To be perfectly honest, this blog post has been sitting in my drafts section for a few months.  I wanted to start this post about people bitching about the MLB.tv service, but I think I had this little voice in my head that told me to just give it some time, enjoy my already stellar experience, and see where it goes from there.

The journey to MLB.tv started late in the season last year when I wanted to be able to stream the playoff games from whatever office I may of been working out of that day, however, I forgot to read the fine print that stated all live playoff games were blacked out, but an archive copy of the game would be available AFTER the game…meh.  Small fail for me…but that seems to be some what of a daily occurence as I get older. :-)

So fast forward a few months, and I start poking around and seeing if I could find ANYTHING on the internet about MLB.tv offering live games streaming in HD…I couldn’t find anything.  So I went to the social channels, sent out a msg on Twitter, and oddly, my friend Nicole of all people responded to me on Facebook (my Twitter feed goes through to Facebook as well).  She said that she knew all the MLB.tv guys from when she lived in New York for a few years and she immediately got on her IM, asked if they were going to be offering streaming HD content for 2009, and they said yes!

The power of social media is awesome!

So anyway, when it came time to roll out streaming HD over the internet from MLB.tv, I was on it like white on rice with my credit card in hand!  Its roughly $20/month for me to be able to watch ALL of the Red Sox games live in HD…ummm…yeah…IN!

When I signed up, the player was still in “beta” mode with some limited functionality, but it worked well for a beta…not gonna lie.  There were some issues with the “NextDef” java based plug-in initially, for many users, but as far as I can tell, those issues are gone.  The player itself is all Flash based, and has some really cool options.  You can literally use it as a DVR with an unlimited amount of space to store ALL games ALL season long…in HD!  Its like a media mecca for any diehard baseball fan.

We are a few months in to the MLB season now, and I’m still watching my HD stream every chance I can get.  The picture quality isn’t perfect all the time, but this is new technology, and since I’m REALLY in to new tech (oddly I’m writing this blog post on my PC that’s connected to my 46″ Samsung LCD TV), I can pretty much “go with the flow” when it comes to bumps in the road when new technologies roll out.

Kudos to the MLB.tv crew…you guys are doing a great job…love the service…keep pushing forward!  And, if you are a die hard baseball fan, and your team isn’t within your local market, do yourself a favor and get the service already…no…seriously…get it, and if you do get it, and don’t like it, come back and tell me why…maybe we can get some group collaboration together and get some new features packed in for the 2010 season!