Adventures with streaming video

*Now with updates to try to fix my inability to post correctly.

This is the conclusion I have come to after two weeks of trying, and occasionally succeeding, to use the streaming video application.

If I have failed to correctly use the service in some way, it is not for lack of trying. I went so far as to e-mail Bob Bowman, the President and CEO of MLB Advanced Media, a strategy that yielded surprisingly fast results.

Two weeks ago, I signed up to pay 20 bucks per month to use "mlb.tv premium." This would give me access to home and away video feeds to all games, as well as both radio feeds and highlights packages. The games would have "nexdef" feeds, which is MLB's term for high definition streaming video. Or at least that was what was advertised.

The point of this is that I am a huge baseball fan rooting for a team based in Kansas City while living in California. Also, I do not have cable or satellite TV so I cannot get the MLB Extra Innings package. Instead, I figured I would get mlb.tv and stream it to my TV with an HDMI cord, something I do with streaming video frequently. My Internet connection is generally good enough to support video, especially with a special program and client installed for this expressed purpose. (A program, I might add, that inserted itself in the "startup" folder on my laptop and is meant to run in the background at all times. I find this disconcerting and shady.) I should add that I rarely have problems watching games on espn360.com and that I watched most of the NCAA tournament online at mmod.ncaa.com, so I know it's possible to watch live sports feeds on my laptop in my living room.

I have not been able to watch a single game in "nexdef" so far. The stream comes in too fragmented and slowly. Several times per game it crashes my browser. Because the stream was so fragmented, the actual game would be several minutes ahead of the footage I was seeing. When I restarted my browser, I would find that I've missed several minutes or even innings of a game.

I have not been able to watch a single game in high definition. This is despite of some of the worst customer service I have ever encountered, followed by some of the best customer service I have ever encountered. 

The bad customer support came when I called mlb.tv's customer support phone number. I called twice on the same day and talked to three people, all of whom recommended the same troubleshooting steps in the same order, none of which helped. These were steps that had me do things like check the cache capacity on my Internet browser and make sure that I have indeed installed all three necessary programs to use mlb.tv -- Silverlight, Adobe Flash Player, and the mlb.tv nexdef plug-in. The customer service reps could not offer more help than that, and when I pressed them for something else, they pushed back rudely. Apparently they were given a list of steps to recommend but are in fact less tech-savvy than I am (and I am not exactly an IT professional). In other words, if they would just give me that list of steps, I would not have to waste my time, patience, or cell phone minutes talking to people in a call center.

I was especially pissed at the rudeness that the third call center employee displayed when I asked for more help, then asked to speak to another employee. She said to me, "You can speak to someone else, but they're just going to tell you the same things. So you might as well listen to me." She then read from a card the steps to check that my Internet was indeed plugged in, and did so in a condescending tone.

I also had e-mail conversations with the mlb.tv help crew. I only called when I found the e-mail conversations lacking and one-sided. Let me reproduce those e-mail conversations below. I wrote this first e-mail after a game I was watching crashed in the eighth inning with a tie score.

To whom it may concern:

I am a mlb.tv premium subscriber. Today the games are not streaming. My high-speed Internet connection is otherwise working well, so I have to assume the problem is on your end. Please resolve the problem so I can watch today's games.

(signature)

Dear Adam,

Thank you for sending your email. I apologize for the difficulty experienced. Please call our customer service department at 1-866-800-1275 so we can do some troubleshooting and improve your experience. Thank you for taking the time to write!

To whom it may concern:

Thank you for replying, but let me point out that I spent an hour on the phone "troubleshooting" yesterday and got nowhere. Three members of your support staff ran me through the same half dozen or so steps. It became clear that I know much more about how the software works than your support staff and that they are trained to tell me the same things in the same order, regardless of its relevance to this particular situation.

I do not want to spend more time on the phone listening to rude people tell me to "right click on the application, click on the folder icon, and slide the bar over to 10MB," then "turn off my computer, unplug my Internet connection and plug it back in when the computer restarts." Each of three people told me these steps yesterday, among other, similarly asinine fixes. Nothing was accomplished. the customer support was no more than people reading a list of FAQs to me. I don't need to call for that.

I have still yet to be able to watch one entire game in one sitting. The quality of the stream ranges from mediocre to poor when I do watch. This occurs on multiple computers in different places with different Internet access.

I am disappointed in your product.

(signature)

Dear Customer: (note they stopped using my name here)

In an effort to provide you with the best viewing experience MLB.com has been making upgrades to our 2009 Media Player. We apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused you in accessing the games.

We continue to be committed to our customers and thank you for your patience as we make enhancements to our Media Player.

This is not exactly personalized support. I'd be surprised if anyone actually read my e-mails beyond the subject line of "Games not streaming." So, I did the only reasonable thing: I e-mailed the CEO.

It's surprisingly easy to find the e-mail address of most corporate types. It took about two minutes to find Robert Bowman's e-mail address: one to find his name and one to find the correct e-mail address. Google is a wonderful tool.

For those who are wondering, the address is bob.bowman@mlb.com.

I sent Mr. Bowman this e-mail:

Mr. Bowman:
I do not know if you will actually see this e-mail, but I figured that it is worth a try. You were listed online as the person in charge of MLBAM. I hope I am not mistaken in assuming my concerns are in your jurisdiction.
My name is Adam Ross. I am an mlb.tv premium subscriber, but I have had problems with the player since signing up last week.
I have not been able to watch an entire game without long delays and often I cannot get any picture at all. I have called and e-mailed customer support, but so far the help has been non-existent. At the bottom of this e-mail, I have cut and pasted the e-mail back-and-forth with a representative, should you want to read it.
If I can sum up the experience, I would say that the application does not do what I have paid for, the customer service reps on the phone are rude and unable to help, and the customer service reps who have e-mailed me are more interested in getting me to shut up than they are in actually solving anything.
I do not like to complain. All I want is to be able to watch the Royals from California while I am home with the flu and out of work.
This is no better than my previous experience with mlb.tv. While in college I bought a month but canceled when I went back to KC for the summer. It took me an hour waiting on hold to cancel, otherwise my credit card would have been automatically billed. I assume this is unintentional, but I still find it unfair. I hoped the business changed as it grew, but so far I am disappointed.
Thank you for your time,

(signature)

Within an hour, I got a phone call from a member of the MLBAM IT department. He was calling me from his commute home from work in NYC, not from the call center in Houston I had called before. He didn't acknowledge that I had e-mailed his boss' boss but he did acknowledge during conversation details of that e-mail above.

Let that be a lesson. Good customer support still exists. You just have to ruffle the right feathers.

This was last Thursday. On Friday I spoke to two IT guys late in the day, but they called me as I was headed out the door and they failed to get anything accomplished.

It can be a little intimidating talking to well-informed IT guys. I found that they had all my contact information, my past history in doing business with the company, and my phone number that I don't remember giving anyone.

I spent two hours dealing with mlb.tv on Saturday. On of the IT guys, Kushal Patel out of NYC, called me on my cell and hijacked control of my computer (with my consent) through livemeeting.com.

The problem has not yet been resolved, though not through lack of effort. So far Mr. Patel wants to blame my Internet Service Provider, but that fails to address how I can still watch espn360 but not mlb.tv.

In fact, it only got worse over the weekend. For some reason, mlb.tv thinks I am in Minnesota, as it blacked me out of the series between Kansas City and Minnesota.

I am awaiting further contact with Mr. Patel. I am not anticipating getting this service to work for me. It's a shame, really. Here MLB has a product that not only am I willing to pay for, but I am begging them to help me get it so I can pay for it, yet they are failing.

If mlb.tv loses me as a customer, its business model is in serious trouble. I am relatively Internet-savvy, I am a huge baseball fan, and I am willing to shell out $20 per month to watch my team.