Hi all,

Again, thank you for the feedback. Just wanted to quickly clarify, for those of you who are still having issues with the Mosaic, you can still get to the 400k and 700k Single Game Streams on MLB.com by clicking on the TV icon on the scoreboard on the home page.

For users who are having installation problems, we have our support team reviewing your comments here and responding, as well as responding to your customer service inquiries and emails. For those that are successfully installed, and are having issues with the 6 game view in the mosaic, please note that you can double click on a game at the top of the Mosaic window to go to single game view, which appears to be working well. Thanks for your support.

Best,

Justin Shaffer

Hi all,

We’ve had some reports of buffering on the mosaic streams using our new technology, as and such will be providing a 700k stream using normal streaming on the lowest quality level in the mosaic. If you’re having trouble with the middle or high quality levels (just on the mosaic view), please comment here and let us know. The quality will not be as good as the 1.2 or 1.8, but we want to be sure that everyone can see video today. We’re working actively to ensure that the 1.2mbit and 1.8mbit streams are working well and looking good, and will update you here, hopefully before game time today.

Please note: The single game streams should all still work well, at both 400k and 700k via the mosaic.

We appreciate your patience as we work to ensure quality.

Hi all,
thanks for the commentary so far. We’ll be pushing another build of the application (those who have already installed will self-update when they start the application again, after the build is live) before games today to clean up some of the issues we’ve seen so far. I’ll put more detailed release notes up in a bit as well.

Regarding issues reported so far:

Vista: We’re still working on ensuring that we’re able to support Vista well (with both the Mosaic and our web based media player). Some of the new security components have caused some trouble for some of our applications. However, if you run the app as an administrator (right click, run as administrator), you should be able to get it working. We expect to have this cleaned up in the next few days.

Swarmcast: Some of you have asked about swarmcast. Its a new technology we’re working with that is letting us do much higher quality streams within the mosaics. It needs both internet access and to be running while the mosaic is. I’ll be putting up a more detailed post on it specifically today, but for now you can take a look at http://swarmcast.com/whatsthis.html for more detail.

Random Crashes: We’ve seen a few scenarios that are reproducible that cause application crashes on mac and pc that we are cleaning up, though we’ve all been watching video for days on end now via the mosaic – so it does run stably in most cases. We’re actively addressing these as we see them, so please let us know by writing in here if you’re able to reproduce one consistently. Thank you for your patience while we address these.

CC Verification/International Users: As MLB.TV Mosaic is just another way to watch MLB.TV, the data used is the same as what we do in the browser. Please confirm you’re able to watch 700k streams with your premium subscription on MLB.TV in the web browser today, and let us know if any of you are still having trouble after validating this in the browser. We cache your location and some verification data, so we don’t have to ask you every time – this is interchangeable on our infrastructure between the Mosaic and MLB.TV in the browser.

Thanks again for the commentary and your patience. Here’s to a successful and happy opening day for the majority of you, and for those that are having trouble, we’re working around the clock to make your experience as good as possible in short order.

Thanks,

Justin

Quick update for you all. In addition to testing alternative methods of distribution on Panel 2 (Please write in mosaic@website.mlb.com or comment here on your panel 2 viewing experience lately!), we’ve rolled out our first pass at two new features. Now, while you’re blacked out, you can take the mosaic application to a scaled down version of the MLB.com Gameday application. Next time you see a live game that is blacked out, click twice on the screen to go to the single game view, and you’ll see the new feature. We’ve also launched the customizable Player Tracker which will allow you to view alerts only for players you are interested in. Check out Player Tracker in the single game view for more detail. We’re still working out the kinks in both of these, but wanted to make them available for you all to start taking a look at.

Also, If we receive good feedback on the higher quality mosaic streaming in Panel 2 from you
all – we’re considering moving all panels to the higher quality format. Please write in and let us know how panel 2 is working!

Thanks,

Justin

Thanks again to all of you for your valuable feedback. We’re aware that some of you are still experiencing trouble getting video working in the player, and we’ve found that 99% of the time the issue is related to one of 3 things:
Issues:

1. Not having a current enough version of DirectX (We require DirectX 9.0c and suggest you’re running Windows XP Service Pack 2). You can check the directX version by going to the start menu, clicking on run, and typing in dxdiag and then hitting ok. You’ll see the directX version down at the bottom of the page.

2. Not having current enough video drivers for DirectX ( 9.0c support required). In the dxdiag application – see issue #1 for how to run this – under the Display tab, you can try and run the DirectDraw and Direct3D tests. If all tests run successful and Mosaic is not working properly, please contact us.

3. Not having a video card that will work at all with DirectX 9.0c – see instructions under issue #2 above.

Possible resolutions:

1. Upgrade Windows to Service Pack 2 and DirectX to 9.0c. Downloads available via Windows Update, or here: WinXP SP2 and here: DirectX 9.0c

2. Contact your video card manufacturer or computer manufacturer via their website and download the latest drivers for your video card. You can find the video card and version under the dxdiag application as noted in issue #1 above. After the driver upgrade, try and run the tests again as noted in issue #2 above and see if you get better results.

3. If all else fails, you may need to purchase a newer video card for your computer. Please contact your computer manufacturer prior to doing this, as they may have a workaround or advice on the issue. Unfortunately, in order to provide an application we feel best adds to the baseball viewing experience, we need to use newer technology which necessitates the use of the latest DirectX features. We hope to continue to develop the technology and hope you’ll upgrade with us as we progress.

Thanks again for all of your help and patience as we work through this process.

Best,

Justin