Not Quite Ready To Cut The Cord

There is an ever-growing community of people who have quit getting their TV from the traditional cable and satellite providers and instead rely on the internet for their programming.  With Netflix and Hulu and smart TVs it is becoming increasingly easy to do this.  With the recent arrivals of HBO Now and Sling I am almost ready to cut the cord myself.  There is just one major hurdle that is preventing me from doing this - live sports.

Over the past few years we have progressed a lot towards delivering television content over the web.  Sports are progressing much slower, however.  MLB.TV is amazing and is the model with which I think most leagues will follow in the future.  In fact, the NHL just partnered with MLB's technology services to offer a similar service for hockey games (who has ever heard of competing leagues joining forces for broadcasting?).  The NFL, auto racing, and most other sports are a no-go as of now.  If the game is on ESPN and you have Sling, or if you can pick up local networks in HD over the air, those are pretty much your only options right now to watch live sports if you cut the cord.

There is one other major problem, even if streaming options for sports were ideal.  We bought the rest of the baseball season for $25 on MLB.TV.  We have three devices connected to the service - a 2013 Panasonic smart TV, an ~2010 Panasonic Blu Ray player, and a 2015 Samsung TV (all three devices had the MLB.tv app pre-packaged on the device, which is amazing).  None of these devices can consistently stream the games in HD, and there are frequent buffering times.  The Samsung TV, which is the newest, does the best, but it still doesn't compare with regular TV.  We currently have 10 MB down for our internet speed, and admittedly it is sluggish at times and suffers from congestion slow down.  Regardless, it can't seem to provide a reliable HD signal.  Is it my overall internet speed or my devices (I don't think it's my router - it is brand new and wasn't cheap.)?  Time will tell as we are being upgraded to 50 MB down in the near future.

Additionally there is something that traditional TV offers that thus far I do not think internet TV can match and that is convenience.  I can switch through channels quickly, pull up the guide quickly, pull up shows from my DVR quickly, and easily record programs.  My experience with watching TV through apps is that it is a bit clunky and disjointed when switching from program to program.

I think sometime in the future, probably the near future, most American's will be getting their TV through app services similar to MLB.tv.  For me, I am not ready to make the switch yet.  Traditional TV is too reliable and convenient, and the lack of competing sports packages makes the switch unrealistic.  I will be watching as new technology and packages are released.  I predict sometime within the next 10 years I will be making the switch as well.  I probably would already switch if it weren't for live sports.

Blacked Out

As the dog days of summer have hit, so have some of the slowest times of the sports calendar.  With basketball and hockey gone for the year, and football not yet started, the only thing we have left in terms of major team sports is baseball.  This is fine by me as I enjoy baseball, especially the Cardinals.  Every night there is a Cardinals game I tune in to Fox Sports Midwest, a channel that carries Cardinals games and a channel that I typically get on my TV.  This all changes once the game actually starts, however, when the channel goes black and I am greeted with a lovely message stating "This game is restricted in your viewing area."  This absolutely infuriates me and is one of my largest annoyances with sports, even more so than ESPN.

Living in metropolitan Indianapolis, there are three teams closer to me than St. Louis: (1) Cincinnati, (2) Chicago White Sox, and (3) Chicago Cubs.  I have access to all of these games via Fox Sports Ohio or various Chicago stations.  Additionally, if I lived in Terre Haute (a city closer to St. Louis than Indianapolis), or southern Indiana towards Illinois, Fox Sports Midwest would not be blacked out.  In a desperate attempt to understand this logic, I've done quite a bit of research regarding MLB's black out rules.  You can read a brief summary of the rules on Wikipedia, or a more in-depth summary on baseball's FAQ site.

Baseball's blackout rules differ from the NFL in that they have nothing to do with attendance or really even where you live.  The country is divided into arbitrary regions belonging to each team, and within that region you are restricted to viewing the team's local broadcast.  Since Indianapolis is so close to Chicago and Cincinnati, and does not have it's own team, I believe the regions of the two Chicago teams and the Reds overlap where I live, which is why I am able to view those games.  Since we are outside of St. Louis' region, the game is blacked out.  No one wins in this situation.  I don't get to see the Cardinals play and the St. Louis-area advertisers miss out on viewers.  And it's not like I'm going to start watching the Cubs just because baseball makes me watch them.  The only way for me to get Cardinals games is if I pay for MLB Extra Innings or MLB.tv, which I would be willing to do if I lived far away from St. Louis.  The fact that I get the channel and baseball forces the blackout is just infuriating beyond relief.  For another example that is even more extreme, if you live in the US territory of Guam, you are not allowed to watch San Francisco Giants games.  These rules make such little sense they are currently in the process of coming under attack in a class-action lawsuit.  Until that suit finishes (and hopefully in my favor), I will either have to pay to watch the Cards play or stare at my black screen.