baseball

Some subscribers of Major League Baseball's streaming-video service are complaining that the new player, powered by Adobe Flash, isn't ready for the big leagues.

After receiving plenty of favorable reviews from technology blogs, some MLB.com subscribers have complained about stuttering and stalling video while watching on Monday, opening day for baseball. Some of the same problems continued on Tuesday, according to reports. Subscribers of MLB.com's GameDay Audio service also reported that archived games haven't been accessible since Monday.

The irony is that Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), the unit that oversees the streaming … Read more

Baseball season is finally here, so it's time we take a look at some of the best baseball resources across the Web. Whether it's fantasy sports, news, or statistics, you'll find all the best right here.

BenchCoach: After you sign up for BenchCoach, it imports your fantasy baseball team and analyzes your roster. Once complete, it offers advice on how to improve the team. It even projects your success.

CBS Sports: CBS Sports' free Fantasy Baseball league provides real-time scoring and live chat. Its player news and stats features help you pick the right players for your team. It's highly-recommended if you want a full-featured, yet intuitive fantasy baseball league. Disclosure: CBS Sports and CNET are both owned by parent company CBS.

DraftHelp: DraftHelp gives you team depth charts to help you pick the right players in your fantasy draft. But its most useful feature is its "projected stats" tool, which tells you how well a player should perform for the year.

ESPN Fantasy Baseball: ESPN Fantasy Baseball Leagues are free. Users can create a public or private league. The tool's player news and stats come straight from ESPN.com. But beware: ESPN charges a fee for access to its in-depth news articles.

FantasyBaseballChamp: FantasyBaseballChamp provides users with real-time player rankings. Those rankings are based on how they're performing so far this year and how they should perform going forward. The site also has advice columns offering tips on who to add to your fantasy team. That said, don't consider it an ideal resource. It's a backup.

MLB.com: Major League Baseball's free fantasy baseball service is one of the simplest in this roundup. It boasts team management, stat tracking, and a league message board so team owners can communicate. That's about it.

ProFantasyBaseball: ProFantasyBaseball helps you pick the right players for your fantasy baseball team. Its "sleepers" section gives you information on players who might be off your radar but worth adding to your team. All the information is free.

RotoAuthority: RotoAuthority tells you who the top players are this year, based on current and projected performance. The site's blog is updated daily, providing guidance on who you should add to or drop from your team.

TG Fantasy Baseball: TG Fantasy Baseball offers basic player reports and depth charts. The site's Dollar Values tool tells you how many players at each position you should have on your roster. Its Projections tool gives you information on how well your players should perform during the season.

Yahoo Sports: Yahoo's fantasy baseball leagues are free, player information is always up-to-date, and the service's stat tracking is outstanding. But if you want a draft kit or scouting reports, you'll need to pay $9.99 and $14.99, respectively. Even though you'll have to pay for that information, Yahoo's fantasy baseball league is great. It's worth trying out.… Read more

Upper Deck and Flying Lab Software launched a beta version of UpperDeckU, a new kids-oriented online virtual world where sports fans can create their own personal player and socialize and play games with other players.

The ultimate goal of UpperDeckU is to revitalize the dying art of card collecting, but obviously monetization would be great. According to Louise Curcio, vice president of marketing for Upper Deck, "the vision is that this is a marketing tool we're using to engage kids into collecting cards more. That being said, there's also the possibility that it could be a viable … Read more

The thwacking sounds of bats striking balls will once again fill stadiums, as Monday is opening day for Major League Baseball. This year, Microsoft will watch from the sidelines.

MLB.com no longer uses Microsoft's Silverlight to stream games to its 500,000 subscribers. This season fans will watch live and on-demand video via Adobe's Flash player.

In November, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the league's tech unit, announced it would discontinue using Silverlight, the browser plug-in that MLBAM had signed up for barely a year earlier. The decision was not insignificant. MLBAM not only runs the … Read more

Baseball season is almost under way. So it's time we all get online and start forming our fantasy leagues. Perennial favorite sites from ESPN, Yahoo, and MLB.com will probably top the list for most people when they decide which service to use, but more goes into fantasy baseball than simply signing up for leagues. What about stats? Did you forget about the news? Did you happen to remember scouting tools?

Hear are the rest of the sites you need.

There are a number of fine league-building services out there, but if you want to have the best experience, stick to these selected few:

CBS Sports Not only is CBS Sports' Fantasy Baseball league free, it provides real-time scoring, live chat so you can talk with buddies during the game, and adequate player news and stats to help you make more informed decisions. I've used it a few times over the past five years and find it to be easy to use and high-powered for a private or public league. Disclosure: CBS Sports and CNET are owned by the same parent company: CBS.

ESPN Fantasy Baseball I've also used ESPN's fantasy sports services for years, and I've been impressed with how much they offer. Leagues are free, player news and stats come straight from ESPN, one of the best sources for sports news, and managing your team couldn't be easier. But ESPN's penchant for charging for extra scouting help and more in-depth player information is annoying.

MLB.com If you want the most basic offering for your fantasy baseball league, you'll probably want to use Major League Baseball's service. It's free and makes it easy to set up a league. But I'm generally unimpressed with its stat tracking, and managing a team isn't nearly as easy as it is in competing services. It's a well-known fantasy site, but it's not the best.

Yahoo Sports Yahoo was one of the first companies to start fantasy leagues. More than a decade later, it's still providing an outstanding experience. All the leagues are free, player information is always up-to-date and reliable, and the service's stat tracking is second to none. Yahoo does charge some hefty fees for access to a draft kit ($9.99) and a scouting report ($14.99), but it's still a great service.… Read more

Erica Boeke is on the show today to talk about her new book "GameFace: The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Seriously Love Pro Sports." On the show, we talk about women and their fascination with watching hockey players kick each others' ass. And Justin reveals that he has never played baseball, basketball, football, or hell, even played catch in his life.

We don't talk too much technology today, but we promise: we have a good time with sports and our general ability to turn any seemingly benign topic into a sexual innuendo. After Justin talks about men playing hockey, you'll never think about it in an unerotic way again.

Briefly on the show, we mention the war going on between Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," and Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money." Jon Stewart pretty much destroys Jim Cramer and the entire financial news media. We've never almost seen a grown man crying on cable television.

As usual, keep the voice mails coming: 1-866-404-CNET (2638). We still haven't found the right motto yet, but boy do we have a good time sorting through them. Or if you just want to leave a message about how Erica Boeke looks like Helen Hunt, that's fine too. Everyone have a great weekend, and you'll hear us next week when Jeff asks the Sleep Doctor Michael Breus how to stop farting in his sleep.

Netflix is trying to locate the source of a series of glitches that some users of the company's streaming service are blaming on Microsoft's Silverlight video player.

Over the weekend, a steady stream of angry messages was posted to Netflix's blog. The complaints range from choppy video, to audio that doesn't sync with the picture, to grainy image quality.

The complaints began accumulating soon after the Web's largest video-rental service switched to Microsoft's Silverlight in November. The posts appear to have trickled in until last weekend, when a score of customers began reporting problems. … Read more

I'm a die-hard Yankees fan and a season ticket holder for the most storied franchise in sports history. I've been buying the tickets online through the Yankees' "My Yankees" pane that it operates with Ticketmaster. Until now, I was happy with my package of games and the affordable seats I got.

But 2009 is a different story. The Yankees have a new stadium, higher pricing, and a relocation process that has caused Yankees fans to question the motives of their favorite team.

Right now, there are season ticket holders with seniority dating back more than five years that are still waiting for their season tickets, while others, who do have seats, have been moved from the infield to the upper deck. The main reason: Yankees brass decided to use the Web as their main source of adding new season ticket holders, which combined with more people wanting to see the new stadium, created demand that caught team officials off guard.

"As it turned out, we had an unexpected number of fans who wanted the full season, not dropping down because of the economy, but going up," Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost told Newsday in an interview. "We didn't expect there would be such a demand for fulls and we have to salvage 6,000 or 7,000 seats a game for general sale."

To address concerns, the Yankees are now offering "premium seats" to displaced season ticket holders or newcomers for $325 per game for a full season package and $350 per game in a partial season plan. Those seats are located "dugout to dugout" just above field level. Good seats. But there's one problem: last year, a comparable seat in the old Yankee stadium behind home plate was selling for $100.

There's a lot of blame to go around. Some say that the Yankees shouldn't have been so "greedy" in their attempt to add more season ticket holders, while others are saying that it's the relatively recent availability of season tickets online that has substantially reduced the barriers to entry and made it possible for so many people to quickly and easily buy season packages.

Nowhere are both arguments more pronounced than in the place where the fervor started in the first place: online forums. As of this writing, NYYfans.com forum has a 177-page thread on the relocation process dating back to 2007. On average, more than 30 concerned fans are adding comments to that forum each day.

With under two months until the season starts, now is the time for most teams in the Major League to start making their big pushes for season tickets. Season ticket holders are important to any team because they basically guarantee cash for a certain number of games before the season even starts. That's precisely why the Web is such a key component in ticket distribution across Major League Baseball: Ease of use translates into more revenue.

I ventured around the league (online) to find out if fans in other cities were having as much trouble as Yankees fans trying to get season tickets and good seats. Fortunately, the Yankees debacle looks like an isolated event.… Read more

2K Sports is known for its action-filled titles, but next week it will be making its foray into the statistics side of sports. MLB Front Office will be released, starring Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A's. CNET News' Daniel Terdiman got a sneak peek and says it's unlike any sports video game he's ever played. He stops by to tell us about it.

Also in today's podcast: Intel's chairman calls it a career, Forbes releases its list of the most wired cities in America, the Facebook/MySpace debate goes on, and we look … Read more