MLB.TV

Movers and shakers in the Internet video sector are typically easy to identify: YouTube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix.

A name often overlooked, however, is Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). The Internet arm of professional baseball is one of the most successful online subscription services--along with the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports--and the No. 1 most profitable video-streaming service on the Web.

On Thursday, MLBAM is expected to enable subscribers to watch live Webcasts of pro baseball games on Sony PlayStation 3 video game consoles, the companies announced Wednesday evening.

As part of the partnership with Sony, MLBAM subscribers … Read more

In its bid to put together a roster of compelling content, Roku has just acquired an ace.

Starting Tuesday, the set-top box--known to many as "the Netflix box"--will begin streaming Major League Baseball games. As with the current Netflix arrangement, you have to be a subscriber to the service, in this case MLB.com Premium, to access the content that normally would be available only on a PC or iPhone.

And while this is a boon to baseball fans, it's an even more important development for Roku. MLB.tv Premium is the first live content available on Roku's device, and by bringing that from the PC to the TV, the 50-person Saratoga, Calif., company is beginning to differentiate itself from similar consumer electronics products.

Roku currently has access to the Netflix Watch Instantly queue, as well as Amazon Video on Demand, which allows for rental and purchase of movies. More recently, Roku added content from Blip.TV and MediaFly, two content aggregators, for videos and podcasts.

MLB.tv will work the same way. It will be accessed via a new pane that can be reached via the small remote. Once a customer's account is synced, any live, out-of-market (as in, not your home team) game across the league can be seen, with the choice of both the home and away team's local broadcast feed. Games up to one week old are available in the archive, and previews appear of each team's scheduled games up to a week in advance.… Read more

Of all the sports leagues, Major League Baseball has the reputation of being the most technologically savvy. On Thursday, MLB proved it by winning its first tech patent.

The league's digital unit, Major League Baseball Advanced Media(MLBAM), announced on Thursday that it was granted patent No. 7,486,943 for a system that helps determine a subscriber's geographical location. MLBAM oversees MLB.tv, the online video distribution service that streams live and on-demand games, and is widely considered to be the most successful subscription business on the Internet.

Pinpointing where a subscriber is located when he or … Read more

Baseball fans rejoice. MLB.tv has just debuted a killer iPhone application at WWDC 2008. The application provides live scoreboards, with individual box scores and pitch-by-pitch updates, along with current and constantly updated video highlights, minutes after the play happens.

This application is great for checking in on your team while you're on the go. Instead of being frustrated by not being able to see what your team is up to, MLB.tv's solution puts the whole baseball experience, not just the scores, in your pocket.

This iPhone application looks like it's the best in its class, … Read more

This weekend Jacked.com is launching the first stages of its service. The easiest way to describe it is like a souped-up Netvibes you can use as a reference while watching live television programming. The service is rolling out its features slowly, beginning with a partnership with Notre Dame and NBC Sports to serve up real-time content for Notre Dame's football season which starts on Saturday. NBC is billing the service as "Play Action." You can visit the site now, but there won't be anything on it until game day.

Jacked is linked up to what you're watching on TV, so say you're watching the game, and a player scores. Jacked's smattering of Web widgets will pull up the player's stats, photos, related news stories, a comparison chart of that play to others, etc. The idea is to save you from having to track down player, team, and historical information on your own, and serving it up automatically.

The widgets are powered by a group of underlying technologies that scan through live TV content and grab bits and pieces of information from its metadata. Combine that with things like optical character recognition, and you've got lots of information to work with. The result is an impressive array of widgets, that--when viewed during a live broadcast--will pull up information and related content seconds after it happens.… Read more

If you're a real baseball fan, watching games online instead of on TV is one of the more frustrating uses of the Internet. But for some fans who subscribed to Major League Baseball's online package, watching the first games of the 2007 season was a study in aggravation.

In the wake of MLB's exclusive deal with DirecTV--in which the season-long Extra Innings package is available only on that one satellite network, rather than on any number of cable networks--many hard-core fans have had little choice but to turn to the Internet to get access to the … Read more