FRS

Reappearing Commercials

A couple weeks ago I tweeted, “With Gameday Audio from MLB during innings I hear the local commercials, but on MLB.TV any ads are blacked out. Why?”

I think I know why, Adblock Plus.

When you click on the link to open the video of the game it opens in a separate window and 99.9% of the time I’m using Firefox, which is my default browser. In FF I run the Adblock Plus add-on, but yesterday I tried watching the game using Internet Explorer with no Adblock and lo and behold I get to see the NESN’s commercials on MLBTV.

Normally I abhor commercials, but they are actually better than silence with this image showing for 2 to 3 minutes:
Commercial in Progress

The Holy Grail of Watching a Televised Red Sox Game Realized

After trying all kinds of shenanigans over the years to get it so I could watch the Red Sox on television and listen to the radio crew call the game, turns out it was available all along. No audio and or video delaying software required, all I had to do was subscribe to MLB.TV, install their NextDef add-in and that combination is right there for the selecting.

I don’t see it tonight, but last night I could select no audio and just have the stadium crowd noise while viewing the game. Tried it for a bit, and while interesting, I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I just watched the game instead of my usual internet surfing multitasking…

Better Than Being There

img_mlbtv_smWhen I went to check out the start time for last night Red Sox game on their home page I noticed a news item that said get the rest of the season of MLB.TV Premium for $19.95. I’m in, no more watching badly pixelated streams off of European servers…. The HD picture is awesome. Why bother paying all that money to actually go to a game?

Watched part of last night’s loss, but today and tomorrow I will not be able to use it the watch the FRS, seems that when the game is selected to be carried by FOX on Saturday it is unavailable for watching on MLB.TV. Even if the game you want is not being shown by your local FOX station. Sunday’s night game belongs of ESPN and the same deal applies. Luckily today’s Red Sox/Dodgers game was on my local FOX channel so I could watch it.

It seems like this thing is really geared for the fan of a team who he lives nowhere near, because there blackout restrictions to protect sports cable networks monetary interests. Fortunately I’m a fan of of a team that is a thousand miles away, because if I was an Atlanta Braves fan I’d be blacked out.

Big Papi Is Not Screening My Voicemail Anymore

We’ve decided to go ahead and keep the cheap Verizon phone we bought on vacation and just let the AT&T Pay As You Go account expire. The per minute charge is the same, so no loss there, but I did have to reenter the 70 odd contacts we had accumulated on the old phone into the new phone which took some time. At least with Verizon I could enter them offline in a CSV file and then import them in one fell swoop. Trust me, that was a huge time saver as it might have taken forever using the phone number pad.

My only real downside to the swap is I can’t find a way to get a free ringtone on the phone. With the prepaid plan you can’t add an attachment to a text message or email and you can’t use their Verizon Cloud or Backup Assistant Plus to load a media file to the phone. The only ones you can get are the ones for $3 in the Verizon store!

Though I do kind of wish I could get Big Papi’s voice back as the intro to the voice mail again (even if I could find the recording, I’m sure there would be no way to use it on the new service, if I can’t get anything but their approved ringtones on the phone.)

Straight Hat As A Metaphor For A Baseball Season?

500x386_rsnhatMy Red Sox Nation Citizenship package arrived in the mail Saturday. This year instead of the basic Starter Level package I usually purchase for $15, I doubled my investment and went for the All Star Level. For the extra dough I got some stuff that was cool, a 12″ x 18″ page full of Red Sox Fathead decals that I can stick various places and a Red Sox Yearbook. And some not so cool, a catalog of Red Sox themed merchandise to buy and a small drawstring bag made sort of like a sweatshirt or a small sweatshirt turned into a sort of drawstring bag.

But the real draw was the free hat. Regular readers who are more obsessed with my life than I am will remember that last year’s Red Sox hat only stayed in the head wear rotation until May before being donated to Goodwill because the sox were hanging crooked. This year’s RSN hat has its socks dangling at the proper angle and this season is looking good so far.