Major League Baseball has rebuilt its live streaming video service, unveiling some interesting new features in time for opening day.
In addition to the usual video, audio and live game highlights, the premium package includes multi-game viewing, live picture-in-picture and a player tracker. For fans of their team's radio broadcasts, live game radio can be swapped into the video feed. There's also live game DVR and HD-quality video where available.
This is a pretty robust set of features for any breed of web television, let alone Major League Baseball. Obviously, it's also more feature-rich than standard television, taking full advantage of the 'net's interactiviy.
On the downside, local games are still blacked out when they're being covered on TV, but MLB Advanced Media CEO Bob Bowman tells Business Insider that his group is trying to work out deals with teams and TV-networks for so-called "in-market" streaming. As a Yankee fan in Los Angeles, this doesn't affect me, and I'm seriously considering the $110 yearly subscription, given all the money I've saved by dropping cable late last year.
The bigger question is this: how can cable providers or other content providers offer a better service online, to the point that it's worth paying for? Ideas such as DVR and picture-and-picture, along with the a la carte nature of the service, could certainly be a start.
