{"id":522555,"date":"2010-04-09T14:00:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T18:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10004311"},"modified":"2010-04-08T21:59:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T01:59:16","slug":"mlb-tv-decides-entire-planet-is-a-blackout-area","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/522555","title":{"rendered":"MLB.tv Decides Entire Planet Is A Blackout Area"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/04\/2401946977_e2d5134ffa_m-thumb-240x135-39099.jpg\">         <\/p>\n<p>The MLB.tv banner ads that brag, &#8220;NO BLACKOUTS!: Blackout and other restrictions apply&#8221; may be more accurate than we initially thought. Owen tells Consumerist that he was unable to watch a Cubs\/Braves game, even though he was trying to watch well after the game was over, when blackouts should no longer apply. <\/p>\n<p>He writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No one seems to have caught this story yet. Not even the 50+ tech blogs I subscribe to. <a href=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/2010\/04\/roku-cant-swing-baseball-streaming-until-later-this-month.html\">Your article about Roku<\/a> hinted at this issue, but didn&#8217;t cover it completely.<\/p>\n<p>Opening day is an important time in the baseball season. Thousands of people logged in to try and watch their favorite teams and were faced with a message that they are living in a &#8220;blackout area.&#8221; I found this out because I received the same issue myself and spend almost 2 hours trying to fix it.<\/p>\n<p>It was puzzling when I tried to watch a Cubs\/Braves game that took place in Atlanta yesterday. I live in San Francisco, so I shouldn&#8217;t be blacked out of anything. Regardless, I was trying to watch the archived game after it had taken place, which should not be blacked out anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n<p>If you check MLB&#8217;s support forum, there are more than a hundred comments of outraged customers facing the following issues:<br \/>\n1. Watching an archived game means getting a message that you are unable to because of blackout restrictions<br \/>\n2. If not blacked out, customers open a game and get a black, blank screen.<br \/>\n3. Calling customer service means (reportedly) getting no refund and being told to &#8220;keep trying.&#8221;<br \/>\n4. Checking <a href=\"http:\/\/mlb.mlb.com\/help\/supportforum\/forum.jsp?plckForumPage=Forum&#038;plckForumId=Cat%3adb3d8d11-6612-46a0-9783-8496e917b6b2Forum%3a5ed7216b-8608-47c4-8980-58ade2da4bf2\">the forum<\/a> leads to a few comments from the moderator, drowned out by hundreds of replies from pissed off customers. The moderator suggestions do not fix the issue.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Thus, thousands of customers are outraged that they spent $100 or more on a service that simply does not work. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Blackouts apply, to all games, home and away, in a given team&#8217;s market. Or any market in which their games might theoretically air. This is right in the service&#8217;s fine print. Being unable to access any games at all is not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The MLB.tv banner ads that brag, &#8220;NO BLACKOUTS!: Blackout and other restrictions apply&#8221; may be more accurate than we initially thought. Owen tells Consumerist that he was unable to watch a Cubs\/Braves game, even though he was trying to watch well after the game was over, when blackouts should no longer apply. He writes: No [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4307,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}