The Twins Opening Day game is now to be televised nationwide on ESPN. I guess maybe they figure people are interested in a game featuring last year's AL MVP and Cy Young Award winner.
It sounds like WFTC/FSN will still be carrying the game in Minnesota, but we out-of-towners also get to see Opening Day on TV. As much as I appreciate just being able to see Twins games on mlb.tv, it's much nicer to watch on TV. (Plus, I'm a little wary of how well my computer will handle the new 700k mlb.tv feed.)
They did have some problems with the feed during pre-season. It's such a great service - I hope they get the kinks worked out.
NASA doesn't even have the sophistication of the combo of getting mlb.tv video, home-town color on audio, and Gameday for pitch location, while tracking on the WGOM.
Now if I could only start it all up with one click...
I just tried out the 700k demo, and it worked fine, but I'm more worried about whether or not they are going to have enough bandwidth to serve all of their customers during peak periods--especially if they are increasing the video quality and presumably adding at least some customers who can't watch on cable anymore and didn't switch to DirecTV.
I've got my fingers crossed.
Also, I just checked my cable listings, and it looks like the Twins game will be on ESPN2 rather than ESPN. So if you are setting a VCR or something, I'd be sure to double-check which ESPN affiliate the game winds up actually airing on.
VCR? What's that? We live in the day and age of Tivo (or MOXI, for us Charter folks) that knows exactly what to do.
btw, I think ESPN also has the following Monday's game televised nationally as well.
Actually, I really want to put together a media center PC with a TV tuner card so that I can digitally record TV programming, but I need to scratch together a little bit more money to make that happen. Until then, I'm stuck with my VCR.
ubelmann, I'm assuming here from your fizzicks background that you actually know a thing about hardware. so I'd be enthusiastic about you giving us a post on your research findings and recommendations on this matter at some point (or anyone else in The Nation).
I'd like to jerry-rig a faux-TIVO arrangement at some point for my cable feed. That is, a freeware software front end for a hard drive and TV tuner card connected to cable coax. I'm the cheap-ass who has the minimal (analog) cable -- just the broadcast stations plus CSPAN. But I'd like to move in the direction of recording stuff on the hard drive and perhaps burning the occasional DVD.
Yeah, if I get anything like that up and running, I'd be glad to blog about it. I actually don't have a ton of linux experience (I've only started using it extensively over the last year or so), but I once spent a decent part of a summer break reading a DOS manual, so you could say I've been a bit of a tech geek for a while now.
Saw a cool demo on the Linux Version last night..seems like it could be done for a song.
that's what I've read. I have zero Linux experience, but am willing to learn.
From the limited research I've done so far, it seems that the major hang-up with DVR over Linux is somewhat limited driver availability for TV tuner cards. But, I also have a friend who already has a Linux setup with TV tuner card working just fine, so it's probably not a big deal. Anyway, it's definitely something in the ubelplann.
Every time the Twins are scheduled for ESPN, I end up getting 3 hours of ESPNews instead. Des Moines must be in some sort of local rights purgatory where I'm too far away to get Minnesota stations, but too close to be considered out-of-market. If I don't get to see them, there will be hell to pay.
Yes, Iowa is blackout hell. Six, count 'em, six different teams (Twins, Royals, Cubs, White Sox, Cardinals, Brewers) claim the whole state of Iowa as part of their home territory.