Trying to Stream Nats Games Locally

As I sit in my office knowing I won’t be able to watch the Nats game despite having an MLB.tv subscription, thanks to being, you know, in the area of the home team (like most people), I wonder if there’s something that can be done about it. Well, the Baseball Prospectus guys are having an Opening Day (or at I call it, Strassover) Round Table right now and I posed the question to them about what can be done. They took it up, so here’s what was said:

Comment From Charlie
Do you guys think MLB.tv will ever be blackout free? I, like most people, would love to watch my home teams games online at work, on on my iPad, or anywhere else. It’s not about NOT paying for cable or anything, it’s about viewing options! I assume this isn’t MLB’s call, but they’d probably have many many more subscriptions if people could watch the home team…

Colin Wyers: Ever? Probably. I wouldn’t want to bet on the timeline or what other changes would take place between now and then.

Larry Granillo: Charlie, as I saw someone say on Twitter yesterday, with the amounts of money networks are paying for rights now, I doubt it… at least not any time soon.

Jason Collette: The existing TV contracts teams have in place really make it unlikely to change any time soon. I don’t think offering a double secret premium version of it at an inflated price would fix the issue

Colin Wyers: What’s already starting to happen is partnerships with cable companies. Where if you have the channel on your cable, you can watch without blackouts. It’s very limited now, though.

HD Games All Over the Place

MASN announced their TV schedule for this year’s baseball season, and thanks to the addition of MASN2 in HD, every single game will be offered in High Def. Here’s the schedule if you haven’t seen it. If you hadn’t heard about MASN2 HD, here is the press release on that. Basically, it’s going to be turned on in April. I know my service provider, Comcast, is on the list. Here’s the total channel lineup, plus the list of cable  companies that have “committed to carrying MASN2 HD in 2010.” Hopefully there aren’t any issues, I have no idea WHERE MASN2 HD is going to be located on my channel lineup. In an stroke of uber-helpfulness, MASN gave us this quote: “The easiest way for fans to locate MASN, MASN2, MASN HD and MASN2 HD will be for viewers to check their on-screen channel guides using their television remote.”

MASN HD Finally Here

It’s about time, the 40 Nats games in HD last season just weren’t enough. This year, there are more. A few months ago, I went over all the details of the Nats games in HD. The dedicated HD channel launches TOMORROW, April 1. In my neck of the woods, MASN HD will be channel 246, and Comcast subs will find it there or on 201. If you are cooler than me and have FiOS, you probably also have an iPhone and a Mac, you pretentious bastard. You’ll be watching on 577 or 578.

Apparently there are other ways to get TV as well. If you want to find the channel elsewhere, follow this link, and you’ll get to see the complete list.

And of course, if you want to see the broadcast schedule, here it is. Looks like you won’t get to see Jordan Zimmermann’s debut in HD (April 19th). Perhaps a trip out to the ballpark to see it in Real Definition is in order?