I had numerous rebuffers watching the Red Sox - Rangers game last night. Also did a software update and version went
from build 382 to 380. Still had rebuffering problem but not quite as bad. Also picture quality varied from very good to
blurry / pixelation at times. Watched end of Yankees- A's game picture quality was very good, no rebuffering.

One observation I have noticed is that picture quality seems better later at night when there are less live games remaining.
To me this suggests that MLB.tv possibly does not have enough bandwidth when there are more live games. I always have
very good picture with Netflix and never have any rebuffers watching movies.

I'm using a wireless connection for Roku with Verizion FIOS 25 meg. down internet service.

by eepstein0 » Wed Apr 21, 2010 7:52 pm

Guys, I hate to burst anyone's bubble here but the problem isn't with Roku. Everyone is describing their internet speed as being terrific, yet you're getting buffering, etc.

Unfortunately, MLB.tv is an awful program because their servers can't handle the demand. Can't fault Roku on this one, but you can keep complaining to MLB.tv about their awful product because that's where the problem lies.
eepstein0

Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2010 12:02 pm



I might be inclined to agree except that after all the frustration last night and wondering what was really going on in the game I pulled out my laptop and watched the last 4 1/2 innings of the red sox/rangers game with no rebuffering problems whatsoever. I did notice some of the blurry/haziness/underwater look on MLB.tv on the laptop too. But the feed played fine.
That would seem to indicate that the problem lies with the Roku box itself. Near constant rebuffering. No problem on laptop, big trouble on roku. Doesn't seem to point solely at MLB.
All I know for now is that this has been very disappointing. Should have stuck with Directv!

If bandwidth/servers are the problem, what will happen when PS3 MLB.TV goes live? http://cnettv.cnet.com/mlb-tv-ps3/9742-1_53-50086575.html?tag=mncol and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/technology/22sony.html?src=busln

lafitefl wrote:

I might be inclined to agree except that after all the frustration last night and wondering what was really going on in the game I pulled out my laptop and watched the last 4 1/2 innings of the red sox/rangers game with no rebuffering problems whatsoever. (

Your PC and the Roku use completely different streams.

eepstein0 wrote:

Unfortunately, MLB.tv is an awful program because their servers can't handle the demand.

I think this theory is getting overplayed. The rebuffering issues are prominent even when playing archived games at 10AM. At that time both the server and bandwidth requirements for the MLB system are at a minimum. (indeed archived games require significantly less resources to serve to start with.)

rbenjamin wrote:

Silly question -

Has anyone received more than a 1.5mbps feed on this beta channel (according to the debug screen)?

I haven't - even this morning when it detected a 7.2mbps network. (although speedtest.net still says I have a 16.8mbps download and netflix on the roku gets 10+ mbps speeds.)

I've been in this thread since the beginning and I don't think anyone has reported more than a 1.5meg stream for MLB. It's interesting to me that many other channels I checked also stream at just 1.5. That includes including the (at least equally blurry) NBA playoff highlights channel, and a few of my favorite talking-heads Revision3 programs that are much less visually demanding and yet still show some compression or other cutting-corner artifacts. However, Roku debugging also reports 1.5meg streaming on some Netflix movie selections that are very sharp, including two anime series I've queued up, plus at least one old TV series (Miami Vice) that, while it has that degraded soft-focus look, is never as bad as the worst MLB underwater sludge view.

So the obvious conclusion is that there are lots of different factors affecting the image quality. That detailed post by vpms about DNS and CDN was fascinating.

Just started using it yesterday, my Roku is wired to the internet. I had almost no problems for the duration of two games while also doing a lot internet-heavy stuff on my laptop, the buffering only became an issue a couple times and fixed itself when I went back to the menu and resumed.

One thing that was weird though, I was watching the Tigers/Angels game on the FSD (away) feed - near the end of the game when I had to click out and resume it kept trying to give me the home feed, no matter what I clicked. after a couple tries it gave me the away feed like I wanted.

MLB.COM/Roku is no longer active.
It takes you to a sign up screen only.
Is this due to the problems?
Or are they taking it down until things are worked out?

eepstein0 wrote:

http://mlb.mlb.com/help/supportforum/forum.jsp?plckForumPage=ForumCategory&plckCategoryId=db3d8d11-6612-46a0-9783-8496e917b6b2

Here is MLB.tv's "customer support forum". Might be a useful resource as to why the buffering is occuring.

Was very interesting to go to this site...I found people complaining about many of the issues I have had with MLB's service on the computer. Just one..is the fact that frequently the log in button is disabled. When my subscription was up for renewal this year I asked if they would be improving their program with Roku and of course I should have been suspicious when I never got an answer.

jkuhns wrote:

MLB.COM/Roku is no longer active.
It takes you to a sign up screen only.
Is this due to the problems?
Or are they taking it down until things are worked out?

interesting! fwiw the non-beta channel placeholder on Roku is still there, saying "check back in mid-April" (ahem)

Was on b382 and forced an update last night to b380, it'd be nice if there was a changelog...

I was watching the STL/ARI game last night and was jumping between innings. When I selected the away feed and selected and inning,watched the inning, then hit up to return to game screen and pressed down to select the away feed again, the focus always goes back up to the home feed. I was able to reproduce this at least a dozen times.

lafitefl wrote:

I might be inclined to agree except that after all the frustration last night and wondering what was really going on in the game I pulled out my laptop and watched the last 4 1/2 innings of the red sox/rangers game with no rebuffering problems whatsoever. I did notice some of the blurry/haziness/underwater look on MLB.tv on the laptop too. But the feed played fine.
That would seem to indicate that the problem lies with the Roku box itself. Near constant rebuffering. No problem on laptop, big trouble on roku. Doesn't seem to point solely at MLB.
All I know for now is that this has been very disappointing. Should have stuck with Directv!

The roku does have limited memory, and cannot buffer as much as a computer. The vastly larger computer buffer can paper over a lot of the problems if the stream is getting inconsistent bandwidth or packet loss. I'd guess that roku will increase the memory in future systems as prices go down, but buffering only helps to a point if there actually is an underlying network issue.

Was on b382 and forced an update last night to b380, it'd be nice if there was a changelog...

I believe that they had to roll BACK to 380 bc 382 had taken down Radiotime. With 382 it wouldn't connect to the music streams. Once they rolled back to 380 Radiotime worked again. I haven't seen anything to suggest that it did anything to improve MLB. In another forum one of the Roku moderators commented that 382 was "not a valid build".

Was sent an archived build last night tweaked to not drop radio streams..... Some greater artifacts at cam angle change that did not go away quick enough.
Last night vid q was 6/10 at best, after using the usual buffer tricks.

So far so good, pretty nice video quality. I was watching the Nationals game MASN-HD feed last night and it was okay only a few "buffering" then about 10:05pm est it starting to get really grainy and buffered a lot. I started back over in the bottom 8th inning and was fine for the rest of the game. I fell asleep watching the Tigers game and the video was fine there too.

Woke up this morning and took the update now @ version 2.5 build 380, I can still view last nights games just fine I watched some of the cards game and redsox game.

As for bandwidth last night I was pulling about 2.5-4.5Mbps on the MASH-HD feed while also watching the caps game on TSN-HD @ 1600kbps via NHL Gamecenter live on my Boxxee, I am using MRTG to graph internet usage it updates every 5 minutes so that is pretty accurate I haven't tried the roku debug yet. I have a 12Mbps AT&T Uverse Internet connection with my roku hard wired into the network and the rest of the family was using the internet too at the same time I was watching the games. Its pretty obvious that when the servers that are streaming the games get over loaded they have to lower the bandwidth of each individual stream and that's what is causing the grainy pictures. I image these issue we are having at on the MLB host end and not on the roku end so probably not much roku can do about it.

As for feature's I wish the pre-game was included, or a "Game will start soon" logo screen so I don't have to actually tune into the game right at 7:05 or whatever, I wanna just tune the channel up and just wait for the game to begin. I also would enjoy the radio streams to be added to the available options. And since I am writing a wish list how about MLB Network channel to be part of the MLB.tv offered service I would obviously pay more for the package if that could be included. =)