Ok, I wanted to test out MLB.TV quality on my PS3 because I have never had it before so I watched Verlander's no hitter against Toronto from last season. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on my first experience with the service for people who are thinking about buying it.
First, the picture quality was good for the most part. It definitely had more artifacts than FS Detroit on Dish but most of the time it was close enough. If it looks like that all season it will definitely exceed my expectations. It was comparable to the Netflix 1080p streams on my PS3 for almost the entire game. My only real gripe was that it wasn't as consistent as Netflix. About 3 or 4 times during the game it turned into a horrible blurry mess that is far worse than Dish SD. This only lasted for about 30 seconds at a time and I can live with but it would be nice if they could get it as rock solid as Netflix. I'm hoping they are just working kinks out because it was the first night of the 2012 package and it will improve during the season.
When I watch Netflix HD through my PS3 the quality is solid and people watching with me would have no idea that I'm watching an internet stream. If my first test of MLB.TV turns out to be the norm you couldn't say the same thing about this service. The quality is very good for the vast majority of the game but those 3 or 4 times the quality dropped took away from the experience a little bit.
Second, I put a lot of money into my sound system. When I watch TV or movies sound is just as important to me as picture. That being said I wasn't expecting bluray quality sound from this streaming service. The sound wasn't great but it wasn't bad either. I was happily surprised to see that my Onkyo receiver was getting multichannel PCM 5.1 from the PS3. FSN Detroit doesn't use the rear channels but this gives me hope that this service is capable of using them for channels that do take advantage of them.
Overall I think it is a good value for me. Dish doesn't have EI so it is a no brainer if you want out of market baseball. If I had Directv it would be a closer call but I think I would still go with MLB.TV and save the $90. If they don't change anything quality wise it will be acceptable to me. If they can get it to stay at its top quality like Netflix does throughout the entire game I will be extremely happy with my purchase. I do have 20mb cable internet service so my internet speed should not have been the problem.
Edit: One small thing I forgot to add. It would be nice if they would edit out the commercial breaks on archived games since they aren't actually showing any ads anyways. Every time the game went to a commercial they showed a blue screen that said commercial break in progress for a couple minutes. I understand why this is necessary for live games but it seems a little dumb to look at a blue screen for 2 minutes every half inning or pitching change for a game that was on May 7th. This isn't a huge deal to me because 90% of my use will be for live games but it doesn't seem like it would be that hard for them to edit out the commercial breaks on archived games.
