Tiger Geist

Being a tech geek and an iphone user, the MLB.com at-bat 2009 application looked extremely promising.  Priced at $10, it advertises itself as an application that gives you in-game video, audio feeds from both the home and away team, real time scoring, video highlights, and pitch by pitch graphical updates.  $10?  Count me in.  I also purchased the mlb.tv package for my computer and… I’ll give that a review after a week.  I don’t think its fair to judge that app after one day so I’ll give it some time (though they do get some egg on their face by strutting the wonders of their switch to adobe the same day as the mlb.tv web app crashed for millions of users).  Give me the weekend to play with mlb.tv, as I’m still intrigued by their features — probably a server / load problem.

I spent most of opening day playing around with the iphone application, and in the ultimate test, I walked home from work (about 3 miles) listening to the Tiger / Blue Jays game.  Here are my first impressions.

PROS:

• This thing is really slick.  While many iphone applications are slick, the interface is very well thought out.  Live in PST?  Tell the app and all games are listed in PST.  Favorite team is Detroit?  It will automatically put every Detroit game at the top of the application.
• You can listen to one game and browse box scores, game updates, etc from another game without interruption of your audio stream.
• Audio works very well.  The quality is about the same as your standard internet radio feed.  Not quite AM quality (slightly tin-y) but easy to listen to for a few hours.
• Audio was tested on Wifi, 3G and Edge network connections and worked well.  Video / rich content speeds may vary based on connection speeds, but audio quality was the same for each.
• My walking tests?  I walked from the financial district, down market street, to the lower haight in San Francisco, about 40 minutes.  Very limited audio interruption, and this was only caused when the network dropped 3G and moved to Edge and then back to 3G.  The game picked back up automatically.  I imagine if you were hanging out in one area you wouldn’t see an interruption, as I probably went 15 minutes at a time before buildings probably blocked the signal.
• Battery life was very respectable.  During a 40 minutes in mostly 3G, starting with a full battery, I easily had 65-70% battery life remaining.  This was mostly walking in a 3G network;  If you disabled 3G and stuck with Edge it might have been better, but I don’t see any issues with the battery.  Easily could get through a game without any concerns.
• Real-time box scores and play by play is easy to use and easy to read
• Video results populated themselves;  while waiting for a stop light I checked the stats and was able to watch a video of Curtis Granderson’s solo shot in the fourth (can’t verify the time it showed, but it was about 20 minutes after he hit the homer that I checked and noticed the video was available).
• Video quality was very good.  Could have been better, but the game wasn’t in HD (from what I read) so that could have been a factor in the coding/codec available.
• When the app crashed (see below) the phone was unaffected.

CONS:

• They advertise “home and away” radio broadcasts.  The fine print says “All home and select away feeds”.  I was going to buy the app anyway, but it was very misleading.
• Not all audio feeds came through; some didn’t work at all, and some crashed the application.  Luckily, the phone never crashed.  This was a problem during the earlier games, but I didn’t have any issues with the Tiger game.  Early glitches may have been solved by then.
• Early games didn’t seem to post video feeds; nothing was available for the Texas 9-1 victory over Cleveland.  Not sure if this was a glitch that is to be worked out or if they didn’t have any videos of interest.
• Volume levels (while walking in an urban environment) are low.  Noise isolating headphones would be preferred, but then I wouldn’t be able to hear the drug dealers offering their wares.  In an office environment there aren’t any issues.
• Standard iphone headphone adjustments don’t work and have unexpected results.  For example, iphone headphones allow users to pause music, fast forward, or rewind by the click of their headphone extension.  However, when this is done while listening to a game on at-bat 2009, it actually starts your iphone’s itunes application.  By habit, when i’m listening to music and someone stops to ask me something, I just ‘pause’ what i’m listening to.  When this happened at work while listening to the Rockies / D-backs game, it clicked on itunes.. which had a different volume level and was playing music.  Not the expected result and scared the crap out of me.
• Standard iphone issue, but its annoying here too — you can’t use another iphone application while the mlb app is running, and if you do the game audio feed stops.  So if you get a text message, to reply you must stop the game.  Frustratingly there is no saving of the last known state, so when you re-open the application it doesn’t remember your game or what feed you chose.
• Application launch can be slow if you’re in 3G, and slower still in Edge.  Not as much of an issue, but compounds your annoyance level with the above issue.
• Small glitches — I had to select the Toronto feed of WXYT to listen to the actual Detroit announcers.  Sounds like a data feed problem that can be easily fixed without a software update.

Overall… this thing rules.  For $10 its one of the best applications you can purchase for the iphone in terms of service and what you can get out of it.  Yes, a portable satellite radio would have better service, but I don’t have satellite radio — I have an iphone.  Very Highly recommended.  Go buy it.  Now.

Also available:

MLB.com At-Bat 2009 Lite:  Blah.  Its free, but its not worth the time or money.  No audio, no glitz… no value.  The optimized espn.com mobile site I feel is faster, and allows you to click into the game immediately.  If you deem $10 not worth it, the mobile espn.com is pretty slick (scores only — no audio).