# mlb.tv app needs bandwidth selection / stop audio dropouts



## rocket777 (Sep 11, 2013)

Well, I plunked down the off season mlb.tv fee to check out how the tivo mlb.tv app on my roamio works.

The bad news is the audio, which keeps dropping out, about every 10-20 seconds, it drops out for about 1/4 of a second. This is quite annoying. 

It appears that the app tries to stay at the highest resolution, and when it's at its highest, the dropouts are at their worst. Sometimes the resolution drops down for a while, and then the audio works better.

I have a pretty good isp connection (1.6 MB/sec) and these dropouts are quite rare when I listen through my computer.

At the least, the app should let me select between hd and sd resolutions, if that would solve the audio problems. Or perhaps the app should buffer more if that's the problem.

The interface is ok, but also has one annoying problem. When I'm seeking to an inning, and say I'm at the 9th inning, then to back out of the app to choose another game, I have to press the remote <- key 10 or 11 times. Why not use the "back" button on my remote to take me to the schedule in one press.

I would prefer to use the tivo over my computer (both connected to my tv) since I like being able to use the remote to pause, which you can't do when running on the computer. So, fix the audio, or let me lower the resolution to fix it, and I'll watch mlb with my tivo. But the sound dropping out is just too annoying.


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

please don't take this the wrong way but I wouldn't characterize 1.6mb as "pretty good" by todays standards....I wouldn't try to stream netflix on that.


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## rocket777 (Sep 11, 2013)

spaldingclan said:


> please don't take this the wrong way but I wouldn't characterize 1.6mb as "pretty good" by todays standards....I wouldn't try to stream netflix on that.


You wrote 1.6mb; do you mean 1.6megabits? I was reporting MB or megabytes.

That's 16.31 mbps on speedtest.net.

On mlb.com's speed test, it says you should have 3000 kbps for HD video, and they measure me at 11830, or nearly 4x the requirement. As long as I can receive faster than the stream, they could be buffering to deal with all the hops to me that determine the true speed. On my pc, they must be doing this, since there are almost no glitches coming through and both are on the same router.

I've got huluplus and I can stream hd shows (on the tivo or pc) w/o a hint of a glitch.

Here's netflix's requirements, so I got enough for even 3d.

5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality
7.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for Super HD quality
12 Megabits per second - Recommended for 3D quality

But bottom line is that I'm suggesting that, like most other apps of this kind (hulu, netflix, mlb.tv on a pc) there's a way to change to a lower resolution if the experience just isn't cutting it at the higher resolution. The tivo mlb app has no such choice.


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## spaldingclan (Aug 22, 2012)

ah 16 is waaaay more than you need


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