• ZDNet, Wednesday, June 7, 2006 11:46 AM

Major league baseball is balking at a new technology like Sling Media that allows TV viewers to access their set-top or TiVo boxes from anywhere in the world, reports ZDNet. The League feels that people who want to watch on multiple devices should have to pay multiple times. The fuss is part of the running dispute between broadcasters and companies that relay video streams to portable devices. The conflict was outlined Tuesday during a panel discussion at the Digital Media Summit, when George Kliavkoff--executive vice president of business for MLB Advanced Media--took on Rich Buchanan, Sling Media's vice president of marketing. Sling cuts out cable and satellite operators who pay for transmission rights in their areas, Kliavkoff says, so a subscriber in San Francisco who watches a Giants baseball game from a laptop in Chicago is stealing from the Chicago cable operator who paid to transmit MLB games in that city. For Buchanan, however, the subscriber has already purchased the content from a programmer--and should be able to watch it wherever they want.

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