I was planning on subscribing to MLB.TV so I could watch the Phillies and Orioles games since I'm way out here in Idaho... However some games are blacked out on the service depending on where you're watching from. The service says it is unable to determine my location accurately and wants to use the address from my credit card location to determine my black out status (I haven't subscribed yet, I was just trying to view the 'free game of the day'). That address is back in Pennsylvania... So would that get me blacked out of Phillies and Orioles games since they're broadcast on local TV back there?

Okay went ahead and changed the address on my card, however when I use my Xbox it manages to automatically determine my location.

I also read the fine print and ALL weekend games after 11am are blacked out until 1.5 hours after they air... That's kind of lame considering that I have more time on the weekend to sit around and drink beer and watch baseball :< . Lame. Oh well. At least I can fast forward through games at that point.

Blackouts are, as far as I understand it, largely to do with local area cable/TV/network and advertising contracts. eg, it's about money. Plus trying to get more people to watch "out of market" games on TV. I have mlb.tv and I couldn't use it to watch the A's and Giants baseball games even if traveling some distance, for example, since I'm in that blackout area. But I can watch Boston play all their games (NESN broadcasts), except when they're playing the A's in Oakland...then mlb.tv is blacked out and I have to watch it on CSN/TBS or whatever. Which means you have to have pay-cableTV, too.

Occasionally, "national" broadcast games are also blacked out (this happens a lot with Fox games) because again, Fox wants you to watch via TV/cable and has contracts to exclusively broadcast them. But if the Saturday Fox game you want to watch is, say, Boston, and you live in the A's broadcast area, you can't see the Boston game because in your area Fox will be broadcasting the A's game (since they assume that's what locals want to see) and it's still blacked out on mlb.tv. Those are days where I get very angry, because I can't see the game (live) at all, then.

One of the frustrating things is that the "blackout areas" can be nonsensical. Like if you live in Hawaii, they blackout most California team games I think. They're considered to be the "home market" for six teams. Which is ludicrous.

Anyway, this wiki article probably explains it better than I could.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_blackout_policy

Or this blog article complaining about it/calling for change:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/mlb%E2%80%99s-blackout-problem-keeps-sport-in-dark-ages.html

Gotcha. Do you like MLB.TV? I signed up for one month just to try it out right now. I want to watch the Orioles game tonight, but being a Saturday it looks like I'll have to wait until 90 minutes after the game ends to watch... At that point I'd probably be better off watching the condensed version.

I was watching yesterday's game earlier today and it was nice how it segments the game up by half inning so you can skip around if you like, or when there's a commercial break you can just skip right to the next half inning.

I always thought blackouts were a means of trying to increase ticket sales in the local market?

If there are tickets available, they black out the local coverage of the game to force more people to buy tickets. Once the game is "sold out" (percentage of tickets sold varies), they show the game locally for the poor buggers who couldn't buy a ticket. The definition of local coverage area also varies greatly from market to market.

Since I'm largely a fan of the Red Sox, while living in California, I like mlb.tv very much. I've been using them for ... um ... 3-4 years now I think.

I usually watch the games live....but the ability to see them (and skip around, like you mentioned) whenever I want is a nice bonus. And the condensed games are very cool for catching up on other team games quickly, when I feel like it. I've never had any major issues with their service, outside of the typical, occasional lag or tech issues every such service gets once in a while.

What annoys me is that the archived games show you the score. So like I want to watch a game from earlier today and when I go to click on it I already see the final score. Can you turn that off (on Xbox 360)? Very annoying.

I use it on the PC, so not sure. But on PC there's a checkbox to show/not show the final score in the listing.

I had an entire post, but I realized that Lady Crimson did a fine job of explaining. The point is, MLB does a lot to hinder fans from enjoying the game. It's a hot point for critical discussion with the league.