NPB Broadcasts in USA?

Since we're on the subject of NPB broadcasts in the U.S., I was browsing the Hawks' 2004 web site and saw that there will be a live internet broadcast of a game between Daiei and Orix on March 27th. My Japanese language abilities are pretty sketchy, but is this internet broadcast free and accessible online?

Here's the link [in Japanese].

Yes slingshot, that FDH site you listed provides many of the games live on their internet broadcasts. That's how I usually keep up with them. Along with the live broadcast they also have a scoreboard. The downside of the KBC broadcasts is that the scoreboard doesn't give you a pitch by pitch description, and it can be sluggish at updating. So you may want to check out Yahoo BB for that animation. Also KBC wasn't able to secure the rights to broadcast the Japan Series last year.

Mainichi Broadcasting [in Japanese] costs a couple bucks a game or 30 some dollars for the whole season for Hanshins home game not against the Giants. That's how I watched on 9/15 from over here.

I went and checked out the Mainichi Hanshin broadcast package. The sample clip looks pretty good, and the price is reasonable. For those of you who have used it before, how is the quality and connection of the live feed? If they're good, I think I'm gonna try it out even if it's only Hanshin home games at Koshien.

I don't know about everyone else, but the quality is good. On my computer, after around 20-30 minutes, the quality drops a bit, so I always go back and reload the whole thing which makes it better.

Oh, and btw, there's around a 15 second delay [to cache the stream], but it doesn't really matter.

Many of the suggestions here, and questions from others over the years, are covered in Robert Whiting's latest book, "The Meaning of Ichiro," ISBN 0-446-53192-8. I'm a little under half way through it. I'd consider it a must-read for any journalist thinking about covering baseball in Japan - even a short series.

So when I try to tell people about a new NPB videogame coming out, it's spamming. When you shill a book like crazy, it's being informative. What a hypocrite.

That's correct. A book or web site about Japanese baseball is informative. A video game has nothing to do with what's going on on the field, in the stands, or with Japanese society in any way is not.

There have been questions in the past on how to play some video games by people who couldn't read Japanese, and they got no response. There are plenty of other forums about video games. Feel free to go there.

There are ways of astroturfing video games that I will accept. Look at the Data Requests thread. Does the video game you're advertising have a database of former players? If so, point it out as a resource to answer some of those requests. If not, what kind of official data is accessible?

Can it be used in conjuction with a live feed to act as a live virtual broadcast? If so, that needs to be made clear at the beginning of your post. I know the technology is possible, but I don't do video games, so I don't know if it's been done, yet. (If you did say such a thing in your last post, I'm sorry that I didn't read it. I had five "Make Money Fast" posts to delete at that time, your post started off looking like an advertisement, and I wasn't in the mood to read about a video game. Your follow up comments didn't contain anything to change my mind.)

Free Speech and Commercial Speech are two different things, both a privilage that requires responsibility. What's more, this isn't a public site paid for by tax money. It's a hobby site that I do for fun (and have recieved a total of 0 yen while investing a great deal in research material and time). A video game forum isn't my idea of fun, sorry. (Nor is the MLB forum, but I get far too many questions to ignore MLB all together - and there have been a few really good posts there.)

In short, I'll be happy to put up your ad for a video game if you tailor it to fit with the context of the site - i.e. focus on what it adds to the NPB experience rather than game play.

No hard feelings?

While listening to the Seibu - Lotte game on the radio on Sunday, they signed off and mentioned that the game would be continuing on the Internet. A quick look at Bunka Housou, then a jump to LionsNighter.com, and finally to BBQR [both in Japanese] led me to where the Internet broadcasts were linked from.

I checked again this evening, and the links are there (at BBRQ) during the games. The link disappears after the game is over.

Warning: Windows Media Player stream, but MPlayer works on Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X for those who prefer alternatives they can trust.