That's a completely different (and more complicated) approach than what I had in mind. I was thinking we just manage the listings and top plays views as separate panel objects that we could raise and hide as needed. Instead of clearing the screen going from one screen to another, we just raise the active panel and hide the other. The data remains persistent until it needs to change (or is requested to change.) I've had a little time to play with curses windows and panels in mlbscores. I can look into cooking something up next week.

Whether we cache or we don't, we might want to display the time of the last refresh somewhere. We're starting to run out of screen space though. I'll play with that.

Turns out I've got wireless access at my hotel and plenty of time before the first workshop. I'm opting for a little R&R today before the weekend activities get going.

Darn auto-wrap. Good catch.

Fixed.

Yeah, I think it's good for a release. I started to update the mini-Howto and saved a copy but then I saved again and overwrote the original. So now I have a premature release announcement on the howto. I hope jkr releases soon so I don't have to leave "not yet but soon" comment up for too long.

Just wrote you a mail about that... I poked a couple of places in the code with a stick, but otherwise it all looks great, and I'm ready to run with it. So, yes, "imminently" would probably be right.

Right -- fair enough. That would be much more appropriate for the issue at hand. My solution was more based around the problem of switching days. But yeah, using a panel would make perfect sense in this case.

Hi Craig,

You probably already have python as part of the ubuntu installation. Since we haven't made a recent official release yet, your best bet is to get the code from svn.

You'll need to install the subversion package using ubuntu's package management system.

You'll also need mplayer or xmms or any media player that can play a windows media stream. For that matter, you may need to install the win32 codecs. I found this link for you:

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:G...timedia_Codecs

It refers to Gutsy but it probably should be the same for Hardy.

I think the only thing that won't be in ubuntu package manager is simplejson. No, I take that back:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/gutsy/pyt...hon-simplejson

Again, adjust for hardy but it should be there.

Once you have python, mplayer, the codecs, subversion, and simplejson installed, you can get mlbviewer with the following command:

The README and INSTALL should have everything you need to get listening.

Cheers!
Matthew

Okay, folks -- sorry. There was a slight problem with the setup script not doing the right thing with the test directory. No bugs or anything, just a slight packaging snafu.

Anyway, it's fixed, but it seems to take a little while for changes to propogate to all of sourceforge's download mirrors. So the official announcement will come later on tonight.

In the meantime, I dunno, watch some baseball or something...

Update: cool, it seems to have propagated. So...

Who likes new releases?

mlbviewer 0.1alpha6 officially available now.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlbviewer

Changes since the last release include:
* Online help
* Change video speed on the fly
* Game highlights available
* Configuration files autocreated when program started for the first time.
* Jumping to different days
* Timezone aware, defaults to your computer's timezone, but can also be set manually
* Configurable X display
* More robust error-handling
* And many more new conveniences and bugfixes. See the README for more information.

Get it while it's hot.

Hey again guys! Been using mlbviewer happily for the past few weeks, and even went so far as to order mlb.tv premium, as gameday audio just wasn't cutting it anymore now that the video works so wonderfully under Linux.

My major request is being able to define multiple video players and having the ability to flip between them (like how it is set for changing speed types now). Sometimes I find that mplayer is better then xine, and sometimes vlc is better than both for archived games, etc., and having to exit, edit the config, and restart mlbviewer is kind of a bummer.

edit: Also, I notice that you can define local blackouts, but is it possible to define national blackouts as well?

Thanks guys! Just found this last night. MLB tv was the only reason I had windows on my laptop and on my desktop I've been running it in a virtual machine. This also makes sure I don't run into any spoilers while trying to watch archived games. I'm living in Japan and for some unknown reason all games in Japan are blacked out (even though there are no cable/sattelite/broadcast stations that air my Mets games), so being able to avoid those banners with "Santana dominates" or "Wright hits walk off" is awesome. Now if only I could rely on MLB to consistently put up the 800k feed (even with their client the feed isn't there way too often recently).
Makes me want to learn some python so I can help out some.

The stream availability is out of our control. Once we've received the stream url, our job is done and everything else is up to the competency and whims of the content servers. The speed switching feature was born out of this frustration because I found the 400k streams are more often available than the 800 which sucks because I'm paying for the 800. But... the season is still early and they're still working out the kinks. The official clients don't have much better luck either.

We could do both. I find myself changing video_player lines myself so yeah. I'm thinking we could map the number keys, maybe 1 through 3 plus a way to dynamically enter in a player line and recall it for copy/paste into the config file.

National blackouts are noted in the schedule. I'll get that fix into svn next week.

Just in time for the weekend:

National blackout support checked into svn.

It looks like mlbviewer's requirement of python-simplejson was not included in the README or INSTALL files. I'd highly recommend putting it in one or both of them (INSTALL makes more sense, especially because I think it'd be easier to see).

As near as I can tell it's included in both Ubuntu and Fedora repositories (I only use Ubuntu, but I found rpms for it in Fedora on my first search), so just about anyone should be able to figure out how to install that package.

Yeah, I know stream availability is out of mlbviewer's control, more of a wish directed at MLBtv. I was happy you all added the stream switching feature for that reason.

OK - I haven't read through all the messages on this forum, but I do know I've read through many of the first few pages and tried many of the suggestions and it still did not work until I tried this and please be aware I subscribe to the MLB audio only, not the video.

After logging in and clickig on the game I want, the black Flash screen appears and I would normally click on the icon in the middle of the screen. It would appear to try to start playing and then nothing. This morning, on an archived game, I click on the close button (X) in the top right for the Flash window. This closed out the application and launched the Mozilla media player connectivity link actually two of these windows popped up. I then clicked on the link and then the icon in the middle of the new flash window. This launched my vlc player and started playing. I tried this several times and it seemed to work a little differently each time - I was probably clicking too fast while not waiting for applications to begin.

In any case, the key was closing out the first Flash screen and progressing from that point. So, if you're still having problems - give this a try. It may take several attempts on what works for your system.

Good luck. Will be interested if this works for anyone else.

Also, I need to update my profile - I'm running Linux Fedora 6.