I was going to post an ascii art MLB logo but the board doesn't like it. Oh well. Another gravy feature I can implement some other time.

EDIT:

http://www.eds.org/~straycat/mlb-splash.txt

Yeah, I've been having similar qualms -- not about your project, but about the whole project, since really as soon as we figured out how to get the mms link, anyone could run mimms or mplayer -dumpstream on it. Ultimately, I decided that as much as the right hand cares about it, the left hand doesn't really, since it's pretty easy to capture anything that streams to WMP, and they made a decision to switch from flash to WMP a couple of years back.

Put it another way -- with Extra Innings and a DVR, you could do the same thing... and lots of people have both. So it might not be a big worry.

I am hesitant to install proxy support, though, or at least trumpet its inclusion. My sense is that at least the viewing doesn't break any TOS's, and is basically just sort of like moonlight, paying customers recreating the tech so they can receive the product. But I do worry about them creating more obfuscations if there's a sense that Linux users are trying to get around stuff.

Oh well. Doubt they'll change anything in the course of the season.

Send in the alpha when you get it done, and I'll see about separating out the libs a bit, and then we can think about starting a project repository.

And didn't say it but should have -- the screenshot and progress on mlbrecord both look very cool.

I'll implement a splash screen in both black and white and color and you can decide whether you want it or not. I've actually got a better way to do it (toggling the background color) than the ascii I posted. :-)

I might also guesstimate a progress bar for record based on elapsed time and an average game length (of whatever it is these days) since people love progress bars. :-)

By the way, although it took a little more setup to get cygwin + mplayer + mlbviewer going, I now prefer using mlbviewer on windows over supported methods.

I'm not having much luck with mlbviewer.py. It seems that the attempt to crated the GameStream object raises an exception. Once that happens, MLB.TV thinks I am still logged in -- preventing me from making any further progress. So, it appears that I am successfully logged in, but something goes awry in GameStream. Any ideas?

Thanks...

Are you using the version online now? When the attempt to create the GameStream crashes, it shouldn't just crash the program now, but instead give you an obnoxiously unhelpful message (I'll change that soon, I promise). The reason for doing that is to make sure that you are always logged out.

That being said... I think there are still some problems with the concurrent login issue that might not be solved yet... Unfortunately, unless you want to call them to have them reset your account (866-800-1275) you just have to wait out a couple of hours of ban.

Anyone who knows stuff about cookie handling and authentication handling in python, please feel free to look at the the code and see if there's any way to make sure this issue is dealt with.

Yes -- I am using the latest one online - so I do get the hopeful error message :-)

Thanks...

I don't know much about Python -- but when g=GameStream(...) raises an exception, is g valid? If not, then will the g.logout() succeed in the except logic?

Probably related to the status codes shown on gameday, so I think you're right: F for Final, I for In Progress, P for Pregame, and I noted PO for Postponed today.

A little progress... I'm think that GameStream() was raising an exception because the game I selected was blacked out.

Now that my ban is over, I can connect. The player is launched (vlc), but the stream never starts playing. And, now I am locked out again. :-(

Any idea why VLC (VLC media player 0.8.6c Janus, VLC version 0.8.6c Janus) on Ubuntu 7.10 would not be able to play the MLB mms stream?

My .mlbtv file looks like:
user = myusername
pass = mypass
video_player = vlc >/dev/null 2>&1

When I directed the output of VLC to a text file instead of /dev/null, this is what I got:
VLC media player 0.8.6c Janus
[00000293] access_mms access error: unknown answer (0x2 instead of 0x06)
[00000293] access_mms access error: failed to open a connection (tcp)
[00000293] access_mms access error: cannot connect to server
[00000293] access_mms access error: cannot connect to a668.v10869f.c10869.g.vm.akamaistream.net:80
[00000290] main input error: no suitable access module for `mms://a668.v10869f.c10869.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/668/10869/v0004/mlb.download.akamai.com/10869/2008/mlb_!/mlbam/2008/04/10/mlbtv_seatba_400k.wmv?auth=ca.aCaHdHaAaxcWaAbZd3bQcLbndVbycJbT-bh_T3H-bA-3egxiKbw-lej8kamckfldkfmckbl7khjjj6m9jcjhlbjckamhk5ldkgmi&aifp=v0004&ct5=10-Apr-08&ct1=&ct3=4281702&ct7=642086&ct4=mlb&ct6=76.119.147.186&ct8=1'
[00000281] main playlist: stopping playback

Do you have the win32codecs installed?

VLC doesn't work for me but for different reasons. It connects but the picture is all distorted. I have no problems with mplayer though.

Actually, I'd be happy to use *any* player that will work on Ubuntu 7.10. Unfortunately, neither vlc nor mplayer seem to work (they work for other media, just not with MLB TV).

Here's the version of mplayer I have:
MPlayer 2:1.0~rc1-0ubuntu13.2+medibuntu1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Usage: mplayer [options] [url|path/]filename


What players are being used successfully to watch MLB TV by other Ubuntu users?

Thanks...

I think several pages back someone described the problem with vlc and the suggested fix.

Mplayer works better for my particular setup though.

daftcat: I do have the win32 codecs installed (w32codes 20071007-0medibuntu1). What are you using? What version of mplayer are you using (as compared with my previous post)?

Thanks...