I have been contacted via email by an MLB techie (yay!) and he will get back to me maybe tonight but probably tomorrow morning.

Stay tuned!

You have 5 day's to get a refund.

Almost for sure, this is just another example of how an inept monopoly can screw things up.

Right now, the only way I can get a game is via Mlbviewer! The live games work fine, the archived games from earlier today don't and the ones from yesterday are toes up too.

I can login using my Windows partition but the stream won't play. Using Linux and going to the web page, it says my password is wrong. Go figure as they say.

Anyhow, the Sox game if not rained out is on WGN, so even if Mlb screws up even more than it already has, I'll be able to waste a couple-three hours today.

Please, please, please refrain from passing judgment on MLB until the matter is fully resolved. It doesn't help us and could come back to hurt us.

Turns out my techie contact has used mlbviewer before and had some very helpful input as to why the network guys got nervous and shut us down. He says accounts should be re-instated soon.

As a safety measure, I'm disabling nexdef in the next revision of mlbviewer until I've had a chance to read the Apple Live Streaming specification and pour over some Firebug traces. Assuming my access is restored quickly, I'll implement a more robust speed switching so you guys can get the full range of standard definition streams (128K up to 1800K) while you are waiting for nexdef support in mlbviewer 2010.

Don't use nexdef with mlbviewer and you shouldn't get locked down. I'll have a fix for nexdef in the coming weeks. Be patient. In the meantime, I'll have 1800K streams available soon.

Actually they contacted me. Turns out my nexdef algorithm was feeding their servers bad data (probably the ping algorithm.)

And let's be fair here. MLBAM (MLB Advanced Media) are the ones who provided us with unofficial autobahn.jar last year. At least some of them know about us. MLBAM is responsible for the player and they are pretty much a system integrator for a very complex network of separate solutions. There's streaming from the individual broadcasters, content delivery network (thank the Yahoo deal for not having to make a major architecture overhaul from last year), and many layers of support who have to deal with many problems and many irate and ungrateful customers.

This wasn't about incompetence. On the contrary, they saw bad data coming from us and took (perhaps hasty) defensive measures. I probably would have done the same thing except that I would have suspended the accounts and attempted to contact the account owners for an explanation. I'm guessing if this had happened later in the season when they don't already have so many fires to fight, they'd probably have been a little more lenient.

Still, it looks like they are going to work with us so we should be mindful of what we say about them. At least they aren't like some other content providers who intentionally change their architecture anytime they think someone has found a way around the official players.

Will you be asking the techie about the inability to connect to secure.mlb.com?

I don't seem to be making any progress on that issue through the regular customer service channels

edit: Are you saying they banned our IP addresses? My account is still functioning from my workplace, but if my home IP has been banned, that would explain things.

I suspect blocking specific addresses via firewall was the quickest action they could take to shut us down (and probably the only one that didn't require a manager's approval at the time.)

If your account is in good standing, and I guess there's really no way of knowing since they've blocked you from the authentication servers, you can ask to speak to a supervisor and explain to them that:

- you are a user of mlbviewer
- the developer is aware of the situation
- the developer is providing a fix just as soon as his own account is reinstated

Hopefully my contact has a list of us who were blocked the other night or can get a support log that shows the actions that were taken and have them reversed.

all i know...

watching the cubs play...

i reaaaaaly miss my mlb.tv. geesh their bullpen is gonna be wretched this year.

Pretty sure my account is ok, but I'm getting this when trying to connect to a live stream...

latest svn from mplayer, rtmpdump, and mlbviewer. all python tools installed as well with easy_install. This is on Fedora 12.

So, if I'm using a script to run mlblistings.py to get the id, and then loop test/soapevent.py to get a complete game downloaded using rtmpdump, is nexdef enabled?

Going forward what would be the nexdef way to do so? I saw a previous post about adding 1 to the game id to get the nexdef id, is that still true?

Thanks,
Matt

This is a mandatory update.

For those of you who have missed the drama of the last couple of pages, MLBAM (MLB Advanced Media) disabled several mlbviewer user accounts and enabled firewall rules to block our IP's from contacting their authentication servers.

A techie from the MLB team contacted me directly and we exchanged a few emails. It seems the problem is that my nexdef implementation is feeding some garbage to their servers which they weren't happy about. The easiest action was to shut us off at the authentication servers. I'm not sure why they had to go so far as deactivate our accounts but maybe they're just under a lot of stress with everything else going haywire in the Opening Week.

Long and short of it is that I'm disabling Nexdef support until I can implement it correctly.

Please update to this to revision. Let's not give them any more reason to cancel accounts, deny access, or take even harsher actions against the mlbviewer project as a whole. The guy who contacted me admitted that he used mlbviewer himself several times last year.

That reminds me. I'm removing nexdef.py from SVN repository temporarily while I work on getting this right.

Using soapevent.py, you are not using Nexdef. In fact, if you are using rtmpdump, you are not using nexdef. So you're good.

My account and access was restored approximately 5 minutes ago.

Just in time to watch the Royals put a run on the board. Hochevar did an awesome job pitching 7.2 innings of scoreless ball. Pass the ball to Soria for a 4 out save and we might get our first win of the season.

If your account is still not restored, have your escalation ticket include "mlbviewer user, developer has provided a fix" If you're still out of luck in the morning, shoot me an email and I'll have my techie guy intervene on your behalf.

OK, I'll stick with that script for the time being. On a related note (I understand you're busy right now so don't sweat it), but do you know if there's a way to start at the beginning of a game that's in progress using the script as I mentioned?

I just started the game I wanted to watch in the 8th inning, and while the score wasn't a surprise I would have preferred to watch it develop.

Thanks,
Matt