I don't know about sophisticated. I think many of us are just damn stubborn. :D

Glad you're finally on-board.

re: mlblistings.py
 

yes, I'm about done with that part and have a working xbmc/boxee plugin. however, a large number of users on boxee are using appletv (stripped down MacOS) which would create quite a few hoops to jump through to get the additional python libraries installed. i was asking about other forms of broadcasting listings that might not have the same pre-reqs, maybe something out of the box from xbmc's set of libs + basic python.

if they don't have other methods, i'll just document ways to get the additional python libs added, but it won't be a "quick install" app like most other boxee apps are in their repository.

There's a user here by the handle CubsFanUK who was working on a java MLB.TV client. I don't think he has much time to support it, but if you know java, it might be easier to distribute a java jar version of something like the get_mlb_basic script I described above.

If I could make things simpler, I would. But anything short of a java jar or statically linked c/c++ code is going to require, at a minimum, XML and SOAP. I could certainly, "ifdef" out the json requirement as the json code isn't used for this season with the understanding that you would lose the ability to view games from before 2009 (including most of this year's WBC.) Even still, mplayer patches are required to view the H.264 streams. rtmpdump/libRTMP patches are required for non-NexDef operation, as well.

I'm sure there are a few people here or in your boxee/xbmc community who would jump the hoops to get it working and the rest we have to hope that distributions keep up with the latest changes in mplayer svn (and that we can issue 1040 resolved eventually for live non-NexDef video.)

:(

My pet project to get mlbviewer running on a PS3 has bitten the dust. In short, I've given up.

The final kick in the teeth, after jumping through so many hoops to get a working version of JRE for YDL to get autobahn, then a working version of mplayer and compiling it for YDL and getting all the codecs working, and then FINALLY getting mlbviewer working and showing baseball in a tiny window was the inability to go full screen (or even expand the screen to watchable dimensions).

Reading up on this, it appears that a PS3 will not allow a second operating system to have access to the video hardware, meaning that any picture scaling and acceleration has to be done by software. Even if I could find a way of achieving this (and sdl should do it but when I use sdl with mplayer it crashes) the PS3 processor would not be able to cope with running autobahn and mplayer and expanding the stream, making the video unwatchable.

Humph.

Ah well, I least I can rid myself of YDL on the PS3 and claw back 10GB!

Thanks to anyone and everyone who tried to help me and I'm sorry some time had been wasted. I can still use mlbviewer on my Ubuntu PC in the kitchen and for the time being my wife's laptop on the HDTV, but it would have been nice to have switched on the PS3 and loaded up mlbviewer without all the cables streaming everywhere!

Bye! :)

hi hi,

i have been using the stoopid flash player for the last couple of weeks and now finally updated to today's new version, followed all the requirements, started autobahn.jar and...

it all works.

this is so exciting! thanks so much for all the hard, hard work! i really appreciate it. gotta stay up all night tonight to catch some games.

markus

Got trapped in stream selection screen
 

Removing cokies and session key worked. I should have realized this because what I did was buy mlb.tv premium using a different email address so that if I got locked out of that account at some point I'd still have the old gameday audio account. So far I know for sure archived games work; not sure about live games because one I tried last night just before it ended didn't seem to work but will check on that again today when live games are available.

I discovered that if I run mlbviewer in text console without xsterm -e I still need some kind of -vo option; so far -vo fbdev or cvidix or null work but apparently if I put nothing in it tries to go to fbdev and can't. of course null is pointless if I have anybody here that wants to see the screen; not sure what cvidix or fbdev do since i haven't had a sighted person here yet watching; for me personally it's no big deal as I just sometimes like the sound of the tv broadcasts better but my goal is to have working video.

If I run mlbviewer with xterm -e in terminal, however, no -vo option is needed but I ran into a different problem.At one point last night I got the stream selection stream but there didn't seem to be any way for me to enter a choice; pressing number keys did nothing though I could find the number that went with each choice; I couldn't seem to exit the screen either. I don't know if this was something I was doing wrong or something with accessibility in Orca or some other issue.

At any rate I'm making progress here. I think "stubborn" is the secret of success for most linux users!!!

mlbviewer version
 

Forgot to say that I am using the svn of mlbviewer and I try to keep it up-to-date; was at 192 when I posted yseterday and am now at 196.

Mind sharing?? :D

xbmc/boxee almost there
 

sure, when i get it finally working. looking into mlbtv.py i found i can use the grid.xml or epg.xml rather than the gamesbydate.jsp url. parsing that xml should be easier and not have to add any additional requirements to using the app.

mlblistings.py and mlbtv.py are still very useful for getting everything together like the workflow authentication and getting the right date format passed to the url.

maybe someday i'll get enough time to publish a webservice that wraps their scheduler into rss format so that it's easier for people to include the videos into whatever usage they want.

Yeah, I don't know what mlb.com would think of this idea. They are pretty touchy about reproduction of their material.

Sorry that mlbtv.py is such a mess after this year's changes. When all the features are finished and the dust has settled some, I plan to go back and actually use the object oriented features (class inheritance!!!) of python instead of using if/else statements and wrapper functions. You can ignore all the json code and I can "ifndef" it out or move the json import statements into the JSON code so they only get executed when needed. For now, you can safely comment out the import simplejson statement in mlbtv.py, if you're not going to access any games before 3/30/09.

grid.xml is better than epg.xml. It has content-id's which doesn't save you on any network requests but it does allow you to present your users stream information like media coverage before they make any SOAP requests to the network.

Awesome! I love to hear to when it all works. :D

Most of the time, I only hear about it when it doesn't work. :scratch:

i'd guess mlb.tv would want more people linking to their games and driving up usage/subscriptions, but you're probably right. though they do publish with yahoo sports i see, maybe put myself 2 layers removed from them - heh

thx for the tip on the cleanup of mlbtv.py, i'll go with grid.xml and get started on it this afternoon. i'm looking for basic acct level access over flash, so really all i needed was a way to establish auth and an easy way to build a menu with the game-id and push it to their mediaplayer url.

i've been a user of mlbviewer since you guys first published it, so glad to help contribute anything if it's of any use.

linuxphan,

Have you managed to get XBMC/Boxee to play directly off autobahn.jar?

no, though i'm guessing the different platforms would need their own way of calling those features. it would be pretty easy to do on linux since xbmc would just be a wrapper for mlbviewer but i'm not really sure how nextdef(or whatever that's called) works on mac or atv.

Actually, it works exactly the same. The autobahn.jar file we're using is actually taken from the Mac NexDef plugin.