Optimizing for mplayer isn't a bad idea even if you do use vlc. The mplayer guys were some of the first to really do high quality multimedia on linux. They documented optimization settings like MTRR which would benefit just about any multimedia player even games.

You can check if it's a network issue by exploring the -dumpstream option. Read the documentation on mplayer's website. Run it for a few minutes. If that produces a playable file, then you probably have to tweak your buffer or playback settings. I would stick with mplayer mostly because there are many more settings you can tweak to test different settings.

Awesome...thanks! I'll give that a try.

Oooh! I like this idea. With enough donations, maybe I can wake up with a bad head-ache in a real good seat at a game like this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdnImqDmLqk

You guys don't have to, but I won't turn it away either. You can send donations of appreciation via paypal to my email address, straycat000@yahoo.com.

Thanks to you guys. Your continued feedback and testing has improved mlbviewer far beyond what I would have found useful and necessary. I plan to make continued off-season improvements so be sure to subscribe to this thread.

anybody knows ho to mute just one of two mplayer opened with mlbviewer?

if i press "m" on a window, it mutes each of two windows! (i'd like to see and listen the Twins on a big window and at the same time keep an eye to the white sox..)

Hmm, I wonder if it's because Linux manages the sounds globally instead of on a per application basis because this works in Windows. You could try using the '9' and '0' keys to reduce the volume. But it may just reduce the global volume instead of an application volume. Are you using alsa? oss? esd?

that's an extremely urgent feature!

this is the problem. Here in italy i usually watch games in the (italian) morning, so "the day after". Now during the playoffs is extremely important to start the listings in the last day i'm "up-to-date". Just to be not spoilered.

And it's urgent because tonight Twins will play the "playoff game" and tomorrow in the morning i don't want to be spoilered like today without watching DET@CWS game. (listings begin with MIN@CWS)

Can you put a "start date" on config file? Or any other cool idea?

I'm probably not going to get to this feature before the off-season is over. Today was a special circumstance. But from here on out, there will be at least one off day between series. The only spoilers I can think of from here on out would be if you were expecting a game 4 and the team swept in three, then you might figure out that game 4 wasn't needed before you get a chance to watch game 3.

I might be able to get this done over the weekend but right now I'm too busy with taking work home. :-( I'm on a tight schedule. I'll see what I can this weekend.

This is *exactly* what i mean for "spoiler". From game 3+ i can be spoilered everyday!!!

In 2006 i spoilered the world series in this way!!!

ok.. thanks in advance!

Work hit a snag so I gave it a go.

I checked in some code into svn that should work but test it out and report any bugs or errors.

I started initial support for name=value arguments but right now the only supported name is startdate.

If you specify a startdate in mm/dd/yy format as:

the listings will begin on my birthday (paypal donations are accepted next year .)

If you don't specify any name=value arguments, the listings will start on the current day just like they always have.

I should have the exceptions handled like using an invalid name (foo=06/02/08) or an invalid value (startdate=foo/bar/moo) but you're welcome and encouraged to test these for me and report any errors.

P.S. I made an official release of 0.1alpha8 last weekend just to have the most recent features, bookmarking and favorite team highlighting on sourceforge, so this next svn revision should read 0.1alpha8svn in case you notice and wonder.

aaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!! GREAT JOB MAN!!! it works!!!!

thanks a lot.

Hi! Found this awesome thing today and got it working on Leopard, finally fullscreen on secondary monitor (plasma) without the need to boot into Vista!!!!!

My question is, perhaps it have been answered, if it's possible to get the 1.2m streams to work? On mac the Nexdef is available but you can only watch the high quality stream in awful awful Silverlight. Thanks

No. First, there's no listing for 1200 in the listings page that mlbviewer uses (Hint: we do not parse any html pages so any pages you see on mlb.com are not used by mlbviewer.) Even pulling the stream id from the mlb.com page and using test/mlbgameid.py, there's a protocol for talking with the plugin that mplayer doesn't support. I was able to get it working with Windows Media Player on my XP laptop, but that sounds like it would defeat the purpose. WMP isn't available on osx, is it? Also, I use "working" loosely. It played a few seconds, and then stalled. Then it would play a few more seconds, and then stalled again. I couldn't imagine trying to watch a game like this.

Besides, 800K is beautiful. Also, archive streams aren't available in 1200 so it's pretty much useless now...unless you happen to be one of the lucky SOB's who both lives outside of the blackout region and lives in a timezone where watching the post-season live makes sense.

Anyway, even when I did have mosaic installed, 1200 isn't all it's cracked up to be. It stalled out frequently just like it's doing for me now.

Alrighty then, I just wondered because I've been watching the 1200 streams on Vista using this workaround. No stalling for me and yes I do live outside the blackout region and watching live makes sense to me, insomnia is bliss.

Anyway, I really have no idea about the technical stuff behind these kind of things and depend on googling for guides just to get the streams playing, so maybe I should be happy with what I get.... and i am

Here's what you can try.

1. Set your config file for speed=800.
2. Open mlbviewer and highlight your game (don't hit 'a' or 'enter' though.)
3. Instead hit 'z' (without the single-quotes), and you should get the debug output like the following:

If the z key doesn't display this, then download the latest mlbviewer from sourceforge. 0.1alpha8 should have this functionality.

4. Yeah, pretty ugly. The fields are u (unformatted) plus the field name. Look for the one the first 'w_id'. Up there, this is 876568.

5a. Add one to it to get 876569. This is the stream id for the 1200 stream.

5b. You can also mouse-over the 1.2M stream on the mlb.com listings page to get see a javascript url such as:

In this case, you wouldn't add 1. You would just use that w_id. (Except this particular example is the 800k stream since they don't archive the 1.2 so you would add 1 to this w_id.)

6. Use test/mlbgameid.py to select that stream, e.g.

That should get you that long mms:// url that begins with mms://127.0.0.1:8001 meaning the NexDef plugin. You can try setting your video player to whatever video players you have on OS X. I tested with mplayer and it didn't work. Maybe vlc or one of the OS X specific players will work.

------------

mlbgameid.py is a test script I wrote back when we were having problems with the network code. It was easier to test the network code without all the curses interface. Now it's become a very useful test tool for unsupported features like this. It will produce a ton of output but it should finally end with a line like this:

(I purposely broke up that url which is really one long url so that it doesn't stretch this page making it a pain in the ass to read my responses. )

And the command string for your video_player setting plus any output it produces. In this example, again, I'm using the 800K stream since the 1.2M stream is not archived. The 1.2M stream url will begin with mms://127.0.0.1:8001.

Good luck! If you get it to work on OS X using mlbgameid.py, the NexDef plugin and some video player, let me know which video player.

Thanks!

In the 'z' output, there are two w_id's. You want the first one. The second one is for the audio stream. You can tell you have the right one because the next field is 'w' and either ends in .wmv for video or .xsl for audio.