I like the favorites feature, but when one of the favorited teams is playing in the last game of the day, the underlining continues to appear on any blank lines between that listing and the "Status" footer. Not sure if something similar happens if use_colors is defined.

I'm using revision 93, and everything else about mlbviewer is as great as usual!

Good catch. I've fixed this is revision 94.

Any reason why you're not using colors? They're pretty.

Actually, one pain in the butt drawback of colors is that I can't just use whatever background color you've defined in your xterm settings. If your background color is not one of the eight curses supports (or worse if you are using transparency), then the highlighting looks very blocky rather than just a different foreground color. This is why I give you the option to underline if you can't match your background color to your xterm's background.

No feedback on bookmarks? Has anyone tried the bookmark code yet?

Let me give you an idea of how you can use it (besides the obvious.) Let's say your favorite pitcher is Lincecum (Jesse's favorite) and you know he's pitching on Wednesday. But, you don't know if you'll actually get to watch the game on Wednesday (even from the archive) because you're working on your dissertation (like Jesse is.) You can go forward in the listings (assuming the listings go out to Wednesday, and they usually go out a few days into the future) and bookmark it. If Wednesday comes and goes and you missed his start, you can just open up your bookmarks and watch that game whenever you can find time for it. In this way, it's kind of like Tivo. The only drawback to this, is that if you're a condensed game watcher, bookmarking into the future will record the listing before the condensed game is available and you'd actually have to go back to the original listing to watch the condensed game.

Someone give bookmarks a go and tell me what you think.

Cheers!
daftcat

svn: 94

Bookmarks are nice.
1) I can't use "accented" letters, like "ù" and "ì". In italian they are very important.
2) If i make a typo, i can't edit my bookmark
3) I pressed h(help) and i read lot of keybindings.. they are becaming more and more.. maybe an "ordered-and-categorized" list could be easiest to read.
4) Just for usability: to exit from bookmark page i pressed "esc" many times before remembering the "L" keybind.
5) edit: Maybe impossible to do, but it would be great adding bookmark DURING play (i usually forget that things..)

That's it! let's go twins!

1) I have no way of testing this because I don't have those keys. Maybe I can change my locale in Windows and try it here. What happens with accented characters? Do they just not show up or do they somehow break the app or feature?

2) I can probably provide a method to edit the bookmark title.

3) I'll look into this. Our keybindings presently serve both a help purpose, but also they can be copied and pasted for documentation. Python syntax for dictionaries is a lot more readable than for ordered lists. We might have to sacrifice readability for usability.

4) I can probably map 'Esc' to 'L'.

Fixed. Available in svn revision 95.

5) Yeah, that is impossible to do in our current architecture because we surrender control to the player once a stream is selected. A possible workaround is to use a backgrounded player command such as:

The %s is then string substituted for the url (we already support this.) We might lose some error detection though. Give it a try and let me know how that works.

Cool! I tested with transparency and the new 'xterm' color works with transparency.

If there are no objections, I will remove bg_color option and rename fg_color to favorite_color. This will be in the next revision unless someone voices an objection.

By the way, I think I'm going to take lephio's wishlist as my final tasks for the next official release.

1. Produce a categorized and ordered help screen.
2. Add international support to bookmarks (I'm not sure if this can be done, but I'll look ino it.)

Are there any other fixes or features you guys are looking for to be in the upcoming beta? Yes, I think I'm going to call the next release our first beta.

Also, I'm going on vacation in three weeks so make your requests now because I'll be pretty damn busy with my real job these next three weeks.

what about the "flickering" of videos? i'm watching the CG of last MIN@NYY (game1) and in the 4th inning video begins to flicker.

it's not the first time that happens.

same thing if i watch the game with VLC.

Can any windows user try to watch that CG through mlb.com site, so we can find out if is the stream corrupted or if it's a linux problem?

Flickering, burping, and other video indigestion is definitely nothing I can do in mlbviewer but I can check it later tonight to tell you what the windows experience is. My guesses are:
- Video servers are going through growing pains.
- Your ISP (or any ISP between the media server and yours) is hiccupping the traffic somewhere and not implementing any QoS strategies to assure that streaming video streams smoothly.

From someone who works with networks all day long, I'm pretty damn impressed at what mlb.tv has been able to accomplish. Though even with my awe at the technical feat, I can still get annoyed when streams start to trickle.

I wish you had not broadcasted as to when you are going on vacation, that is when MLB will put the hammer down and screw with MLBViewer.I'm sure being they are control pigs, they despise it.

Jesse's guy Lincecum is something else. First time I ever saw him I thought I had somehow tuned into a high school game somewhere and the kid threw like a right-handed Sandy Koufax. After reading the SI story about him, I see where my observations had some validity being his dad copied Koufax's violent push off the mound or however you want to describe it. This guy may very well be a genetic freak like Mantle, Bobby Hull, Jim Brown, Bonds, etc.

Enjoy your time off. If they screw with the script and Jesse isn't around to fix it, we can always revert back to using firebug until you return and figure out how to get around them again.

I'm bringing my laptop with me. I'll likely have wifi in most, if not all of the hotel rooms I'll be in, and I'm a bit of an insomniac. That said, I probably won't be putting much time online. It is a vacation, after all.

• Provides categorized Help (It's a little cramped but until I implement real scrolling, this is how it will have to be.)
  
• Deprecating fg_color and bg_color options. This is a transitional revision. fg_color and bg_color will still work but I encourage you to replace fg_color with the new name, favorite_color. bg_color will be removed and will default to your xterm's setting for background color.
  

fg_color will be removed and replaced with favorite_color probably in the next revision but favorite_color is working right now if you want to get a head start and change your config file in this revision.

Thank you guys for actively developing this. Mlb.com keeps making it harder for me to watch mlb.tv while I'm running linux. Anyway, mlbviewer is my current solution, and I actually prefer it to firefox->mediaplayerconnectivity.

Thanks a bunch,
Eric

Wanted to stick my head back in here to ask a question. Is there a way to get mlbviewer to automatically begin playing a specified game at startup?

I want to create a cron job to make it begin playing the Sox/Yanks game at 7:05 tonight, with no user intervention. Can this currently be done?

Mlbviewer? No. You can do it with mlbgameid.py in the test directory. First, you'll need to find the stream Id. The easiest way to do that is to select your game (video or audio) even though it's in the not yet available state. It will go through the whole process of querying the servers for the stream url and fail. But...in the log ($HOME/.mlb/log), you'll see a line like this:

In your cronjob, you can do something like:

I would test this before you rely on it since cron usually has a reduced environment. The way to test it is to have it execute a few minutes after you've created the job and tee the output to a log file like:

Then you can check your log and check your mail to see if the cronjob worked or if it had environment issues. You can also write a wrapper script that sets up the proper environment like:

Check that last part for bash syntax, but that should copy stderr onto stdout and redirect the output to the log file.

CAVEAT: Neither mlbgameid.py nor mlbviewer are 100% reliable as I often still run into Login/Logout unsuccessful messages as well as the occasional cranky media server. This is the primary reason why I haven't implemented any auto-play feature yet. Probably after my vacation, I'll add in some code to fix the unsuccessfuls (it's a META-REFRESH page from mlb.com that says something like, "Servers are busy. This page will refresh in 5 seconds." but the REFRESH is supposed to happen on the browser end and python doesn't handle it.)

Good luck!