MLB.TV in Linux

daftcat · 10-08-2015, 01:12 AM

Try setting postseason=1 in the config file.

If that doesn't work, try setting international=1.

Also, you could search this thread for postseason. I know we do this dance every year because I am in the US and many mlbviewer users are international. I try to write code to fix a problem I cannot reproduce. Do you know how hard that is? Anyway, I know myself or another mlbviewer user has answered this last year or the year before.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fang2415

After getting up at 1 in the morning to watch the Cubs wild card game, I've run into a disastrous error. Any video stream of the (currently live) game gives me the message

Code:

ERROR: BLACKOUT: MLB_NON_US_BLACKOUT

This is an mlbviewer bug: when I log into the official Flash player the game starts right up (though my low-spec computer can barely handle it). This is the correct behavior, since I am in the UK where no blackout restrictions (even the international restrictions) apply.

The log tells me to check blackout.xml, which is attached. It looks like it also gets successful-1.xml, so I've attached that too.

Time for me to go back to bed, avoid the entire internet all day, and watch the future of my home city unfold as-live tomorrow. I hope nobody else runs into this showstopper in the meantime...

chrisVV · 10-08-2015, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fang2415

After getting up at 1 in the morning to watch the Cubs wild card game, I've run into a disastrous error. Any video stream of the (currently live) game gives me the message

Code:

ERROR: BLACKOUT: MLB_NON_US_BLACKOUT

I have 'postseason=1' and 'international=1' in my config file. If you don't have these I suggest you add them, as they might well help. (I haven't tried a live feed yet but I will do so this evening.)

daftcat · 10-08-2015, 11:45 AM

Last night I was feeling tired and frustrated because reviewing the logs and my code was not jogging my memory. A good night's sleep has made a difference.

My best guess is that you'll need both flags.

In media stream module, determineBlackoutStatus reads the response and if the blackout_status in the response is not empty, and if postseason is not set, then raise a blackout exception. So setting postseason bypasses that check.

But also, in schedule, you would need to not pick up the TBS-NAT (the US broadcast.) It's intended for the US market, I believe while there is another stream that does not have the pay wall verification ("prove you pay for TBS via cable bill and we'll let you watch TBS online.") This is the international flag that bypasses that TBS US nonsense.

chrisVV · 10-08-2015, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrisVV

I have 'postseason=1' and 'international=1' in my config file. If you don't have these I suggest you add them, as they might well help. (I haven't tried a live feed yet but I will do so this evening.)

The live Fox feed works for me.

fang2415 · 10-09-2015, 06:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

Last night I was feeling tired and frustrated because reviewing the logs and my code was not jogging my memory. A good night's sleep has made a difference.

My best guess is that you'll need both flags.

In media stream module, determineBlackoutStatus reads the response and if the blackout_status in the response is not empty, and if postseason is not set, then raise a blackout exception. So setting postseason bypasses that check.

But also, in schedule, you would need to not pick up the TBS-NAT (the US broadcast.) It's intended for the US market, I believe while there is another stream that does not have the pay wall verification ("prove you pay for TBS via cable bill and we'll let you watch TBS online.") This is the international flag that bypasses that TBS US nonsense.

Yeah, sorry, as you can imagine I was pretty frustrated at 2 AM as well. I forgot there were postseason/international flags and didn't think to search the thread, but by that time I was in stop-loss mode and didn't want to just keep searching randomly... (And incidentally, I completely understand what a PITA it is to write code that nobody except people halfway around the world can test at 1 AM during four weeks of the year! So I certainly don't blame you, or anybody really.)

So I'll try setting the flags (at a less crucial moment) and see if that makes a difference. mlbviewer automatically gives me the TBS-INT broadcast for the archived version so I'm assuming it'll pick it up for the live stream as well...

fang2415 · 10-09-2015, 02:07 PM

Okay, so I can now confirm that setting postseason=1 enables live streaming for me (with both of the ALDS games that are now live). The international setting seems to make no difference with the Astros-Royals game, but with the Rangers-Blue Jays it switches the stream from MLBN-NAT to MLBN-INT. When I set international=0 and try to fetch the MLBN-NAT stream I get a notAuthorizedStatus error as (I think) expected. Also, the international option does not seem to reload correctly with shift-R -- I have to restart mlbviewer to make the change.

So yes, although I can't test this on a TBS game yet, it appears that these options will be able to fetch the streams -- which is great news! But it does make me realize that th current setup is pretty unintuitive and quite difficult to discover; when I grepped the mlbviewer directory I couldn't find any documentation that mentions either option. I did search upthread for the options (now that I know what to search for), and it looks like this was just added last postseason; there's a discussion on page 307 or so of the listings logic, which does seem pretty complicated. There were some ideas posted about how to make it more intuitive, but it looks like they didn't get implemented, no doubt because of the considerable difficulty of testing the code! This problem will also be made worse by the fact that the only international fans who will likely bother to stay up late and notice the behavior are the ones whose teams are in the postseason, so that reduces the testing pool even further...

So I suppose at a minimum I'd suggest mentioning the relevant options in the error message so that users who run into this problem know what to try? There may be a more elegant ultimate solution, but that could at least ensure that the current solution is easily discoverable?

Thanks again for the help -- one thing I love about mlbviewer is how it usually avoids these 2 AM panics, so hopefully this will be one more that we can eradicate permanently...

larshenric · 10-09-2015, 06:01 PM

Works... :-)

daftcat · 10-10-2015, 12:42 PM

Updated both README and Wiki.

http://sourceforge.net/p/mlbviewer/wiki/Configuration%20File%20Options/

hyshai · 10-10-2015, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

If that doesn't work, try setting international=1.

BUG: In mlbplay.py when creating the schedule object (Line 194) the international setting has to be passed in:

Code:

mysched = MLBSchedule(ymd_tuple=startdate,time_shift=mycfg.get('time_offset'),international=mycfg.get('international'))

Thanks so much for your hard work!!

fang2415 · 10-11-2015, 04:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

Updated both README and Wiki.

http://sourceforge.net/p/mlbviewer/wiki/Configuration%20File%20Options/

Looks good, hopefully that will do the trick for any international users whose teams newly make the postseason next year!

crouching_dragon_ · 10-23-2015, 09:17 PM

Even after changing postseason and international options to True (1), I'm getting the below error.

Code:

ERROR: Stream URL not found in reply.  Stream may not be available yet.

I've tried multiple combinations of turning postseason on, international off, vice versa, etc. and it's still giving me the issue. I'm coming from the Netherlands.

Anyone have any advice? I absolutely love the product and it was working during LDS. Thanks!

hyshai · 10-27-2015, 08:45 PM

If anyone is having trouble watching the World Series - edit mlbSchedule.py line 228 with the following code:

replace this:

Code:

if self.international:
               if tmp.get('tbs_auth_required') == "Y":
                   continue
               if tmp.get('mlbn_auth_required') == "Y":
                   continue

with this:

Code:

if self.international:
               r = re.compile(r"\w+_auth_required")
               f = filter(r.match, tmp.keys())
               if f and tmp.get(f[0]) == "Y":
                   continue

use this in conjunction with postseason = 1, international = 1 as stated above

rnrubun · 11-03-2015, 08:49 PM

I signed up for MLB Premium this spring for the first time, and then due to a job change had a LOT of opportunities to view games this summer.

I can only poorly express what an awesome/great/useful/reliable/dependable tool mlbviewer has been! I have NO bad experiences with this software, and I can't say that about many other products I choose to use or have to use. Whenever something didn't perform as expected, the answer was here. I’m sure I can tweak the settings further, based on some of the discussions here, but the base performance has been stellar.

Congrats for excellent work, and for the Royals season. That was REALLY fun to watch!

dvts · 12-05-2015, 11:08 PM

Hi, first-time poster who's never used Linux before but may have to learn it if it has an answer to this problem.

Ok, so - I'd been downloading MLB.TV streams regularly in what I naively thought was the highest res - 2400k/540p. I thought it odd that that was the highest res, but I was willing to accept it. Then the other day I realized higher res's hadn't been available to me because I didn't have nexdef installed. So I installed it and found the higher res's - 3000k/720p, and 4500k/1080p. But there was a problem - once nexdef is involved, you can no longer catch these streams or download them. I'd been using RTMPExplorer to capture the games before, and now nothing showed up.

My Googling on this issue was not at all promising. The only promising thing I ever came up with was a Linux guy from 2011 who came up with some deal whereby he seemed to be saying he could download decrypted games at any res (to clarify - anyone with a username/PW and access to his own cache can download the highest res games in encrypted .ts files, but - then you can't play them - the encryption is the problem).

Here's a link to the guy from 2011 - https://code.google.com/p/mlbtv-hls-nexdef/wiki/README

Now even if that worked at the time, the odds of it working now, I figure, are low - MLB.TV changes things all the time and has completely overhauled everything since then, presumably.

I guess I'm asking - is there any known way, with Linux, to download the games at the nexdef resolutions? Meaning the 3000/4500k resolutions.

Would greatly appreciate any help. If it's possible to do it with Linux I would actually be moved to finally learn Linux, which would interesting in itself, so I hope there's a way. Thanks for any reply.

chovy · 12-14-2015, 03:48 AM

I don't think they use nextdef anymore in the latest player.

I've been streaming MLB.tv in HD with a valid account and Kodi's mlbmc addon. https://github.com/Yuioup/kodi-mlbmc

http://kodi.tv