I got video working the same way, but only sometimes. It can't seem to give the correct address for some of them. Also cant get the 1.2mb streams to work.

Anyone else currently trying to work on this?

I also installed moonlight 0.4. Got it working, kinda, but it still doesnt work with the mlb.tv site. Sometimes it loads, and sometimes it doesnt. I havent been able to get it to play a single game yet either.

I will try the above for video shortly. In the meantime, I've come to report a very ugly but working solution for video playback in the 400k and 800k streams.

I installed Windows versions of Firefox and VLC player using WINE. Then I installed the Flash plugin and Firefox extension called MediaPlayerConnectivity. This will allow you to open embedded media objects in the VLC player.

Run VLC once before proceeding. Go to Settings --> Preferences and click the "Advanced" box in the lower right corner. Then drill down: Video --> Output Modules. Change the "Video output module" from "default" to "Windows GDI video output". This will prevent the playback from being distorted.
Then save the options and close out VLC.

Restart Firefox and configure MediaPlayerConnectivity to use VLC player for all media. Then browse to mlb.com and select the stream you want to view. Using the Windows version of Flash should get you past the player sleections cren (select original player). Wait a moment and the plugin will load and the video window will have an icon with the play logo. Click this and it will launch VLC. If all is right, your video will start playing momentarily.

You can watch it like this, or you can take the next step which I personally think is the best one. With the video playing:

* Click File --> Wizard
* Select "Stream to Network" and click next
* Select "Existing playlist item"
* From the dropdown list, select the only item (beginning with mms://) and click next
* Select "HTTP" and leave the destination box blank, click next
* Set encapsulation format to "ASF" and click next
* Leave next page blank and click next.

Now the VLC player should act as if it has stopped playing. Now open a terminal and type 'mplayer http://localhost:8080' or 'totem http://localhost:8080'

Enjoy!

I can't get firebug to install on Gentoo. Firefox gives me an error about invalid hash or some such.


On a windows laptop that I had to drag out for just this purpose, I had to disable adblock on the page, if that helps.

However, this is just ridiculous. Why not just give us the link to the stream? Why does it have to use silverlight?

Thanks for posting this. Unfortunately, when I try to get video this way, VLC always reports that is can't open the mms link

I was able to get audio this way, but I'm not going to pay MLB that much for audio...

Yeah, shortly after I posted this, I found that I couldn't get it to work any longer. I don't know what happened. I'll continue poking around to see if I can make it work properly.

I don't know why we can't just have a "low-tech" option. Jeez...

I did find out that MLB.com uses a separate plugin for the 1.2M feed, which uses a bittorrent-like data distribution scheme. I haven't been able to get it installed in WINE. I'm getting ready to set up a headless Windows box with a VNC server just for use as a baseball streaming box. If I can get the 1.2M stream to play through their plugin in VLC, then I can stream it to my Linux boxes, including my MythTV box and hence, my HDTV. That's what I'm aiming for.

[QUOTE=ivan256;3106246]I got audio working under Linux today, but it's a pain in the ass...

<snip>

Thanks 256, it indeed does work and even though it is a pain it's better than nothing. Without Firebug and your instructions I was stuck with using XP in Vmware or being a martyr and doing without.

By the way, if opening in VLC gives an error and it won't play, you can disable the MediaPlayerConnectivity add-on in Firefox and the video will play in the browser window. If you don't want to watch full-screen, this will get the game on for you.

[QUOTE=Wolfvorkian;3106665]Could you explain the Firebug approach? I installed Firebug but I'm unable to find the URL mentioned.

[QUOTE=Theophile;3106669]I'll try. After you click the game you want, you are taken to the friggen 'silverlight screen', right? Then I follow 256's instructions to enable Firebug and to reload. It seems you have to diminish the main page and use Control-R to reload the 'silverlight' page.

Anyhow, then you can click the console tab in Firebug and then look for something resembling a batch of gibberish like the below.

----> prePlayerLoad: o.mUrl=http://web.servicebureau.net/conf/meta?i=1112976009&c=1234&m= and on and on and on for ever it seems.

I had a hell of a time trying to copy and paste the url and I finally ended up pasting the whole thing from the o.mUrl= into a text editor and then knocking off the "o.mUrl=" string when I recopied and pasted into VLC.

I tried the command line and didn't have any luck but if you use the GUI, you can avoid the quotation marks like 256 suggested. With VLC, click 'file', then 'open network stream' in the drop down and then put your url into the proper line, the one starting with Http.

I'm pretty sure these url's go dead in around a minute, so you can't play around much. You have to get right with it or they won't work. And if they go dead, you have to close our friend 'silverlight', go back to the page where the game icons are and start all over again.

If I'm making this harder than it is, I'd appreciate someone letting me know. It is truly a pia the way I'm doing it.All I want to do is listen to a silly damn baseball game that I've paid for and they put me through these hoops.

[QUOTE=Wolfvorkian;3106708]I don't get this on my firefox 2. Just the "FlashMovie Event: menu - onTabClosed" line in the console. On my windows machine (with silverlight) I do get all the content you mention. However, it seems my linux firefox is just loading up the flash interface and ignoring the media streams within. Tried switching user agents, too, but that didn't help.

Actually, I tried again today and it actually opened the link. But, the "video" came out looking like this:
http://carpie.net/mlb.png

The video looks the same as above if I disable VLC as the media player *sigh* I experimented with the different video output modules with no success...

Not trying to hijack this thread, but I'm curious if anyone has been able to get mlb.tv to work in complete full screen (or wide screen)?

I've been trying to watch it on my TV, which is why I'm really wanting to get full screen. Right now I've got black bars on both sides of the video and underneath it. I gather from the MLB forums that this is a problem that everyone is experiencing.

[QUOTE=ilikerobots;3107712]
I don't get any http URLs in my Firebug output either. I get a couple of mms URLs but VLC doesn't like those too much .. heh. Is there anything you need to do to tweak Firebug? Or is the default configuration OK?

[QUOTE=ilikerobots;3107712]I don't know what else to say to help. Right now, I'm listening to the Angel and Twin game using the technique that 256 told us about.

I did however get 'exactly' the same same message you got the first time I tried to get the game broadcasting in VLC a few minutes ago. I screwed around with it a bit, disabled adblock, made sure accepting cookies was okay for MlB, and all that kind of garbage and I'm not sure any of it is necessary but it was worth a try and then I tried a couple more times and probably on the 3rd attempt, I didn't get the "menu - onTabClose" message but the the url I needed.Maybe Firebug works when it wants to, I don't know. I'd keep trying because it does work or at least does for me and a few others.... as the only other alternative is Windows or Mac, or doing without...<gag> .

Hmm, I tried the firebug trick (that someone posted earlier) tonight and it works too. However, when I play the video in mplayer it's corrupted too but not as bad as the one in my earlier post.
http://carpie.net/mlb2.png

I have the lastest version of the codecs listed on mplayer's page (20071007) so I'm not sure what the issue is here... The codec mplayer chose is WVC1.

Just to recount how I got to this point, I loaded the multimedia guide in Firefox (native, not wine) with Firebug enabled. Looking at the console view in Firebug, when the popup player page loads there is a line near the bottom that says something:
mUrl:mms://blahblahblah
Double click that line and copy it. Then paste into the command line and run:
mplayer 'mms://blahblah'

This works for me but with corrupted video as shown in the link above...