I just installed Ubuntu for the first time, and I've finally gotten past the IRQ conflicts and config issues. Now to the most important thing I do with my laptop -- watching my games.

Assuming I know jack squat about Linux, but have decent experience with computers generally and a passing familiarity with command line interfaces from my DOS days, what are my odds of getting MLBViewer working? Is there a step-by-step tutorial I could follow?

mlbviewer is great! thanks for all the hard work. unfortunately i'm in the black out area. i'm wondering if mlbviewer could be modified to accept a proxy server for just the stream url that is passed to the player? once again thanks!

Try this for now. I think it's probably safe to resurrect my blog post on this. I'll be updating it with a step-by-step process when I do.

NO! NO! NO! Do you want to ruin it for everyone? If mlbviewer even hinted at the ability to use a proxy to bypass the blackouts, not only would that be the end of mlbviewer, it would be the end of many people's accounts and the beginning of a very unpleasant lawsuit!

This is a legit project, not some underground hacker project.

The official position from mlbviewer development team (hi there!) is mlbviewer will not support any feature that might implicitly or definitely explicitly violate the MLB AM Terms Of Service.

Straight out of the Terms Of Service:

If you modify the source to circumvent blackout restrictions, please change or remove all references to mlbviewer, the web site, this forum, the developer names, and anything else that might link the source back to us. You are on your own with this. Do not contact us for support.

I do not wish to be drawn into a lawsuit over some hack I had no part in.

See this post for some instructions:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...19#post3139319

Early termination fee? That's weird. I paid for the whole season up front, why would there be a termination fee? But the point is moot for me, I live in Denver but am a Cleveland fan. That's why I have MLB.TV.

Ha!
early termination = liquidated damages

hiya,

first of all let me say that i signed up to linuxquestions.org specifically to say thank you for mlbviewer! it's a terrific little utility. I particularly love the no-frills "does exactly what it says on the tin" text-based interface. digital TV set-top box manufacturers could learn a lot from this - as could mlb.tv themselves!

secondly, i would like to ask if it's possible to include a facility to save streams to my hard disk so i can watch them later on? i live in the uk, so generally games are broadcast too late for me to watch the end of them, and if i stream the archive the next day, it means i have to start again from the beginning, and i can't fast forward to the place i got up to.

in light of the recent discussion about proxy servers and legal issues, is saving a stream to disk actually legit? i don't want to endanger the project by requesting a development which could bring the lawyers a-knocking on the door.

Thanks for the feedback and praise. Always welcome and nice to hear.

As for the larger question...

We've gone back and forth on this one and decided that since the Mosaic client doesn't support recording and because they sell downloadable games on their site, that mlbviewer won't support recording. If we put recording into mlbviewer, I could see it ending badly with games appearing on torrent networks and lawyers knocking on our doors. The decision we came to is that we won't develop or support features that go beyond the official clients. After all, mlbviewer, as was mentioned a couple posts ago, is a legit project for paying subscribers who play nice within their TOS to get what they paid for (not more than they paid for.)

I've heard that VLC supports seeking through the game, though I've never got past the garbled picture. It's really not a usable solution for me either given my particular setup. But maybe someone here can chime in on how to get VLC and seeking working with the games so that recording won't be necessary.

P.S. I suggest editing out the "how to do it" details from your post just to be on the safe side.

I noticed the edit. Nice CYA.

The answer is still no.

If you figure it out, don't include us in it.

Cheers!
daftcat
(mlbviewer jr developer )

Fair enough. I think the TOS would allow users to download streams for their own "private, non-commercial" use, though I also understand that it's a very grey area and that the ability to download streams would greatly facilitate all the things which clearly aren't allowed:

So I won't pursue it further. Thanks for the heads-up.

This is interesting, and a much more satisfactory solution. I'll see what I can do in regards to this. In general I'm a fan of VLC.

If you have problems getting MLBViewer working, I can watch games without it on my Ubuntu laptop (using MediaPlayerConnectivity and VLC). I just use MLBViewer for my Slackware box at home.

EDIT: botched the first post and forgot I could EDIT. See the next post.

VLC allows seeking which is something folks have asked about. I know I get frustrated watching 6 innings and having my stream drop or having to leave the game for one reason or another.

One thing I noticed in my vlc testing is that the video was garbled. Well, I found a reason and a way around it.

Both are documented here:
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=45592

Short answer, add the following to your vlc command-line:

Note: I have verified this on Windows. Someone please confirm this on Linux for me.

I'm not sure if I can confirm the "garbled" picture issue in Linux, because the picture wasn't exactly what I'd call garbled to begin with. Here's my description of what happened on both my Linux boxes:

Top plays are jerky (the picture stutters) and the issue isn't solved by adding "--codec dmo". However the archive full-game streams don't stutter at all. The picture quality is nowhere near as good as mplayer though. Still, not bad if it lets me seek.

Unfortunately, seeking is rather hit-and-miss. It usually works the first time you move the slider, and sometimes the second, but more often than not it crashes if you try to jump to a particular place, with the following errors:

I'm not sure how to fix this. Looks like this guy had the same problem two years ago and didn't solve it.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=445652