I am getting the listing. I believe the issue is with the mplayer proxy support. mplayer supports the http_proxy environment variable. I believe the problem is that mplayer is not being passed an http URL, but instead is being passed an mms URL and thus does not invoke its own proxy support.

According to this:

http://bugzilla.mplayerhq.hu/show_bug.cgi?id=225

The MMS protocol does not work through an http proxy as it is a UDP protocol, and instead mplayer needs to fallback to mmshttp protocol, but it is apparently a very low priority enhancement.

I wonder if mlb.tv even has mmshttp support? I assume it does because mlb.tv works on windows boxes through the http firewall. I wonder if mlbviewer could have an option to convert URLs from mms to mmshttp?

What about mlbviewer and that?

Depends on how they implement it. We'll when it's here. It may be do-able, it may not, and it will very likely break us until I figure out how to handle it.

Just dropping by to say I am still avidly using the mlbviewer program and still very very happy with it, though there's one feature which I'd like to request.

Is it possible to change the behaviour so that when you return from the top plays screen to the listings, the highlight stays with the game you were on before instead of returning to the top of the list?

thanks!

I could do that. It will be awhile. I'm still on vacation.

Now I remember why I don't do that. There's a lot of re-used GUI code and the current_cursor variable is the same whether it's a listings screen, a top plays screen, or a bookmarks screen. If one of these screens had more lines than the one it was returning to, there would be an index error.

I would say rather than adding even more if-else code (we're already getting pretty ugly on that front), I'll save it for the new architecture which I plan to have ready for next Spring Training (it will be my off-season project.) I doubt they'll roll out anything new until the actual season starts. After all, why try out new prospects and additions in Spring Training with the rest of MLB when you can wait til Opening Day to really piss things up?

[The new architecture will use panels--a curses data structure--to manage each of the screens as separate entities which can keep state even when not the current screen on display. Functionally, you'll see no difference--well, maybe a small speed performance as there will be less code branches to navigate--but code-wise, it will be a lot easier to manage and add new screens--like if I ever decide to pull in the work I once did on a scoreboard applet or maybe a pitching match-up screen or something...]

Hi,

I am not currently a subscriber to MLBtv, but I have been watching the free archives for a long time now. Recently, they seemed to have blocked the access of the archives except through the new clickable linescores; from the scoreboard page, this new feature allows you to watch the game half inning by half inning (this does not require a subscription, paid or otherwise). This gives the added benefit of being able to skip the "commercial" breaks.

Anyway, I was wondering what the chances are that you would be able integrate this new feature into mlbviewer, similar to the top plays function? This would allow all of us non-subscribers to still access the archived games through linux/mlbviewer, without having to use silverlight.

Thanks for all of your work on the program!!

Short answer:

Not going to happen this season.

Long answer:

Clickable linescores come from XML pages we don't parse. XML is a pain in the butt because the syntax is fast and loose. In fact, XML is pretty much a build your own syntax language. This means you have to tell python how to translate someone else's syntax into a data structure. Trust me! It's a huge pain.

By contrast, mlbviewer uses JSON which has a much stricter syntax and very easily translates into python data structures with the simplejson package.

HTML pages, basically anything you see on mlb.com is completely out of the question. MLB.com's HTML is a rat nest of javascript, CSS, tables, and all kinds of crap that makes XML seem like a walk in the park. I'd have to write a browser class that would translate all that markup into python data structures. I sooner see Kansas City winning the AL Central before I try to parse mlb.com web pages into python data structures.

Sorry. It's probably pretty cheap now to buy the rest of the season.

Good news is the way they implemented it won't break current mlbviewer code.

Bad news is that I have to decide how I'm going to support it. I'm leaning towards a video_follow feature to work the same way as the audio_follow feature.

As an added bonus, I'm also looking into a radio_follow feature for supporting the alternate audio feeds such as spanish language stations.

I'll try to have something ready for the video_follow for Monday's games, if not sooner.

Work's picked up so I'm not going to do any new development. Only bug fixes.

Anyway, mlbtv isn't consistent about which games have dual coverage. Nor are they consistent about how they identify the alternate stream (other than TV station call letters.)

Maybe if they're serious about it, next year's implementation will be more consistent.

In the meantime, if you want to view an alternate stream, visit the mlb.tv listings page and mouse over the listing you want to view. You're looking for the part that says "w_id: 123456" The w_id is the stream identifier. Use the mlbgameid.py script packaged in the test directory to watch the stream by stream id.

For example, to watch the stream with w_id: 123456

A whole lot of debug output and raw html page output will fly by and eventually, it will connect to the requested stream (assuming there's no trouble with the stream at the media server.)

Also, I apologize if anyone's games were below the scrolling point on Saturday. We never anticipated a day with 20 games scheduled. To implement proper scrolling (and not just that hack I put into bookmarks) will take a redesign that I'll do in the off-season. If you're game was below the fold (the point where scrolling would break mlbviewer), you can use the method above to find your stream ID and use the mlbgameid.py tool to watch that game.

i upgraded to svn 100, what's new?

welcome back everybody!

Added debug code just for me.

Pressing 'z' on a listing will dump the data structure for the listing. This isn't something I'm going to document (but I guess I just did.)

I guess I should roll up 100 into an official release. It might be the last until the off-season re-design.

*sigh* Nearly three months since this stopped working for me - I haven't been able to watch more than 2 minutes of a game since. I understand that it's probably not a problem with mlbplayer, but just in case anyone has had a similar problem that they were able to solve, I'm posting here again.

Basically, everything used to work perfectly for me. But, since the beginning of July, I just can't watch any games! I connect, it finds the stream, it launches the player, it plays for a minute or two, and then dies. I've tried both speeds, I've tried mplayer and vlc, I've tried updating everything I could update, and nothing makes a difference at all.

In mplayer, if I leave the screen small so that I can see the terminal window behind it, I see an error flash by saying something about "cannot read" and "resource temporarily unavailable".

In vlc, I get errors right at the beginning "access_mms access error: error while asking for file -1" and "access_mms access error: cannot read file". It then seems to play out the buffer and freeze.

Another strange thing is that I can't seem to play the game using the test script. (in the /test/ dir) I find the game id, and enter the command as shown in the README. It gives me all the HTML from the login, and then it stops. Doesn't try to launch the video or anything.

Other factors of note: this is a machine with a wired connection. My windows laptop which connects wirelessly through the same router has no issues playing the games (except that logistically, I really can't do that, which is why I really want it to work on the *nix box).

I know earlier someone had suggested optimizing mplayer, or something, but I have to admit I have no idea how to do that, and googlefu has not been useful. Also, is that still a likely fix when it fails so epically on vlc, too?

Thank you so much to anyone that has any suggestions...

Been an excellent year baseball/linux wise due to mainly straycat and Jesse. Others helped a lot too. The fellow who suggested using Firebug to find the url and the guy who wrote the greasemonkey script and probably others who I'm missing, my apologies to whoever I may have neglected to mention.

Probably next year on the first day of the season we'll need help again and will be pleading for someone to descramble the mess MLB once again has shoved our way. Hopefully we can meet here again on opening day and straycat or a protege will be able foil their efforts.

Suggestion I've got is for daftcat to post a palpal number or someway we can all send him a few bucks to show our appreciation for such a marvelous little program. You know something like $5-$25 apiece; enough for him to have a bad head-ache after a night on the town from his MLBViewer admirers or a real good seat at a game next year or a cheap whore should that be his thing. Thanks again.