I don't understand this part:

Hmmm, try the instructions posted here:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/printthread.php?t=141102

I used the instructions in the mlbviewer requirements file. Distro is Ubuntu (fully up to date).

I tried running that at the command line and got "Error opening/initializing the selected video out (-vo) device"

Well, that changes what comes up, but it still doesn't play. Now I get the whole "probing" thing, but it does say it finds the chip (and seems to list the correct one). After it loads the driver, it says:

"[nvidia_vid] setting up a 256x144-0x0 video window (src 256x144), format 0x32595559
set colorkey 0xff00"

And then it just sits there.

Could it be a video card driver issue? What is your chip/card and what driver are you using?

If you updated to Ubuntu 9.0.4 there are major issues with both NVIDIA and ATI drivers being supported. Check the Ubuntu forums there are several work arounds and ideas on how to get the drivers to work.

I have Ubuntu on a machine with a nvidia card and I am still using 8.10 just because of the driver issue.

I do think my problem may be that my location isn't being found so blackout-status isn't determined. Is there anything I can do about this?

Please paste the output of the following two commands:

If you can verify it in the Flash player, then I would call customer support. Sorry, that has to suck, but I don't know what else to do.

Are you using a proxy server that masks your location?

I was going to experiment with some new login code.

There might be some additional items I can add to the media requests that might assist the servers in figuring out your location. This would require more configuration file options, but it may do the trick.

In the meantime, I would check if you have "can't determine your location" errors in the Flash player and place a call to customer service if you do.

I'll also search the support forums for you.

Do you have an address/credit card on file with MLB.com?

Maybe you can add your address to your user profile at:
https://secure.mlb.com/authenticate.do

Nexdef is having major issues tonight again. No matter what I try whether with Flash or mlbviewer the signal keeps switching for high to low, etc. I guess this whole nexdef thing is still not functioning properly for MLB.

You can get the driver directly from nvidia. Its easy to download and install. I had some issues in 8.10 with the driver until driver 180.44 came out. That driver is now in the Ubuntu repositories, which I'm now using and I haven't had any issues with it on 9.04.

I got some initial code done only this morning (been working on it for a few days though) before work for the jump to innings interface and was finally able to jump around a few games. Very encouraging.

If I get a chance to clean up the code (put in proper error handling) tonight, I'll check it in tonight. Otherwise, it will probably come Monday.

After that, there are only two more items I want to work on before shifting focus. First, the login code needs to be re-worked so it takes more of a session approach vs a transaction approach--login once, make many requests vs. login once per request. Second, is the get_mlb_basic script.

After those two items, I really need to spend some time cleaning up the code and making some libraries. Mlbviewer wasn't intended to grow this huge and complex and the code is suffering for it. I've made a mess of Jesse's original code, and I intend to fix that. The upside to this is that with the proper libraries, I can easily add in new features like scoreboard, line scores, and maybe even some gameday-like features (as long as I can figure out what it is freely available and what would be stepping all over this new Gameday Premium service they are selling.)

chmoiak,

I had originally envisioned a line score interface for jump to innings but the code for moving the cursor around (especially without some 2.6 features of python) would be too hard to implement. I also figured the line score interface might be too confusing with Orca. I still draw a line score graphic but I use text input for jumping to the innings. I will also be adding in a configuration file option to disable the line score graphic since it probably won't add anything for you, and it might be terribly confusing with Orca.

Are there any other parts of the mlbviewer interface that don't translate well that I could improve on?

One of the support forum posts said they fixed this by restarting their cable/dsl modem.

Another user in the forums said this didn't work for them.

So it sounds like you have a 50% chance that this will work for you.

QUESTION: I have noticed than when I watch live games I have the stream drop and/or switch bitrates up and down during the first 2 or 3 innings. I will typically have to restart the stream a number of times (5-10 or more) during the initial few innings. Then after that it settles in at the 2200K stream (most often) without any problems/switching/drops for the rest of the game. I am west coast so more often than not this happens when I am watching 7pm PST start times. This happened last night with the WAS-LAD game. Couldn't get an uninterrupted stream until probably the 3rd inning then after that it stayed on and smooth and uninterrupted until game completion. Does anyone else see this behavior? Any ideas?

ISSUE: If a game does not have a nextdef stream (the SFG (AWAY) feed of the 5/5/2009 SFG @ CHC game is an example) the mlbviewer won't load the game at all for me. I have video_follow=sf set. When I browse to that game and select it to load it fails. I have to turn off my video_follow in order to watch that game...and I have to thus watch the Cubs HOME feed of it. Is there logic in mlbviewer to detect when there is no nextdef stream and load the non-nextdef stream appropriately? Am I stuck being a premium subscriber that I can't watch a non-nextdef stream? I haven't paid attention in the thread to any setup issues or settings for non-premium subscribers so I apologize if this scenario has been handled already.

I wish I could quote the actual behavior/messages I saw with this issue. If I recall it completed the "Fetching URL for game stream..." step and showed the "Buffering stream..." message. Then the mplayer xterm popped up before failing. Sorry, but I am writing this at work so I don't have access to my Ubuntu laptop that I run mlbviewer on to quote the exact behavior.

Thanks to all who have contributed. This thing is awesome~!!