MLB.TV in Linux

daftcat · 02-10-2009, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lephio

mlb.tv will use Flash video for 2009.

will mlbviewer work?

won't know until the season starts. cross your fingers.

daftcat · 02-11-2009, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by daftcat

won't know until the season starts. cross your fingers.

btw, it sounds like they've abandoned silverlight and flash might work with firefox again. still, it would be nice to remain with mlbviewer. especially since this year, they are offering dvr service which would allow me to officially release a copy of mlbviewer i've been using the better part of last year that implemented recording.

and technically, they've been doing flash this year as well. it was the debug messages they embedded in the flash code that was picked up by firebug that enabled folks to figure out how to make mlbviewer.

anyway, like i said, if this season is anything like previous seasons, we probably won't see how they're going to do anything until opening day. even spring training might not really give us an idea of how they'll do it in the regular season.

Theophile · 02-19-2009, 12:27 PM

I think he meant "flash video" in the sense of .flv rather than .wmv. I really, really hope this is the case as Hulu and other sites have demonstrated that 720p h264 content can be streamed in real time to broadband connected machines. If they have indeed abandoned Silverlight (loser), that might mean HD baseball games in Linux! Yippee!

If they do indeed do this, and depending on the protocol they use, rtmpdump may be worth a look.

daftcat · 02-24-2009, 12:47 PM

February Baseball!!!

The listings show that games will be available beginning Thu Feb 26.

I can't tell you if this means it will work for the regular season. Rather than using Spring Training to test the new players like every other team does, MLB.TV seems to wait until Opening Day to roll out the new lineup. But, it's looking like you'll have at least one month of functional baseball.

Keeping my fingers crossed!

daftcat · 02-24-2009, 06:22 PM

My mistake. The 25th is the first day of Spring Training games. There are several audio available and a couple of video available.

Refer to this page:
http://mlb.mlb.com/components/game/y...amesbydate.jsp

Find the w_id under the speed and game you'd like to watch/listen to and use the mlbgameid.py tool.

I'll see why the listing for this day didn't parse and try to get a patch into svn.

daftcat · 02-25-2009, 02:51 AM

Svn revision 103 has been checked in.

The problem with Feb 25 listings was an exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox and Boston College. BC is an unknown team code. I've added a handler for unknown team codes and added BC to the TEAMCODES dictionary. If there are any other unknown team codes, you should see "Unknown Teamcode" and the team code in the listings screen. Post that listing date and the teamcode to this group and I'll add it to the dictionary.

You may update your svn with svn update or check out the latest svn code using the procedure documented in the README.

Also added to the svn sometime late last season is the 'z' key debug. Since not every listing has all media types (or even any media types in some cases), it's useful to see, without having to visit the mlb.com pages, what media is available. I know the 'z' screen isn't the most readable but you're looking for a field called 'pid:' (displayed as u'pid:'.) If that value immediately following is 'mlb_ga' (or u'mlb_ga'), that means there is or will be gameday audio stream available. If the value is 'mlb_lg', that stream identifies a live game listing. You can access streams directly using mlbgameid.py in the test directory by finding the stream id. That field is 'w_id:' (displayed as u'w_id:' in the 'z' screen.) The six digit numeric value (without the u or the '') is the stream id.

Looking forward to seeing if Spring Training 2009 will work with mlbviewer tomorrow!

Cheers,
daftcat

JackRubysDog · 02-25-2009, 02:53 AM

Guess I'll know tomorrow when I try to watch my Marlins take on the Mets in Spring Training. MLB.TV seems to work flawlessly in Ubuntu at the moment (when I last tried, it didn't). I haven't set anything up *specially* (not that I know of, but I'm a bit of a Ubuntu noob) but once you're through the launch window mplayer launches and plays the stream. Live streams may be a different matter.

Fingers crossed. I have a dual-boot OS/Yellow Dog PS3 and a dual-boot Windows/Ubuntu PC, so I think I have all my bases covered! The order I'm going for is:

(1) PS3 internet browser (unlikely to work)
(2) Yellow Dog, Firefox (just out of interest)
(3) Yellow Dog, mlbviewer (preferred option)
(4) Ubuntu, Firefox (as my Ubuntu PC is connected to a 19" monitor, whilst PS3 is to TV)
(5) Ubuntu, mlbviewer
(6) Windows, TVersity to PS3
(7) Windows

Wish me luck!

lephio · 02-25-2009, 08:51 AM

yeah! and finally.. mlbviewer listings again!!!!

i love it!!!!!!!!

DDDDDDDDDD

go twins!

daftcat · 02-25-2009, 01:21 PM

Good news is gameday audio works for Spring Training for the one game I tested. It will be several more hours before the first game video I can watch. Unfortunately, the first one in the lineup is in my blackout region. I wonder if they are really still going to enforce blackout when all the teams are in Arizona and Florida at the moment....

But I must warn that results in Spring Training aren't necessarily guarantees that regular season will share those results. It's been my experience that MLB.TV doesn't use Spring Training to try out their new players like every other team in the league. Instead they wait til Opening Day and it takes them about a month to get their act together. So, enjoy Spring Training, and be hopeful and patient in April.

daftcat · 02-25-2009, 01:51 PM

So the listings I get are different from the mlb.tv listings page (though presumably they both come from the same source.) I'm going to put up a php page later that will have the option to go to the current day's listings or pick a day's listings so you can see the raw listing.

I also said that Spring Training listings have all the games but don't have streams listed for all the games.

And I mentioned the 'z' screen.

So let's walk through a couple of examples.

This is the z screen for Atlanta @ Detroit:

Code:

LISTINGS DEBUG FOR 2009/02/25/atlmlb-detmlb-1
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
getListings() for current_cursor:
({'home': u'det', 'away': u'atl'}, datetime.datetime(2009, 2, 25, 11, 5), None,
{u'fid': u'h12', u'url': u'http://web.servicebureau.net/conf/meta?i=1113082985&c
=1234&m=was&u=/w2.xsl', u'pid': u'mlb_ga', u'mid': u'200902183845990', u'gid': u
'2009/02/25/atlmlb-detmlb-1', u'w_id': u'906620', u'w': u'http://web.servicebure
au.net/conf/meta?i=1113082985&c=1234&m=was&u=/w2.xsl', u'v': u'2', u'login': u'Y
', u'id': u'906620', u'authorization': u'Y'}, u'I', u'2009/02/25/atlmlb-detmlb-1
')

Kind of messy, eh? This is a python dump of the data structure after the listings code has cooked the raw data. Without getting too much into it, look for the u'pid:' field (the u stands for unicode, it's just a data type and can be ignored.) The next field is u'mlb_ga' (or simply mlb_ga, I'm going to ignore the 'u's from this point forward.)

The pid:s are:

mlb_ga = Gameday audio
mlb_lg = Live Game

I think there are a few others. I also think that archived games use the mlb_lg pid as well.

So from this listing we can see that there is a gameday audio stream available. There are no other pid's.

Let's move to the next listing, Boston College at Boston Red Sox.

Code:

LISTINGS DEBUG FOR 2009/02/25/bocbbc-bosmlb-1
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
getListings() for current_cursor:
({'home': u'bos', 'away': u'bc'}, datetime.datetime(2009, 2, 25, 11, 5), None, N
one, u'I', u'2009/02/25/bocbbc-bosmlb-1')

There are no pid's so there are no streams available for this game.

Skip ahead to San Francisco at Cleveland:

Code:

LISTINGS DEBUG FOR 2009/02/25/sfnmlb-clemlb-1
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
getListings() for current_cursor:
({'home': u'cle', 'away': u'sf'}, datetime.datetime(2009, 2, 25, 13, 5), {u'w':
u'null', u'url': u'null', u'pid': u'mlb_lg', u'mid': u'200902243963013', u'gid':
 u'2009/02/25/sfnmlb-clemlb-1', u'w_id': u'909451', u'fid': u'mlb_lg400', u'v':
u'3', u'login': u'Y', u'id': u'909451', u'authorization': u'Y'}, {u'fid': u'h12'
, u'url': u'http://web.servicebureau.net/conf/meta?i=1113091575&c=1234&m=was&u=/
w2.xsl', u'pid': u'mlb_ga', u'mid': u'200902183846502', u'gid': u'2009/02/25/sfn
mlb-clemlb-1', u'w_id': u'906653', u'w': u'http://web.servicebureau.net/conf/met
a?i=1113091575&c=1234&m=was&u=/w2.xsl', u'v': u'2', u'login': u'Y', u'id': u'906
653', u'authorization': u'Y'}, 'LB', u'2009/02/25/sfnmlb-clemlb-1')

This has two pid:s. The first is mlb_lg meaning there is a video stream available. The second is a mlb_ga, an audio stream. Now looking closer at the video stream, about 4 name value pairs later, there is a 'fid:' field. The fid: is mlb_lg400. This means this stream is a 400K stream. Since there is no mlb_lg800, 400K is all that's available for this game. If you're configured for 800K, mlbviewer falls back to 400K if that's all that is available.

Finally, if you have problems with any of the streams, you can test outside of mlbviewer with the mlbgameid.py script. Looking at either stream, there is a w_id: field. That's the stream id. (mlbgameid.py should really be named mlbstreamid.py but I don't feel like changing that now.) Take the six digit number that follows the w_id: field and give that as an argument to mlbgameid.py:

Code:

% test/mlbgameid.py 906653

Finally, if you suspect mlbviewer is masking an error like saying "parser problem with the listings page", you can enable debugging with the 'd' key. Any error that would normally be caught by mlbviewer will drop right through and raise a python exception. These exception traces (the full trace with code line numbers) are necessary for me to find any problems.

Note the 'z' screen method of finding what streams are available is really only necessary for spring training. Once the regular season gets under way, they should have all stream types for all games.

itshardertotell · 02-25-2009, 06:16 PM

hi,

i bought my mlb subscription today and did reinstall mlb viewer, which worked just fine all of last season. but now when i start the program the terminal always shuts down and i get this info. that means so far i can't watch anything. does anyone have any ideas on how to fix it? much appreciated!

thanks,
markus

Quote:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "mlbviewer.py", line 704, in <module>
curses.wrapper(mainloop, mycfg.data)
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/curses/wrapper.py", line 44, in wrapper
return func(stdscr, *args, **kwds)
File "mlbviewer.py", line 154, in mainloop
available =
mysched.getListings(cfg['speed'],cfg['blackout'],cfg['audio_follow'])
File "/home/mrks/Programme/mlbviewer-0.1alpha7/MLBviewer/mlbtv.py",
line 334, in getListings
listings = self.trimList()
File "/home/mrks/Programme/mlbviewer-0.1alpha7/MLBviewer/mlbtv.py",
line 247, in trimList
' at ' +\
KeyError: u'bc'

daftcat · 02-26-2009, 03:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by itshardertotell

hi,

i bought my mlb subscription today and did reinstall mlb viewer, which worked just fine all of last season. but now when i start the program the terminal always shuts down and i get this info. that means so far i can't watch anything. does anyone have any ideas on how to fix it? much appreciated!

thanks,
markus

See this post above: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...87#post3456587

It should work fine today but you should update to the latest svn just in case. See the README file for instructions on how to check out and update the code using svn. Things are likely to get a little wonky next month with the World Baseball Classic so it's best to subscribe to this thread. I'll announce when new fixes are checked into svn.

JackRubysDog · 02-26-2009, 03:10 AM

Well, tried the Giants/Indians game, this is what I got:

(1) PS3 internet browser (unlikely to work)

(2) Yellow Dog, Firefox (just out of interest)
(3) Yellow Dog, mlbviewer (preferred option)
(4) Ubuntu, Firefox (as my Ubuntu PC is connected to a 19" monitor, whilst PS3 is to TV)
(5) Ubuntu, mlbviewer
(6) Windows, TVersity to PS3
(7) Windows

Wish me luck![/QUOTE]

JackRubysDog · 02-26-2009, 03:14 AM

Tried the Giants/Indians game, this is what I got:

(1) PS3 internet browser (unlikely to work)
- DIDN'T WORK

(2) Yellow Dog, Firefox (just out of interest)
- DIDN'T WORK

(3) Yellow Dog, mlbviewer (preferred option)
- WORKED, YEY!

(4) Ubuntu, Firefox (as my Ubuntu PC is connected to a 19" monitor, whilst PS3 is to TV)
- WORKED, but very poor, Moonlight is awful

(5) Ubuntu, mlbviewer
- WORKED, YEY!

(6) Windows, TVersity to PS3
- DIDN'T WORK

(7) Windows

- WORKED.

So, we're okay for ST. Roll on Opening Day...

daftcat · 02-26-2009, 10:06 PM

SVN revision 105 fixes a bug that will happen with Mar 6 listings. Mar 6 listing has a game where both teams are listed as "null". Without SVN revision 105, mlbviewer may be unavailable that day, e.g., it may crash on the listings screen.

Although, presumably by Mar 6, they'll have figured out which teams are playing in that WBC game.

Also in revision 105, I have added media availability indications to the status line. If there is no video, no audio, or neither video or audio available for a particular listing (like many of the Spring Training games), The status line will show "(No video available)", "(No audio available)", or "(No media available)", respectively. In other words, you no longer need to hurt your eyes on the 'z' screen or consult the MLB.com listing page to figure out if your game has media available.

Finally, revision 105 contains a lot of the WBC team codes so they'll show up as "WBC China at WBC Japan" instead of "Unknown Team Code at Unknown Team Code." As the WBC progresses, I expect I'll have to add a few more team codes but these should carry you until at least March 11 according to the listings available today.

Please refer to the README on how to update (or checkout) mlbviewer using SVN.

Cheers!
daftcat