Notices

This requires a paid subscription to either mlb gameday audio or mlb tv from mlb.com to stream live and archived games. The paid subscription is not required for viewing highlights.

You can find all files and source code on the garage page here.
Current Version:
mlbviewer_gui 0.1.1-2
python-mlbviewer 0.0.5-2

EDIT: Adding lists for what does and doesn't work:

What Works:

• Retrieving daily schedule of games (current and past) and displaying context sensitive buttons for accessing game information.
• Color coded game times to help recognize today’s games that are done, in pregame, currently playing, or not accessible.
• Access and play mlb gameday audio (live and archived audio) streams via mplayer.*
• Access and play “Top Plays” (highlights) streams via mplayer (including game recap)**
• Access and play “Condensed Games” via mplayer (with video subscription).*
• Access and tell mplayer to play*** mlb tv (live and archived video) streams.*
• Configure username and password access.
• Configure audio follow (for setting a team's audio to override the home team preference)
• Configure audio, video, and top plays player launch streams (allowing you to use player/program you want provided you know the command to access it).
• Launch the default media player for any of the media types by setting the command to "mediaplayer" (no quotes) in the confi text box(es).
• Icons!! Not very good looking icons, but they're different from the default, so that's cool.
• Launch the log viewer from the program menu (and preserves log of previous launch).
• Timezones are now handled properly (Thanks ehovorka!)

Only the mobile audio streams work for now. Make sure you have them selected in the config dialog box.

* Subscription required.
** No subscription required.
*** See first point in “What Doesn’t Work”

What Doesn't Work:

• Playing video stream for mlb tv (live games): issue appears to be with mplayer being able to decode and play the wmv9 stream.
• Choosing video bitrate: you’re stuck with 400kbps for now.
• I think there is an error with the time zone offset setting.
• Any thing I’m missing?

In responce to the request in this thread I've ported MLBviewer to run on maemo. It includes the original library used to populate MLBviewer, with only two commented lines to make it run, and then I created a gui to control it based on the original curses interface. I have only tested it so far with gameday audio, so I'd love it if other subscribers would test it out.

I'm ataching two debs. The first, python-simplejson is required for MLBviewer to read the information from mlb's website, and should be installed first. The second installs the application itself, with the python code used in "/usr/lib/mlbviewer_gui", a sh launch script in bin, and a .desktop file to put it on your application menu.

You do also need to have mplayer installed (the version for viewing videos on the tablet, not the microb plugin).

Known issues (with I'm sure many unknown issues):

• No threading support - the gui just kind of freezes when retrieving data, so it takes a couple of seconds to load up.
• Poor error handling - you really don't see any of the errors if you're running in strict gui mode. You can see the shell output if you launch "mlbviewer" from xterm. This includes the ocasional "login error". In my experience, audio should start within ten seconds, any longer implies an error (and the gui should become responsive quicker than that). You can try pressing the button again, or just quit and reload. I really need to improve on this.
• Game button labels don't word wrap - so you usually get to see the first team's name and "at" but nothing else.
• Top plays not yet supported - I just haven't implemented it yet, I'm going to populate a tree view with a list of top plays on the current game dialog in the next release.
• Doesn't use a configuration dialog - unfortunatly I'm just running a clone of the intitial setup method used for MLBviewer and haven't implemented my configuration dialog though it is in the glade file. The first time you run the program, it will check for "/home/user/.mlb/config" and if it doesn't exist, the application creates the directory and a default config file, and then exits. When it exits you'll have to put your username and password in the config file (when you open it, it has instructions).
• Currently the audio stream will only end if you exit, or press the button for another feed.

Future development:
Top Plays support.
Configuration dialog support.
Statusicon for controlling the audio stream.
Threading support.
Whatever else you or I can come up with, within reason...
Score checking support (if some one can tell me how to grab the info from mlb.com).

Please, I welcome your feedback and suggestions. And if any one can tell me how to invoke those notify boxes in the upper right hand corner in python, I'd appreciate letting me know so that I can use it for error handling and other information.

Enjoy!

EDIT: I've updated the packages with new ones with bug fixes.

• Top plays now show up in a tree view to the right of the launcher buttons. Double tap on the play to launch the viewer (should I make a button to launch this video?)
• On playing a stream, the game dialog is now hidden so that it does not hold focus away from mplayer (allowing the hardware resize and other input)
• Moved game label in the game dialog to allow more space and make it more clear.
• Enabled config option on the program menu
• On first start, run config dialog to ask for user name and password. This also shows options for video bitrate and audio follow, but they don't do anything.

EDIT:
You can find all files and source code on the garage page here instead of in this thread.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo... gonna go look and will report back!

My excitement is only tempered by my complete disappointment in the Mariners and the absolutely SUCKY ads we subscribers must now endure endlessly between innings. But that's for another forum and another thread

OK. MLBVIEWER FOR DUMMIES:

Step 1: go to mlb.tv and sign in?

Step 2: fire up mlbviewer?

Step 3:

Result? Um... I'm getting a Mil at SF window offering me the Gameday Audio or MLB TV. That's all. For any game I click on. And nothing happens when I click on either option.

Man. I wan this to work (even with the terrible bad Mariners)... .

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. Log out of mlb.tv, open my app, click on your game's button and it should bring up the that game. The label isn't updating (another bug, I put that label in just as a place holder and forgot). So try and click on the video link even though it doesn't say its for your game.

I should be close to getting the top plays working tonight, so hopefull tomorrow eveing I'll have an update out, and I'll be able to verify the video settings.

Oh, and I may have a way to at least get the scores for atleast finished games, but I'm not sure.

This is the one, yeah? http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/mplayer/

Got that one... .

Um. Still nothing.

At what point do you actually sign in at mlb.com to access the subscription?

If I go straight to mlbviewer without signing in at mlb.com, does that mean I'm completely bypassing the subscription and going right to the audio/video feeds? Not sure how that works

Um. Also, the screen is trying to tell me it's looking for Mil at SF... and they're not playing today. Is the application just looking for *that* feed (which doesn't exist in real time)?

Here's a screenshot for what I'm gettin' (did I mention this is great? This is great!):

Ah, I see your issue now, the user name and password need to added to the config file (unfortunatly I don't have the configuration module working now). I don't know what apps you have installed, but the two easiest ways I have for doing it is using emelfm2 on the tablet, or winScp over secure ftp. You should be able to use any text editor that can see the hidden directory "/home/user/.mlb" or you can do the following:

mv /home/user/.mlb/config /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/config
[use your text editor here to add your user name and password]
mv /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/config /home/user/.mlb/config

And I've updated the package, I found a bug where closing the dialog wasn't stoping the play back, so I fixed that.

I'll update the config setup asap to make this easier.

OK... downloaded emelfm2 (my, isn't it pretty?) and let us pretend my username is 'Fan' and my password is 'Mariners'

bottom of the screen, beside the paintbrush, I entered:

mv /home/user/.mlb/config /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/config

Now... at this point, after '/config'... this is where I'm a Linuxiot. Do I hit enter and go to the next line and add... um... what in a text editor (and none of those slightly crazy icon buttons on emelfm2 are a text editor?) is and what would the line actually look like based on the example of the signin and password?

Oi. To think of all this for my crappy team

But fascinatin', fascinatin' all the same!

First, you are my hero! As usual, I get what I want, then I want more. How would I choose between the home and away gameday audio broadcast? I'm a transplanted Cubs fan and would prefer to listen to the games on WGN from Chicago.

Oh, yes... I still can't figure the configure stuff but the newer version already seems more responsive.

And when that's fixed, people may want to sign up for the promo over at mlb.com; a few days of free access to all the feautures and feeds.

Then you, too, can see and watch games and laugh at the fools that some of us are for paying for a season pass, only to have mlb.com strike a deal w. yahoo after the season started and have irritating ads run in the beaks :P

Okay so for Betty. Now, you should see a config file in the file manager under documents. Easiest thing to do is to rename that to config.txt, and then open it in notes. You'll see a line that says user= and pass= . Plug the info in there. (I assume user wants the email address).

One suggestion for the app is to make both team names fit in the boxes, maybe using the abbreviations is the best thing to do for that. Rereading, it seems you know of that issue already though.

Edit: Also, I plugged in my info, browsed to a game from 6/5/08, (the browsing of games is really slow, by the way.) and then it popped up the choice for Gameday Audio vs MLB.tv and so I picked MLB.tv. Since that, its been frozen for two minutes so far, doesn't appear to be doing anything. Same thing happens when I pick Gameday Audio actually. I have MPlayer installed, so its not that. Does it not work for the replay games?