mlbviewer 2012 Installation guide for Ubuntu (MLB.TV on Linux)

Alex — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:40:32 +0000

Download mlbviewer:

Go and grab the latest version from the sourceforge page below:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlbviewer/

Unrar:

tar -zxvf mlbviewer2012.tar.gz

It doesn’t require any installation but you will need a few extras and the easiest way to install them is shown below:

Download PyXML:

PyXML is an XML processing tool for python which this project uses, sometimes it can be tricky to install python modules so we’ll be using setuptools which you can get from the link below.

If you’re unsure of what version you need, open terminal and type “python”, this will show the version of python you’re running. Mine was 2.7.4 so I downloaded “setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg” I would imagine yours would be similar.

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools#cygwin-mac-os-x-linux-other

Once you have it, run it (replacing the version you downloaded for the one here):

sudo sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg

Now to install PyXML it’s as simple as running:

sudo easy_install pyxml

That’s it, you’re done.

Optional – Install MPLAYER2:

MPLAYER2 offers at lot of advantages over MPLAYER however we’re most interested in it because it offers better streaming support and handle stream rate switches (important if you enable adaptive streaming in nexdef mode).

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:motumedia/mplayer-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mplayer2

(Thanks to – Web Upd8)

Optional – Install mlbhls (for nextdef | HD):

Instructions as per in REQUIREMENTS-2012.txt in the mlbviewer package.

You’ll also need some extra packages which aren’t stated:

sudo apt-get install libconfig-dev libcurl4-gnutls-dev

svn co https://mlbtv-hls-nexdef.googlecode.com/svn/branches/experimental mlbhls
cd mlbhls
make
sudo cp mlbhls /usr/bin

Once that’s done, you should be able to get the higher bitrate streams too!

Using mlbplayer:

Setup:

The first time you run mlbviewer it will generate a config file which you’ll need to enter your Premium MLB.TV account details in, running mlbviewer will tell you where this file is located:

python mlbviewer.py

Go edit the file and enter your email as the “user” and your password after “pass”.

Now re-run mlbviewer and it should start up!