MLB TV on the Mac

Problems w/ MLB.TV & Flip4Mac

Well, WMP no longer will even load a game for me, so I downloaded Flip4Mac. The sound works fine. However, the picture quality is non-existant really. Nothing but a bunch of random colors on a snowy picture. I will include a picture to show what I am talking about.

After two hours of MLB.com phone "support," they blamed it on a firewall (which is not the problem). They had no idea what Flip4Mac was. So I beg for your help if possible. Thanks.

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2519/mlbprob1rz.jpg
 
Why do Mac Users Get Screwed Like This?

Last season was amazing, being a college student out-of-state, watching my hometeam (the Phillies) online was sweeet. Real Player worked well. (who would have thunk we would be praising Real?!:p )

However, this year I not only have the problem of Real not being available but also the stream will not even load within the Windows Media Player, I get an invalid code error. I'm signed up and signed in, there software just seems to have a general problem with my MacBookPro. Having just recently updated from a horrible iBook G3 (you know what I'm talking about) I can not believe the one killer app that I need is now disabled. Flip4Mac does not work on intel chips. Has anyone else had problems using an Intel Mac for MLBTV?
 
spikesglaring said:
Well, WMP no longer will even load a game for me, so I downloaded Flip4Mac. The sound works fine. However, the picture quality is non-existant really. Nothing but a bunch of random colors on a snowy picture. I will include a picture to show what I am talking about.

After two hours of MLB.com phone "support," they blamed it on a firewall (which is not the problem). They had no idea what Flip4Mac was. So I beg for your help if possible. Thanks.

http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/2519/mlbprob1rz.jpg
Click to expand...

I am more interested in why anyone would want to watch the tigers play the royals. :) Seriously though I am a first time subscriber to mlb.tv and I am also using Flip4Mac and I found the whole thing to be very glitchy. I had similar things happen to my streams and I found it helpful to exit out and reload the game.
 
Redline13 said:
I am more interested in why anyone would want to watch the tigers play the royals. :) Seriously though I am a first time subscriber to mlb.tv and I am also using Flip4Mac and I found the whole thing to be very glitchy. I had similar things happen to my streams and I found it helpful to exit out and reload the game.
Click to expand...

Ha, yeah. I've been a Tigers fan my entire life, and I'll stay loyal as long as it takes.

As for the problem, I got my problem fixed on the official Flip4Mac board. For one, I switched my colors from thousands to millions in settings, and also deleted the DivX Quicktime codec. MLB.TV is working fine... for now.
 
The stream stops thousand of times during the broadcast, making it impossible to follow a game without breaking something from frustration when you miss a key play!!!

I have very high speed internet so that's not the pb. I had no pb with RealPlayer last year using the same connection, but it's terrible with WMP.

I email MLB.tv saying that since RealPlayer was in the system requirement when I signed up, they'd better do something in the best interest of everyone.
 
hcuar said:
I purchased the season ticket through Dish this year due to the lack of support for Realplayer.
Click to expand...

How much is the Dish subscription?

I was originally entertaining both options, but sounds like it really comes down to one choice, assuming you want actual picture quality.
How disappointing!
 
AstrosFan said:
How much is the Dish subscription?

I was originally entertaining both options, but sounds like it really comes down to one choice, assuming you want actual picture quality.
How disappointing!
Click to expand...

It costs 160 bucks for the year.

You only get games televised on Fox Sports though... With the streaming you got the local stations as well.
 
AstrosFan said:
How much is the Dish subscription?

I was originally entertaining both options, but sounds like it really comes down to one choice, assuming you want actual picture quality.
How disappointing!
Click to expand...

I believe the Dish price is around $169 for the season, while MLB.TV is only $79.
 
Mlb.tv safari trouble.

I just registered for mlb.tv and am having trouble. I have an embedded flash player in my Safari that doesn't want to handle the live broadcasts. How do I change it to WMP? I tried following mlb's help page and it's useless.

Thanks.
 
I've been testing things out for the past few weeks between the WBC and now, and I've found that the best way to "enjoy" MLB.tv on Mac is to use Windows Media Player (not Flip4Mac) and to disable the WMP plug-in for Safari. That way games will load in WMP and you can turn on full screen.

Hoping that MLB will join the iTunes bandwagon soon and thus create some quicktime streams for MLB.tv. But knowing how assbackwards MLB is, I'm not expecting much.
 
switching players

I'm still trying to work around an embedded flash player that will not play mlb.tv. How do I switch my preference from flash player to use media player? I tried the ctrl/click on the player like the mlb help site suggested but I don't get the preferences they talk about. Ah! Is there a way to bring the website (and broadcast) up with my non-embedded WMP?
 
themanfromvlad said:
I've been testing things out for the past few weeks between the WBC and now, and I've found that the best way to "enjoy" MLB.tv on Mac is to use Windows Media Player (not Flip4Mac) and to disable the WMP plug-in for Safari. That way games will load in WMP and you can turn on full screen.

Hoping that MLB will join the iTunes bandwagon soon and thus create some quicktime streams for MLB.tv. But knowing how assbackwards MLB is, I'm not expecting much.
Click to expand...

****How do I disable the WMP plug-in for Safari?
 
WMP has never worked right

Is this problem getting Windows Media Player to work pretty common?

I've downloaded that thing a few times, in an attempt to watch MLB TV, but I never get anything but audio. So I'm not paying the subscription money until I can see some glorious streaming baseball samples.

I'm not a tech-type at all, but is there any agreed upon method of making the Windows Media Player work for my iBook G4? I called apple and they told me to call Microsoft.

Additionally, I'm going to buy more RAM as I'm only at the 256 Mb built in, as I'm noticing the machine slowing down considerably.

I appreciate any help you guys might send my way...
 
rfrankly said:
****How do I disable the WMP plug-in for Safari?
Click to expand...

It should be in your Internet Plug-ins folder in your library (Do a spotlight search). Drag it out of that folder, then restart Safari.
 
nyc310 said:
I definitely sympathize with these complaints -- MLBTV was awesome last year and the WMP feed is not as crisp. I don't think the problem is the feed itself, but rather that the technology to play the feed (WMP) hasn't been updated in years. The quality is much better on the PC. Sucks that Realplayer isn't supported. However it seems more tolerable doing the following: D/L Flip4Mac and the widget linked above (allows you to watch QT in full screen mode). I just watched a few innings, sitting roughly 6 feet from the screen (15" PB) and the quality was good, even in full screen mode.
Click to expand...

How do you go about getting the address of the stream to watch in Quicktime w/Flip4Mac? I've got it installed and it plays fine in the embedded player in Safari, but I can't figure out how to get it to play in the actual Quicktime app instead...
 
The stream should load automatically in the QT application itself...Don't know if this is the solution, but there's a "Launch Quicktime Player" option in the System Prefs for Flip4Mac that I think needs to be checked.
 
nyc310 said:
The stream should load automatically in the QT application itself...Don't know if this is the solution, but there's a "Launch Quicktime Player" option in the System Prefs for Flip4Mac that I think needs to be checked.
Click to expand...

Checking that box fixed it - now it opens in Quicktime. Of course now I get no audio or video and a message saying "Unknown Error". Oh well, probably just not meant to watch the Yankees tonight.

Thanks for your help
 
I found that if you change your WMP preferences to buffer more than the default amount of time (say 30-60 seconds), you don't have as much problems with re-buffering. It's not completely gone, however.
 
I hate Microsoft even more now :mad:

I had a question though, maybe stupid: would it be possible to make it work with WMP10 on Virtual PC ?

I'm not familiar with Virtual PC, but if that could help me watch games without the video stopping every 5 second then I'd do it. I have a very fast Internet connection, and it was perfect with RealPlayer. Now the quality is terrible and I have constant rebuffering... :'(
 
So, a buddy of mine has a subscription to MLB.TV. Last night he and I watched the Dodgers game using his powerbook. I decided that it was worth it for me to try it out for $15 this month.

Here's my question/problem:
I'm trying to watch last night's Astros/Nationals game. I'm using Flip4Mac, and I have tried this both by having it in play in Firefox (and Safari for that matter) and by having it play in the Quicktime Player (though not at the same time). The stream begins with an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. It appears that this entire episode is on the stream. My problem is that I can't seem to skip it. Clicking within the progress bar to try and advance the stream forward does not work. All I can do is hold down the little fast forward key o make it play at about double speed—however, because this is the whole episode of Everybody Loves Raymond (all 30 mins), this would take quite a while. Any ideas?
 
i dont think they make wmp mac anymore, if you dont have it and want it, its on the office install disc. if you dont have office, pm me your email adress and ill send you the installer. (dont worry this is perfectly legal)
 
LunchBox8484 said:
I have MLB.tv and I was also wondering if I could use real player. I have a MacBook and since Windows Media Player isn't a Universal App yet, I have to load it in its own program rather than in Safari.
Click to expand...

You were able to watch without linking off safari? How? I cant even get a game running w/ safari/firefox/wmp -- complaining about a bad picture & sound would be a step up from where I'm at. thx
 
stevietheb--

Here's what to do: Open System Preferences and go to Flip4Mac. Click the 'Movie' tab, and check the "Create streaming movies" box. This ought to allow you to skip Everybody Loves Raymond.
 
Realplayer makes this extremely painful and not worth the $80 at all.

As an aside, for you guys that want to watch games in-market, just search for a free proxy and set that in the connection settings for your browser. I was able to watch Red Sox games in-market that way two seasons ago by using a California proxy in Firefox.

It's most definitely frowned upon, but useful if you're wanting to avoid the television.
 
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