Some Tips for You
Hi all,
In our troubleshooting, we’ve come across a few things that have been getting people a bit tripped up it seems.
First, if you used to use Windows Media Player on an Intel based Mac, and you’ve now installed the mosaic, you know that Flip4Mac is a requirement to run the Mac based Mosaic. If you’d still like to use windows media player in the browser to play games off the site, instead of in the mosaic, you should go into system preferences, click on Flip4Mac, go to the Plugin tab, and uncheck the first option that Enables Flip4Mac for Internet content.
Second, we’ve received reports from users that UPnP support on home routers/firewalls has been causing our next-gen streaming software (swarmcast) to act up. To clarify, swarmcast will communicate with other swarmcast clients locally (if you’re on the same home network, and running 2 or 3 copies of Mosaic, the computers will more efficiently use upstream bandwidth – by combining forces to pull down the stream they are watching). However, this feature is currently disabled in the short term, and we’ll be doing more testing on it before we turn it on wholesale. It was however enabled in some of our early releases, and so some of you might want to try and going to your configuration for your home router, and enabling UPnP support.
Hope these help, we’ll be adding more as we find things that those of you whom are still having trouble have in common.
Thanks again,
Justin
MLB.TV Mosaic Blog 
its all in the ports.. opening the ports mentioned in the comments of the last blog entry cleared EVERYTHING up for me.
@ALL
here is a good writeup on how to configure ports for BitTorrent. You aren’t using BitTorrent, so don’t use the ports they suggest in the article, however, use the ports suggested in the previous blog entries comments. this article along with the screenshots should give you a good idea how to configure your router.
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/73686
Hi. The first days with mosaic worked perfectly, but these last few builds keep giving me a stream error every so often. Working now…but every ten minutes or so it gives the stream error. I’ve got a mac. Anyone else have this scenario with the recent builds?
Dustin
@dustin
see my comments above. i would suggest against using uPnP because of its inherit security risks, but thats just my opinion. i don’t work for mlb.
OK…I had a good day with mosaic, then a couple of bad days and now once again things seem to be working. I uninstalled and reinstalled and updated my drivers.
But…I am only getting 2 video quality options. What do I have to do to get the third and higher option?
I have the same question, how do I get the THIRD video quality option when watching a single game? The THREE bars only appear when watching 4/6 games.
there is no third option.
there is a extra option in the multi game panes for LOW quality. the other two options are medium and high.
@dbeers – the single game feeds are only offered in 2 speeds – 400k and 700k. It’s the same if you access the feeds through the MLB.com website. Only 4/6 Mosaic is offered at 3 speeds.
Then why did I buy the Premium service if SINGLE games are only at 400k and 700k. What a crock!!
Everything on Mosaic is choppy today, this service stinks.
Hmmm…I remember that when I signed up it was clearly advertised – 1500K TV Quality. It didn’t mention that the tv quality was only for multi games.
That definitely should have been stated clearly.
I AGREE photo@bgu.ac.il. What FALSE advertising.
And one more thing…I’m watching the Mets – Braves game now. It’s the bottom of the 2nd, and the broadcast has switched from TBS (Atlanta) to SNY (NY) and now back to TBS in the span of 2 innings. Any way to control this or is it some random thing happening???
How do i open the ports that are supposed to be opened?
You don’t need to open any ports for Mosaic…I don’t think so. I hope the Mosaic programming team gets back to work on fixing the issues. They should refund EVERYONE back at least 1 month service, over all this is a BAD product. TV Quality? yeah maybe from the 1950’s, not for 2007.
Anyone agree?
@photo@bgu.ac.il
There are only 2 Video Quality options in single game and 3 on the mosaic. The site never stated 1.5k in single game mode.
regarding the game switching, I saw that as well. It’s just a broadcasting thing. It went away.
@ro290190@yahoo.co.uk
That would depend on your router. We can tell you which ports you can open, but we can not tell you how to open them as we don?t know, due to each router being unique.
@dbeers
You dont have to, but some routers are now allowing users to connect.
Out: TCP on port 1755
Out: UDP on ports 1755 and 5005
Most people behind firewalls will end up using TCP streaming. But UDP streaming is
much more efficient. You can enable UDP streaming by opening up these ports:
In: UDP between ports 1024 and 5000
I’ve been subscribing to some sort of MLB online product for years now. For the first few years it was just audio (that is what was offered) and for the last few years it’s been TV.
One of the biggest overall problems has been customer support. There is no excuse for a customer to be put on hold for hours on end (and from overseas the toll free doesn’t apply). I probably spent almost as much on phone calls to customer support as I did on my subscription last year. And after all the waiting, often the support was mediocre at best. For example, I know I am not the only one that requested that the highlights in the related links (archived games) not be visible until clicked on.
It’s not much fun to watch a game when you have just read “Jones hit’s game winning RBI”, “Delgado goes 4-5″etc…If I’m watching an archived game the day after it was played, obviously, I don’t want to read about the highlights. OK…so at least that has been addressed in the mosaic this year (but not on the website media player).
I think MLB.COM takes advantage of the fact that they have a captive audience and are a monopoly. Obviously, all the customers are big baseball fans with few options as far as watching games.
I should have said “not allowing users to connect” so they may need to open up the ports to connect.
The “broadcasting thing”didn’t go away. It just switched on me for the 4th time in 3 innings.
I use a Mac and am unable to load the players to my player tracker. I can update my roster and save the changes, but when I click update it does nothing but tell me it is loading my information. How can I get this to work? This is why I chose Premium over the original. Thanks…
i keep getting the “service temporarily unavailable message” i have yet to see the service “available” anyone else getting this?
i am using a sony vaio notebook (pcg-grt100) on a wireless router(belkin). i only have a 32 mb video card. the six games on mosaic start off fine but eventually slow down. the single game video on 700 is good but the sound was intermittent. the single game video on the regular player and not the mosaic is great. i am on my router page right now and just wondering if opening up those ports will make a difference or if it is just a slow video card. i have a few questions regarding the port forwarding too but will wait to ask those. thanks for any help. rh
I’m getting the 4/6 game mode at all resolutions now, but I still can’t get a single game in Mosaic. When I switch to single game mode, status says “Connecting” and doesn’t change. I’ve tried changing games and changing video quality, but still never goes past “Connecting”.
I’m running Vista Home Premium on an Acer L310 (Core 2 Duo processor, Intel GMA 3000 graphics). I’m in Beaverton, Oregon.
@dbeers16
last year was only at 400k. 700k is an improvement. you aren’t missing a higher quality stream. the 4/6 mosaic screens offer an extra LOWER quality stream because there is so much data coming down the pipe.
@rhopkins
try it and find out. no one can tell you how your computer is going to behave.
I can’t get sound on the 4/6 mosaic screens, is there anyway to fix this?
so it looks like the service isn’t “unavailable”…..anybody know why i’m getting this message?
Further information….it looks like once I’ve been in single game mode and had it never connect, going back to 6/4 mode doesn’t work either. I have to restart Mosaic to get 6/4 mode to connect again.
Some comments:
– I’ve opened the UDP ports in my firewall and router, but still it’d be nice to have a way to know whether Mosaic is really using UDP streaming now.
– In previous builds there was an error with fullscreen mode (going to fullscreen and back changed the size of the non-fullscreen Mosaic window). Seems to work now.
– In another thread a user asked why Swarmcast is in the Startup folder, and I agree: Mosaic should start/stop it automatically. I have no use for Swarmcast when Mosaic is not running.
– Everything goes quite smoothly, except that sound and image are usually out-of-sync (at least in single game mode). Usually (or always) sound is delayed with respect to image.
– Also, when watching finished games, clicking (or dragging) on the bar to advance un-syncs sound and image too.
– Every now and then I get stutter in single game mode, but strangely enough, it works OK when I switch to fullscreen mode.
For the record, I’m using a HP Pavilion laptop (3,40 GHz, 1 GB RAM, Windows XP Home) on a 4 Mbit cable connection (from Spain).
All in all, I’d say great product, and good work on fixing bugs, though it would’ve good to give it more testing before the season start 🙂
every day my Mosaic gets progressively worse. I have a Mac/Intel and the mosaic almost never work now and when it does, only for a few minutes before freezing or going black.
They should give a rebate until these problems are fixed. I also called customer service and could not get through, what a joke. Looks like I’m done after a month.
One other problem I’m having, which is unrelated….
I’ve got my computer connected to a TV, so I’m running at 720×480 resolution and using a wireless keyboard and mouse. I’d like to not have to pull out the keyboard. I can do everything with the mouse except click the login button. The login dialogue doesn’t fit on the screen, so I have to pull out the keyboard to hit enter. This seems simple enough to fix, but if the app already knows my user name and password, why do I have to give it any input at all?
@mosaic
after opening up ports on my router, things have gotten drastically better.
one annoying bug that still hangs around is about once every 30 minutes or so my audio loses sync with the video. this happends in all 4 games i am following. if i click to lower the quality of the stream, then re-click back at the quality i want it will work again for another 30-45 minutes.
its not a showstopper, but annoying.
good progress today.
Has anyone has any issues with Mosaic and Windows multi-monitor setups? When the program is on the first monitor, everything runs fine. When I drag it to the second, the computer nearly grinds to a halt until I drag it back to the first. Any suggestions?
@eliasperson
this is an earlier comment.
—
Yes Dual Monitors matter. It is a known limitation that if you place the Player on the “non-main” monitor system performance slows way down. The Mosaic needs to be run on the primary monitor.
Posted by: svertner@ensequence.com | April 3, 2007 04:27 PM
—
i would suggest making a feature request. look at the the FAQ in the “useful links” to the left of the main mosaic blog page. it will tell you where to send your feature request.
@rmcc
on my port page for my router there are boxes for program description, two boxes for the inbound port range, tcp or udp box, private ip address box and two boxes for a private port range. i entered mlb mosaic, 1024 to 5005, udp, ip address and the same numbers for the private ports. then i entered 1755 for tcp the same way. there are no boxes for outgoing ports just incoming. does that matter? i started up mosaic again and the six game screen slowed down again which i understand – 32mb vid.card – but the individual game at 700 kbps the sound cuts in and out while the mlb.tv @700kbps is perfect. just wondering why the difference between the mosaic and the regular player.
thanks for your help. rh
I have a 256 MB video card. 1 GB or Ram, Windows XP SP2, I did the port fowarding and I also have 2582 kbps MLB bandwith test. Mosaic is very choppy in sound and picture quality. Any suggestions?
Could one of you look through your comments and find my issue and address it like you said you were going to do when this blog started and get back to me. I’m getting ready to deploy to Iraq and would like to get this fixed so I can watch some ball with the fellas. I don’t have a phone to call customer service, thanks.
@rhopkinson
because even though you are steaming @ 700k in a single game w/in mosaic, they are actually streaming all games in the background. so you are using a bit more bandwidth in mosaic in single game mode than you are using it directly from the web.
they mentioned they are looking to further optimize this.
@dabecks18
are you sure you have the latest mosaic download? what is the size of the file you downloaded?
@lance.jones5
send me an email. i’d be happy to help out a soldier.
Lance, you might want to post the issues your having again. There are hundreds of comments throughout the blog and it’s really easy to miss someone, if you’ve only posted them once.
Good luck to you my friend..:)
I’m duplicating this since the audio/video issues thread scrolled off the blog and it’s unclear if it’s still being monitored.
I’m having no luck whatsoever watching 700Kbps video on the system I have attached to my TV. It’s an Acer L310 (Core 2 Duo, Vista Home Premium).
I tried watching an archived game (at about 1 AM PDT). The stinking Right Guard commercial (which I have now seen about 10,000,000 times) plays just fine. Then when the game comes on, I get audio but very poor frame rate on video.
Bringing up the “statistics” dialog gives me the following information.
Maximum bit rate: 682.0 Kbps
Selected bit rate: 682.0 Kbps
Bandwidth available: 1564.3 Kbps
Bandwidth in use: (varies between about 622 and about 890 Kbps)
Protocol: RTSP (TCP)
Frames skipped: 0
Frame rate: 29 fps
Actual rate: 0.2 fps
Packets
Received: 8895 and counting
Recovered: 0
Lost: 0
Obviously this is with the browser interface, not Mosaic.
I looked at tomorrows schedule and all the early games are listed as blacked out? Whats up with that? and please give me a official answer are away games suppose to be blacked out? Thanks.
I was wondering if anyone was noticing that right after Mosaic launches, an error box appears saying “Program cannot be started because MFC71.dll cannot be found and that re-installing should fix the problem”? I’ve tried this two or three times now and it does not help.
Finally got it working, thank you to Justin for personally e-mailing me with some ideas on getting it running.
I like the “Alert” function but the “Alert” banner is too big and blocks too much of the screen. Perhaps there would be a way to acknowledge the alert and remove the banner.
I agree with above post that the “ALERT” along the bottom of the six game screen is quite large compared to the small viewing screen. It’s not horrible but a flashing border or smaller alert that doesn’t obstruct the view so much might be something to think about for future versions
Minor problem: How do I disappear the cursor when watching full-screen using Mosaic? This doesn’t occur during non-Mosaic full-screen (i.e., going directly to a game from the MLB game-day page).
@dustin
Are you getting stream error on the 6/4 game screens, or on the single game?
-Chad
I’m not good with computers but I seem to have installed the Mosaic correctly. Everything loads fine, but last night I was only getting audio, no video. What are some reasons that this may be happening? How can I resolve this problem? Thank you.
I am not happy with this picture Quality, please cancell my account and refund my account. I am within the risk period and have left messages on thursday,friday and today Saturday 4/7/2007
Jimmy Harley
e-mail address jimmyharley@chicora.net
I have the following problems with the Mosaic.
1. The mosaic freezes up after a couple of minutes
2. When I’m watching a game using the mosaic and I try to switch to another game, sometimes I cannot switch. I can’t do anything with it except stay on the same game. Usually, I can fix this by shutting down the mosaic and restarting it.
3. Today, I started getting a new error: It says “The MLB.TV mosaic got an unanticipated exception while logging in. Padding is invalid and cannot be removed”. I redownloaded the software and reinstalled it. It worked once. But when I shut it down and tried to start it up again, the same error came back.
i have a tip – to get better quality, like HD, make the window small. it has a trade off, but i think its worth it.
hmmm…Mosaic has been freezing up nd not allowing me to change games right before it freezes. A new one for tonight, i close out mosaic when it froze, and then all of the sudden I am hearing the BAL/WAS announcers. Fix your product, its getting close but dang over a year and you stuff still stinks.