MLS Soccer videos to work in Ubuntu



As you can see in the screen grab above, the Major League Soccer videos do not work in Ubuntu. At the beginning of the 2010 season it was announced that MLS would start streaming live video feeds in much higher quality than in previous years. Along with the news, came the horrific fact that the newly revamped & beautiful website was going to use Microsoft Silverlight. I really didnt think much about this, because the Vancouver Winter Olympics website also used Silverlight for videos. I simply installed Moonlight, the linux equivalent, and I got to see the winter olympics highlights.

Major League Soccer did not work, and it has not worked since March 2010. A recent chat with Moonlight turned up some info. The problem is not DRM rights, but a codec issue with h.264 and this will be resolved sometime in November. When? Dont know. Will us Major League Soccer fans get to watch streaming games again soon before the playoffs and season ends? Dont know.

You would think a young league like MLS would strive to provide easier access to videos for its fans. Lets hope things are about to change for the better.

UPDATE March 8, 2011 - http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2011/03/major-league-soccer-video-works-in.html
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:36 PM

    makes me wonder if maybe you could download soccer games on bittorrent O_o. you could try searching www.torrentz.com...i'm not really aware of a better torrent search engine.

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  2. You can download soccer games on torrents. but the MLS site has streaming video of live games, but uses silverlight :| as does their archived videos, which get posted within seconds of events happening. Currently, I just wait overnight and check the videos on youtube as people will upload them there

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  3. Anonymous1:10 PM

    feb 2011 still no video

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  4. Anonymous3:42 PM

    please someone write the solution please. please

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  5. Dear Anonymous. I recently spoke with the crew that develops the open source version of Silverlight, which is Moonlight. They said a fix is on the way "very soon" whatever that means. I am hoping within the next few weeks, certainly I hope its before the start of the 2011 MLS season. We were promised a fix last November before the playoffs got underway and still nothing. Feb 14,2011. If you have Moonlight installed in either Firefox or Chrome, then you should see an update available to install when the crew releases their update. Alternatively, you can keep checking the link below for an updated version (it should not say Nov 2010, but Feb 2011). Lets hope they fix this soon.

    http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/prerelease.aspx

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  6. Anonymous5:20 PM

    hi, as i see they release the update for moonlight for ubuntu but it does not working. any solution? sorry for my english.

    bye

    ReplyDelete
  7. Please check the newly posted article! MLS videos now work in Ubuntu! See here - http://www.iheartubuntu.com/2011/03/major-league-soccer-video-works-in.html

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