The video playback problem has been solved as a result of ffmpeg developers' lightning-fast response to my bug report. That means the ffmpeg decoder can now handle these files and mplayer (which uses ffmpeg decoders) can play them. Since XBMC's dvdplayer is based on ffmpeg, it should also be able to handles these files, provided the change makes it into XBMC's source tree.
I've tried applying the change myself but was unsuccessful. There may be more to it than just replacing the source file. Whatever the case, I posted a feature request
here regarding this fix.
The mlbviewer project should soon have the various testing scripts consolidated and integrated into a
unified interface which will allow premium subscribers the ability to watch full-screen, high resolution baseball games using the NexDef plugin to get 2200 kbps video, even in Linux, and all without opening a web browser.
The libraries are already in python. There is already a curses interface. Unlike the 2008 edition, this version does not use mms:// streams but rather writes a local h.264/aac file for playback.
To get a functional XBMC plugin/script, I believe someone would merely have to port the existing frontend to python and then point the player at the locally created temp file once it starts being written. Alternately, the video can be played directly off the NexDef port, depending on how well XBMC handles http streaming.
Unfortunately, while the task seems to me to be relatively simple (compared to writing something from scratch), I am not a coder and thus cannot do it. I would love to see this come to fruition, but we're going to have to persuade someone to do it.
Any takers?