I have a paid subscription to ESPN via Time Warner Cable. ESPN works on my macs as well as my iPad. My XBMC system is on an Mac Mini and it works fine when I use Firefox or Safari to watch ESPN but stopped working through XBMC a few weeks ago. It just said ERROR when I tried to play something. When I selected the option to play in a browser, it would tell me that my ID is invalid even though it was typed correctly and worked when I manually launched the browser..
Here is what I did to fix it and it has to do with post #571 & #574 (mind you, I don't know what you need to do to fix it if you dont have a subscription or if your subscription is with anyone but Time Warner Cable. The following steps worked for me).
1- In FINDER, click on GO --> Go to folder. Then type
~/Library/Application Support/XBMC
2- Navigate to userdata/addon_data/plugin.video.espn3
3- The two files we need to work on are: Cookies.lwp and userdata.xml.
4- Log into any computer and go to ESPN.com and watch ESPN on your computer. Once it is running successfully (meaning, ESPN has asked you for your provider and login/pw), click on this link:
http://broadband.espn.go.com/espn3/auth/userData
I use Chrome as my browser.
5- Copy the entire content of the link above (except for the heading 'This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.')
* Note two things from the link I pasted above. First- the Name tag (which says twc for me). Second- the swid field. You will need those 2 items for step 7
6- Rename (or delete) the userdata.xml file and paste the contents from step 5 into this file and save.
7- Open the cookies.lwp file (using textedit) and paste what I have below. Except, take the SWID you got from step 5 and enter it between the curly brackets. Also note that I put down 'twc' as the provider in 2 locations below (twc= Time Warner Cable). Then save cookies.lwp
#LWP-Cookies-2.0
Set-Cookie3: SWID={SWID GOES HERE}"; path="/"; domain=".go.com"; path_spec; domain_dot; expires="2031-10-28 03:56:20Z"; version=0
Set-Cookie3: espn360affiliate1=twc; path="/"; domain=".go.com"; path_spec; expires="2012-04-25 03:56:20Z"; version=0
Set-Cookie3: espnAffiliate=twc; path="/"; domain=".go.com"; path_spec; domain_dot; expires="2011-10-28 20:36:20Z"; version=0
8- Open XBMC and navigate to the ESPN add-on and go into settings.
9- Check off the following:
* Play in XBMC. (Disable to use Browser).
* Use Custom User Files (this allows the addon to use the files we edited above).
* Username (enter the username for your provider)
* Password (enter the password for your provider)
* Cable Provider (in my case it is Time Warner Cable).
* Channels ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN3
10- Click OK and watch ESPN.
The steps I used above worked for me. Hopefully it works for you too.