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Play DVDs On Linux 226

Posted by michael from the video-4-the-masses dept.
mojo-raisin writes: "After more than a year of development, the first release of OMS has been made on www.linuxvideo.org. For those of you running Debian see this message for an easy installation to your system." Looks like you need a cutting-edge libc6, among other things.
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Play DVDs on Linux More

Play DVDs on Linux

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  • Imprison LiVid

    What You Say?!?

    All Your Rights Are Belong to Us ... You are on the way to Destruction!

    You have no chance to compile, make your time!

  • I've been using xine for watching DVD's on my debian box for a while now. It works great.

    I tried the oms but had a hard time getting it to work properly. For now xine works great for me. Xine also has a great plugin architecture. You can view mpeg videos with it and other stuff too. It can also use the windows video codecs for decoding video files that are not otherwise supported on Linux.

    And anyways competition is always good right?

    You can get xine at

    http://xine.sourceforge.net/xine_frame.php?page= do wnload.html

    Debian packages are also available (Go Xine!!!)

    The css plugin is available at

    http://gape.ist.utl.pt/ment00/linuxdvd.html

    cheers

    YAH00
  • I'm paid to read slashdot. My employer doesn't know it - but I am ;-}
  • Mebbe this is a dumb question...

    I have a DVD in my server box, a little Pentium 200 - the DVD is there because there's no room in my workstation for another drive. :)

    Does the "Lan" part of "VideoLan" allow me to run the decoder on my workstation, while the DVD is in a drive on my server?

    AFAIK you need direct access to the device to negotiate keys - i.e. you can't decrypt an NFS mounted DVD - can you?

    ---

  • But that's true for every device! If you mount a hard drive as read-only, you still need to send commands to the IDE controller to do the read. I still don't understand why you need write access to /dev/dvd in order to read from it.
    --
  • Well, at least with Xine it's not possible due to the legal reasons (the authors want to keep xine legal as possible - and I can understand them). Thats why you don't see IFO parsing there also.
  • This is the first troll on /. that I've seen moderated to +5. Bravo!
  • more importantly, why is this person watching a film in an incorrect aspect ratio?? Woo I like the thin tall people :)
  • You guys rock! Thanks for the software.

  • Hey! I've been playing DVDs for months! (Score:3)

    by Matthias Saou ( 264938 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @11:52PM (#430965) Homepage

    I use xine [sourceforge.net] since the early 0.3.x releases and it works really well! I can get a perfect fullscreen playback at 1280x960 (thanks xv!) with a NVidia GeForce 2 MX on a P3 550. The latest version now supports subtitles and changing audio tracks on the fly (earlier versions started supporting IFO parsing, very useful too)... everything I need!
    There's even an "unofficial" input plugin to play encrypted DVDs which works perfectly.
    I really love this piece of software, it's wonderful :-)

    BTW, RedHat 7 users can get a clean custom packaged version from http://redhat.aldil.org/ [aldil.org] and play all their DVDs in no time!

  • You're missing one important point. There is law on the books that bars certain licensing schemes and bars their enforcement.

    The crux is that if money has changed hands an exchange must occur. Just like you can't have fire without oxygen along with heat and hydrogen, you can't have an exchange without the right to use that content in ways that it is readily accepted that the item purchased is made valuable.

    Barring destruction of the purchased item, I have rights to use it as one would expect the point of purchase to be.
  • Shooting in the backyard is stupid.

    But it does not even remotely resemble watching DVD with an unapproved player.

    Shooting in the backyard is clearly different from using your gun wisely. It might injure somebody.

    Watching DVD with an unapproved player is indistinguishable from watching it with an approved player. It causes zero harm.

    The only different thing is the label on the DVD players. One says "approved" and the other one does not say so.

    You have paid for the disc. You should be able to watch it however you want. Copyright only protects COPYING. Watching is USING and is trivially different. Use your brain sucka.

    So my analogy stands. Now can I have some of what you're smoking?
  • It's not a read only device, it's read-only media.

    You can still send commands to the drive.. which involves 'writing'.
  • Shut up! Buy a copy of Hustler and learn to jack off!

    Pardon my French!
  • Not until they put Nice Large warnings about one's rights on them.
  • actually, all macs with dvd drives (except for the g3 towers) use software dvd decoding. ati has nothing to do with it, even though the rage chip supports hardware dvd decoding. i don't watch dvds on my g4, but i know that mac community was a bit disgruntled when apple went to software decoding--with the cooperative multitasking of os9, watching a dvd in a window and doing anything else cause stutters and skips. maybe things will be better under x's preemptive scheme.

  • I've got an ATI 128 Rage mobility pro on my laptop, running Win2k and I can watch DVD's fine -- the picture quality is astounding and fullscreen you don't notice the scaling at all.

    Unfortunately, I've been extremely, extremely frustrated trying to get XFree86 working correctly on my Debian side. I've tried so many things, don't even bother suggesting anything else to me...I'm ready to just drop it and concentrate on actually using the damn thing.

  • As other have already mentioned, there are lots of good DVD players for Linux, Xmovie, Xine and VideoLan are my favourites. But none of them support AC3 passthrough, in fact, there's no sound card (to my knowledge) that support this feature.

    I have a SBLive! Platinum and a DTS2500 Speaker System that includes a Dolby Digital Decoder, and under Windows it really rocks, under Linux with Xmovie I just get Stereo sound.

    Anybody knows of a project to bring AC3 to Linux? ALSA [alsa-project.org] is planning to include it after the release of version 0.6 but what about OSS drivers?

    - german

  • If you're anal about picture, as it sounds, get a matrox card. I can barely tell the difference, but friends of mine really do. Especially in very high resolutions. (I run my Viewsonic GS815 21" in 1920x1440 from my ASUS GeForce DDR) Matrox might not have the framerate in 3D apps, but in 2D they're the best consumer-level card.

    And the only reason the G4 is faster decoding is that the ATI card has DVD decoding hardware. And the Athlon is borderline for software decoding. It'll work 98%, but you'll get skips in complex scenes. Both my p3-800 (600 OCed) and my GF's Thunderbird 900 do fine, but if I clock the 800 to 600 or lower (I was testing some software I wrote and forgot to return it) the jerkiness is terrible.

  • can I get it to use the hardware DVD decoding on my ATI Rage Fury?
  • Possession of "contravention devices" such as DeCSS is a felony in the U.S., under the DMCA.

  • Perhaps (Score:4)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @09:45PM (#430977) Homepage
    Perhaps it's illegal, sort of like wearing pants on sunday in montana is illegal (or whatever...)

    But let the cops come to take me away for playing a DVD I purchased on a DVD-ROM drive that I purchased. Let the judge throw me in jail with a straight face.

    ---

  • Isn't it just a matter of supply and demand? As long as the video players are dominant the DVD is an item which is going to be more expensive.

    The price of an object is based on its value to the customer as much as (or more so) the cost to produce. CDs are cheaper to make than tapes, but they charge less for tapes because it's lower quality and less convenient.

    Don't make the same mistake marx did and assume price is a function of production cost. Do a web search for "marginal value theory" for an informative lesson in economics, one which I wish I'd learned 15 years before I did.
  • No it's illegal like stealing cable is illegal. Obviously this is the first step towards ripping thwm and posting them to usenet.

    ---

  • Re:Lovely DVD (Score:5)

    by eric17 ( 53263 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @09:51PM (#430980)
    I can't decide which I like best -- the D's or
    the V between them.
  • The disc doesn't actually detect, but it offers region free content, and zone X content, if the drive chooses the region free content it gets a black screen. Sort of a primative denial of service attack.

    I'd personally love to sue the studios over this, if you buy a disk and find out it won't play because they crippled it. Just find an unmodded player that is hit by that bug, buy it, and sue the studios for false advertising. "They said it was a movie, it's a DVD of a black screen, and they did it intentionally!"
  • For gaming, I thought 30 was the absolute minimum for smooth believable motion.

    People are begging for 200fps average frame rate so that it never gets below 60.

    On film, however, 24/25 fps is the standard because that's what is available for projection and cameras. It's very easy to see the limitation on motion scenes.

  • There's something in the kernel setup I've seen, but never enabled - Network Block Device.

    It looks like it's intended to do exactly that - share a block device over the network.

    --
  • yeah, your right, im a wanna be redneck-- im just 9th generation texan, drive a old beat up pickup with mud tires, listen to old country only, go hunting regularly, my mom owns more guns than most people, my dad was a roughneck, have worn the same pair of boots for 3 years straight (everyday, including church), have worked construction, etc, etc, etc, but your right, im just a poser -- man, your sad
  • oh, and its poser, not posuer (where the fuck are you from anyhow, boy)
  • I bought a dvd-rom and a matrox card. With both of them came a WinDVD player. I bought a copy of Matrix. So why am i not allowed to play it with linux?
    It's like buying some wheels and gasoline and not being allowed to use them on my car (which i assembled from parts i got for free).

    Please don't give me that piracy shit! I don't want to copy it (even though i don't see why i'm not allowed to copy it for personal use, since i bought it) and i don't want to sell it or show it to an lager audience....

  • Yeah, but I think xine shows just how slow OMS development has been. The xine crew took the same stuff OMS was working with and made a player, that worked, in a much shorter timeframe than the OMS crew could. Besides which, I don't need a lot of new, fancy crap to get xine to compile, like you do with OMS. I'll be sticking with xine, my dual celeron 466s and full frame rate, TYVM.
  • Does anyone have a good recommendation for a good DVD player? Creative seems fairly popular, but I'm curious as to what the alterantives are.

    :)
  • all macs [...] use software dvd decoding. ati has nothing to do with it

    In a way, yes: decryption, demuxing, audio decoding, subitiling is done by software. Some high-level MPEG video stuff is done by the software but the bulk of the effort (that is, motion compensation, inverse DCT and scaling/smoothing) is done by the video card (so playing a DVD at 1600x1200 is just as fast as 800x600). This is why this "software decoder" only works with Rage 128/Radeon (and now, GeForce2 MX). Actually it is about the same thing as what you get bundled with said cards in their retail PC version.

    BTW, the hardware support in ATI chips is first-rate, quality-wise. The image is better than most hardware decoders (we checked a Hollywood-whatever and an ATI card on the same PC. The ATI's image is much cleaner)

  • I still like VideoLan (Score:5)

    by drift factor ( 220568 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @09:08PM (#430994)
    VideoLan [videolan.org] uses SDL and plays very smoothly on my 500Mhz laptop, can play directly from encrypted DVDs, and it doesn't require jumping through a lot of hoops to get compiled/running. It's usable now, releases come in reasonable timeframes, and it keeps getting better, I'll stick with it.
  • If you try an ATI Rage 128 with ATI's DVD player you'll get the same results as the G4 with the ATI card.

  • LinuxVideo? No. VideoLan, Yes! (Score:4)

    by TheLocustNMI ( 159898 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @09:09PM (#430998) Homepage
    I was pretty disappointed with LinuxVideo (LiVid) as I only got 6 fps TOPS on a Duron 700, however, a discrete link in a recent Slashdot story linked to VideoLan.org [videolan.org], and THEY have a client that works and works SPLENDIDLY. I got FULL framerate and EXCELLENT AUDIO as well. I've never turned back!

  • Dummy, you bought the wrong card. (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15, 2001 @12:23AM (#430999)
    I bought a dvd-rom and a matrox card. With both of them came a WinDVD player. I bought a copy of Matrix.
    Well what the hell did you expect? You expect to view Matrix with a Matrox card?
    Next time read the fine print. To view Matrix, buy a Matrix card. Damn.
  • No it's illegal like stealing cable is illegal. Obviously this is the first step towards ripping thwm and posting them to usenet.

    No, this is the first step to getting DVD's playing on Linux. Maybe you misunderstood the purpose of the program Mr. Valentini.

  • Many options for DVD on Linux (Score:5)

    by kjj ( 32549 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @09:59PM (#431006)
    I don't mean to try and take away from the LiViD team. They were the first to start working on a DVD player for linux, and there work has provided the basis but there are several other DVD players for linux. But there are other players which many have reported to be better than oms in the areas of configuration, performance and audio sync. One of these is call VideoLAN [videolan.org] which several others have mentioned. It now has css support much like OMS and the performance is suppose to be quite good on lower end system. VideoLAN is not quite as old as OMS but the source was only made available more recently hence less exposure. I believe most of the code in VideoLAN was developed independently of LiViD code except css of course. There is another which has called Xine [sourceforge.net] which is the newest one but reported to be one of the best. I believe this one used the LiVid video and sound system but has tweaked synchronization and performance as well as adding some other feature. This one is also designed to be compatible across several free unix type platforms including *BSD. Note that the standard version of Xine does not come with css support but it can be added with a plugin from here [nbci.com] as well as a version with the plugin already built in here [ist.utl.pt]. Again what LiViD has done is great but competition as always is good. The only thing I would like to see is some unified plugin standard for these players so that any css plugin could work with any of the DVD players. That way if new DVD's come out that break the current CSS updates could occur much easier for all the projects.
  • Too bad the "official" Linux DVD player made their official release years after the rest of us were already getting the job done on the unofficial players. Too bad none of the assembly language code compiles on IA64.
  • What happened to Apple's DVD player software? From what I understand, some commercially-produced DVD's do not play properly. Some older set-top boxes do not support certain features.

    How will this Linux player fare?

    Wasn't that the whole point of DVD in the first place- a rock solid standard?

    my brain hurts. [ridiculopathy.com]

  • The nice people at Sigma Designs sent me a Netstream 2000 card for me to beta-test, and I have to report that it does pretty well at playing DVDs under Linux. The only caveats are that I can't get the X diaplay client that comes with it to work, so I can only pipe them out to my TV set, and since my TV set is a TVCR I have to put up with macrovision on most movies (special kudos to MGM for foregoing Macrovision on its titles--I can watch the James Bond spec.eds. or This Is Spinal Tap while I'm in Unix, even if I can't do the same for The Matrix).

    Of course, since the NS2K costs a couple hundred dollars, it's not exactly an optimal solution for most people . . .
    --

  • Re:yeah, but can I pirate videos with this. (Score:3)

    by kyz ( 225372 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @04:22AM (#431013) Homepage
    d00d! u must use the l33t w4r3zing tool "dd", like this: "dd if=/dev/dvd of=thematrix.dvd. It is so il33gal! We must ban "dd" now!!!!1 h0llyw00d needs rights!!!!1
  • Maybe you should start by moving to XFree 4? recompile your SDL (if your player runs with the SDL option) with Xv support? check if you have Xv support? (by typing: xvinfo)?

  • You criminals sicken me. (Score:5)

    by George Walker Bush ( 306766 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @10:14PM (#431026) Homepage
    Your illegal DVD software epitomizes the lawnessness, anarchic nature of Linux and free software users across the world.

    You are the reason why our great nation is facing difficult economic times right now. The way you flout the DVD Consortium and the Hollywood studios angers me to no end, and you are an embarassment to the millions of honest, hardworking American citizens who view DVDs using LEGAL hardware or software.

    And it only took you guys about four or five years after DVDs first came out.

    Why go to these lengths simply to break the law?

    I will never understand you people.

    Thank you, and God bless America.

    --
    George W. Bush
    President, United States of America
    --
    George W. Bush

  • Re:What to buy? (Score:4)

    by Saminu ( 114473 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @10:14PM (#431027)
    Does anyone have a good recommendation for a good DVD player? Creative seems fairly popular, but I'm curious as to what the alterantives are

    I've owned several, and the ones I have been most happy with are Pioneer's models and the Ricoh CDRW/DVD combo drives.

    Go here [firmware.com.bi] to make sure that a modified version of the firmware for you drive is availble so you can easily play discs from more than one region. The Ricoh drives are especially nice because they are not region free, but region switchable, with the propper firmware modification. Region switchable is preferred to region free because some recent discs can detect if your DVD drive is region free and will refuse to play if it is. Region switchable drives avoid that problem. There are other drives that are region switchable, the Ricoh ones just happen to be the ones I am familiar with.

  • Re:DVD Player Compatibility (Score:3)

    by HeUnique ( 187 ) <hetz-homeNO@SPAMcobol2java.com> on Thursday February 15, 2001 @05:30AM (#431040) Homepage
    You got it wrong. The article that you probably read was about the Apple DVD-R recorder which is not playable on some consumer (and some PC's) DVD players - which is true. Some of the old DVD players cannot read DVD-R CD's.

    Oh, and the DVD-R cd's got the CSS ring (the place where the CSS authentication data is stored) blocked, and the DVD-R storage is smaller then the normal DVD media itself - so no DVD's media copying... (hmm, they probably didn't hear that DivX with small compression ratio can give some excellent results.. oh well - maybe they'll get it some day)

  • It is anticompetitive (Score:3)

    by hub ( 78021 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @12:53AM (#431041) Homepage
    CSS encoding is a completely anticompetitive practice. The way it works is as follow:

    1. the disk contains a private key to decrypt it. This key is encoded 400 times by 400 different keys that match 400 possible licencee (note that the 400 number as to be checkd, but you get the deal)
    2. a manufacturer that get it own DVD license get it's own key that match one of the keys mentionned above.
    3. when the DVD player want to decrypt the disk, it fetch the disc key using its lincencee key and decrypt the MPEG steam with it

    Now imagine that the World Company that have almost 80% of the video publishing companies as well as several DVD Player manufacturer wants to make it's main competitor (ACME DVD, a DVD player manufacturer) bites the dust. In this case the World Company only have to remove the ACME DVD CSS key from their DVD disc, so that WC DVD cannot be played on ACME DVD.

    Don't you find this unfair ?

    On the other side, CSS does not prevent raw copy of DVD, hence it does not offer a good copy protection scheme.

    And I don't find decrypting a DVD to play it when we have purchased it legally is violating author's right. After all buying the DVD gives us the right to watch it as much as we want, when we want, where we want (unless it is public broadcasting or other condition prohibited by law).

  • Right now, when you buy a DVD you own it. But I am quickly seeing things shape up where, because it is digital content, the MPAA are going to say that by buying the DVD you have just purchased a license to view it and that you must abide by some type of EULA type contract (in which I am certain they will say playing on an 'unauthorized' player will be illegal and a breach of contract). Whether they can make that stick or not is an interesting debate, and one we won't see settled until the first case of DVD EULA contract breach goes through the courts.

    Just thought I'd point that out. I agree with your sentiments, and that we should own things that we have purchased, but I'm sure the movie company would disagree with you.

  • The American Revolution was illegal to. What the fuck is your point? In order to change things, you need to stand up to what's accepted in society. I find the existing encryption licensing scheme to be immoral, and therefore, I am going to stand up against it.
  • The creator only has the rights granted by copyright law. Copyright law restricts those rights quite extensively, including giving the public "fair use" rights, which include the rights use works you buy for practically any purpose in private. This is intended exactly to ensure that copyright holders can not restrict access to their works in the way the DVD CCA are trying.

    In fact, copyright law's basis is that it should protect the creators of a works rights only to the extent that it encourages the creation and dissemination of works to the public. In this case the movie industry is trying to restrict even paying customers from fair use of the works they've bought, and that violates the very principles copyright law is built on.

    If breaking CSS for fair use purposes violates any laws, it's the laws that shouldn't be as they are, and I'd break them whenever I please.

    Luckily I don't live in a country that have sillyness like the DMCA (not that the UK doesn't have more than enough other crappy legislation to make up for it)

  • Wow. (Score:3)

    by beaubell ( 208049 ) <[beau] [at] [stellarnetservices.net]> on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @10:20PM (#431051) Homepage
    First of all, I find it rather disturbing how some people seem to be really ignorant.

    We (the people) are allowed to 'view' our purchased DVDs based the the fair use law! No ands, ifs, or buts.

    Now to quote you, "No it's illegal like stealing cable is illegal".

    If you are paying for Cable-TV, you are ALLOWED BY LAW to be able to DESCRABLE IT. Just so long as you dont descramble the channels you are NOT paying for. Look it up, and make more informed posts next time.

    To give you a little history... There one was a time when Telephone companies tried to charge you for each phone you had installed on the SAME line. You had to also purchase the telephone directly from the phone company. The courts thought otherwise. This same case was used towards the cable companies as well. Now, you are ALLOWED to purchase your own telephone just like you can purchase your own cable descambler independent from the phone/cable companies. Just as long you were PAYING for service.

  • ...or download music from the thousands of musicians who are not even making enough money to break even, like the smaller acts. No, no problem there.

    But this is slashdot. We can't let ethics get in the way.

  • Re:Perhaps (Score:3)

    by mojo-raisin ( 223411 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @10:52PM (#431053)
    Because we won't surrender our rights to proprietary software [gnu.org]. I'm sure the MPAA would love to collude with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs(MPAA member) to make it impossible to view DVDs except for in very controlled conditions. We're making sure that will neve happen.

  • OMS Features (Score:3)

    by mojo-raisin ( 223411 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @10:23PM (#431054)
    One of the lead LiViD developers has posted [linuxvideo.org] a descriptive list of features in OMS/OMI. It also lists the near-term developement goals.
  • /me prepares to lose huge amounts of karma once the mods hit. /me also takes the troll bait.

    Well, congratulations for blanketing everyone who reads /. as being pirates. And also to the god-believing members of /. you just accused of sinning. Give this man a cookie, he's almost a MPAA drone already.

    As i look over to my left, i see about 10 dvd's (I started late, ok) that are practically useless coasters in my dvd drive under *ANY* os other than a windows based os.

    Choice, it's all about choice, nothing more, nothing less. Can I pirate dvd's easier w/ this, yes. Will I, NO!!! Just because I can doesn't mean I WILL.

    It's like saying that because I know how to build a atomic-bomb, I will, and I will launch it at you all in your sleep. C'mon, use the white tissue between your shoulders, I WANT TO WATCH MY MOVIES, period, end-of story.

  • Your gun analogy is retarded as it is not legal to kill anyways. If it were illegal to even watch a DVD (obviously false) then your analogy might be correct. Nice try for you though.

    A better analogy with guns: (the situation is completely fictional)

    Suppose you have an H&K gun and H&K demands you to use H&K-approved bullets. Suppose Steyr makes bullets that you can use in an H&K too. Now you've got your H&K gun, but the Steyr bullets are a LOT cheaper. What would you do?

    The gun is yours. There are legal uses of a gun. The conclusion? Provided that your use of the gun is legal, you can choose whatever bullet. Then, the H&K license is legally invalid.

    It's a logically trivial conclusion. I wish it is so to you as well.
  • While I'm glad to see that we've finally got viable DVD players for my favourite OS, I wonder about the picture quality. My (uber-picky) graphics person and I got a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2040u and a Mitsubishi Plus 200, respectivly. Both are 22", super flat screens. His is running off a 400Mhz G4 with MacOS and the stock video card (ATI Rage 128 Pro, I believe). I'm running a Guillemot 32MB Geforce2 MX on an Athlon 600 (not T-bird).

    We played the Matrix on both, first the G4 (Apple DVD Player). Oh my God, I had to change my shorts and take a long shower. This was the best picture I have ever seen. I would swear watching full screen (1600x1200) from the G4 was comparable to being in the theatre as far as picture quality and lack of artifacts goes. We also watched a 320x240 quicktime of Battle Angel Alita, blown up to full screen. The ATI card apearently has a video scaling chip in it, the lack of artifacts (there were still some, heh it was 320x240), and the color quality was exellent.

    We tested the Matrix on my box under Win2K and the WinDVD 2.3 software DVD player. Less clarity, colors were a little washed out comparitively (yes we tweaked contrast and brightness on monitor and in DVD player), and the video jittered every now and then (the G4 was as smooth as ).

    I'm pretty sure that my hardware has the horsepower to hold it's own against the Apple solution, but they really put a lot of quality into they're software when it comes to multimedia applications.

    I just hope that the resources being thrown at Linux DVD don't slow down at 'ok we did it'. IMNSHO, Apple's platform has set a high standard, which is why my graphics developer uses Adobe products on MacOS rather than GIMP and friends on Linux (He does a lot of high end print and 3D work, not just web design).

    Besides I'm really tired of running over and having him check out the latest and greatest achievements from the Open Source community, just to have him yawn and produce a list of lacking features and quality. It's making me look bad dammit!!!

    But in seriousness, this is great, just as I applaud every release of GIMP, GNOME, KDE and many of the other awesome projects that make using UNIX systems easier, I really must produce a sober reminder that we still aren't the best, or even in running for the top spot, when it comes to quality and richness of features in multimedia stuff.

    These are the same reasons that Windows never won over the graphics market (surprise, it wasn't just fanaticism), so we really can't feel bad, the bar is that high.

    I hope that one day soon my graphics developer will thank me when I put Yellow Dog or LinuxPPC on his G4. I've already got it on my 1999 PowerBook (did I mention Apple makes great hardware)

    So thanks for everyones hard work, it's looking like a great start.
  • This is the true reason we need to support the MPAA. If they lose money to piracy, tit quality will only go down.
  • Regarding the relative quality of the Hollywood card and the ATI card... I have to say I had the opposite experience.

    I have a P2-300 machine with both an ATI All-In-Wonder Rage 128 and a Sigma Designs / RealMagic Hollywood card. Under Windows 2000, the RealMagic card puts out a noticably better picture than the ATI does. The Sigma Designs Netstream 2000 should be even better.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • And then Slashdot makes sure that most people can't reach the site.
  • The problem is that the purpose of the encryption is to enforce the region coding (and other rules, like not being able to fast-forward through the FBI notice or ads). The encryption does nothing to prevent copying.

    Think about it. The average user cannot copy the disk because the "blank" disks have an area burnt into them that contains data necessary for the playing of the disk. (real money-making pirates have no trouble getting "real" blank disks, so this does nothing to them). There is no reason for the contents of this area to be secret, you would be unable to play the copied disk anyway because the necessary data is missing. Other schemes that would work are "intelligent" DVD burners that would refuse to write anything recognized as a DVD, thus destroying the data so bad that it is useless. (Of course SlashDot would hate this stuff as well, but I am just pointing out that the "encryption" has nothing to do with piracy prevention).

    The encryption's job is to make it impossible to get the data off the disk into viewable form without using a program under the manufacturers control, thus linking you to other "features" of this program that are not in your interest.

    It is true that one of the "features" is that you cannot send the decoded output to storage. This does interfere with piracy. But not much, as still nothing is preventing the contents of the DVD from being copied to another storage, and I doubt there is much technical obstacles stopping the DVD player from being fooled into reading from this storage instead.

  • Yes, as long as you use XFree86 4.0.2 which has an Xvideo driver for the Rage 128 chipsets. Otherwise it's comparable to a turtle swimming through treacle (at least on my 'piddly' PIII 500)
  • I know I'm going to be eaten alive by gurus here, but why would you need write access to a read-only device?
  • Sure Xine is great, but don't give the developers too much credit as they "only" developed the frontend and all the "real" work is done by software from the OMS people (mpeg2dec, ac3dec). The em8300 (h+, dxr3) support is a totally independent project and yes, it works with OMS too.

  • Bah (Score:2)

    by Mike Hicks ( 244 )
    The rumor [linuxvideo.org] is that OMS still doesn't have any method for properly synchronizing video and audio. Why would someone put a 1.0 stamp on something that doesn't handle this basic problem?
    --

  • Re:What to buy? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are a few possibilities. One of them is playing the DVD with software playback. This means your processor will be used to decode the MPEGII, another possibility is using a hardware decoder. This last one brings you also the possibility to watch the movie on your television because you also would have a TV-out, most of them also support DD5.1 and DTS output etc. When you use a hardware decoder it will also mean it will use less CPU resources. There are a few good decoders. The first (which I have also) is the Sigma Designs Hollywood+. It's a cheap decoder ( $100) and brings good quality. Unfortunately there are only drivers for Windows 9X/ME/NT/2000 and not for Linux. That brings me to the seconds possibility the Sigma Designs Netstream 2000, this card can also decode live streams, and has also driver support for Linux(!) which is partly open-source. Unfortunately Sigma does not release drivers that often which can cause some problems for example at the moment there is a lip sync issue with DD5.1 DVD's, this is known for half-a-year but there are still no drivers to fix this problem (that wasn't there before). But they've prommised us to release the drivers that fix this problem very soon... Ofcourse if you would buy the NS2000 that would not be a big problem if you use Linux because the most parts of the software you can fix yourself (but unofortunately due to some DVD restrictions you don't have the source to everything...). There is also an open-source Linux project for creating drivers for the Hollywood+ (and Creative DXR3, which is based on the Hollywood+) for Linux but it does not seem to make any progress anymore... Sigma's site: http://www.realmagic.com.

  • LiViD Performance (Score:3)

    by htmlboy ( 31265 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @11:02PM (#431090)
    The performance of oms is a bit disappointing, imo. Using a 1 GHz athlon with 256 megs of ram, under gnome in redhat 7, the dvd's framerate fluctuates between 20 and 24 fps. After a while, sound tends to desynchronize itself (using the 2.4 kernel's sblive! driver), and about halfway through a dvd, it stops playing.

    After reading a post here, I decided to give xine a try. It's much better. Video is smooth, sound syncs better, and I can watch the end of my dvd's!

    One less reason to reboot into windows...

    ck
  • Well the decryption has to take place on the machine with the drive, then the vob could be streamed just the same as an unencrypted one. The decoding can still take place on the remote client
    treke

  • Conclusion (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ive spent a little over an hour now going over all of the posts that you'll have been submitting, and im AMAZED that some of youll are so stupid and are puppets my the MPAA
    They have you fooled into thinking they own you. the same people that are fooled into thinking Microsoft is the only way. You call us communists? You call us criminals? fucking shit, dd if=/dev/cdrom of=dvdimage.iso is perfect for trading DVDs, this shit isnt gonna make people wanna pirate movies. Youll are crazy to say 'Look you communists, you need an authorized player, thats the way. THIS IS ILLEGAL' It really pisses me off, your morons if this is your thinking. You bought the damn thing, you bought the DVD player, what does it matter? CSS doesnt stop me from ripping the disc. It just is a form of control. This is just common sense. Picture this you Windows lovers: Microsoft decides to make it to where you have to have an authorized copy of Windows media player that you have to pay for to look at your little windows media files. What would you do? Thats right, youd get the little shareware version. Of course you wouldnt code it yourselves, you dont have the knowledge. Is that why you flame us? Because
    we have the SKILL to do stuff ourselves? Its really starting to piss me off.
    I cant wait for the day when corporations dont have people literally brainwashed. thats what youll are... ill be glad when Mozilla is the browser of choice, where noone uses Windows. It will happen. Why? Because we can make things perfect. We have freedom. I know that you posters dont know what freedom is, but its not having to 'have an authorized player to play the DVD youve purchased'
    This is just my rant, i hope someone reads it, please reply if you agree, and if you disagree, your too brainwashed, in love with Mircosoft, and have an intimate relationshit with your reset button, feel free to reply too (then just walk in front of a bus)

    Posted anonymously since i know some will disagree, but really, the post tries not to be a flame/troll, but my anger is in there, so im sure it may seem like it....

  • link to the official announcement (Score:4)

    by taaz ( 27571 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @11:06PM (#431099) Homepage
    There is also an official announcement [linuxvideo.org] for OMS [linuxvideo.org].
  • But without mpeg2dec and ac3dec from the Livid project, Xine wouldn't exist. Xine also came along at a time when XFree86 started supporting hardware acceleration, giving them an excellent head start. Don't knock Livid, they've done a brilliant job despite the best efforts of the MPAA and the (so far) vapour from Intervideo. I've got to give Videolan a go though, sounds interesting.

  • But that's the whole point: if you move the CSS decryption upstream (to either the device driver or the DVD filesystem), then players wouldn't have to deal with the CSS issue anymore.


    ---
  • I'd much more recommend xine. [sourceforge.net] It is MUCH MUCH MUCH farther along! I watch my anime and my lovely movies on it...in fullscreen mode. It's sometimes a chore to get it working...but it works! In fact it's no where near the chore that OMS is!

    Unfortunately they aren't brave enough to bundle the CSS plug-in with it. In fact they've gone to great length to make it very unvisible and must be found here. [nbci.com]

    Have fun!

    Derek

  • Lucky! All we get here in the state of Fuckistan is Microsoft commercials and "Judge Judy."

    - - - - -
  • So... how do I get it to not segfault on start?

    Tried the unstalbe release and today's CVS.

    Starting program: /home/rothwell/dvd/vlc/./gvlc
    VideoLAN Client - version 0.2.60 Urumov - (c)1996-2000 VideoLAN

    Cannot access memory at address 0x231
    (gdb) bt
    #0 _dl_debug_state () at dl-debug.c:56
    #1 0x4000ac3b in _dl_catch_error (errstring=0xbffff770,
    operate=0x40130990 , args=0xbffff774) at dl-error.c:141
    #2 0x40130d3d in _dl_open (
    file=0x80b2e58 "/usr/local/lib/videolan/vlc/idctclassic.so", mode=2,
    caller=0xbffff770) at dl-open.c:232
    #3 0x400323d3 in dlopen_doit (a=0xbffff884) at dlopen.c:41
    #4 0x4000ac3b in _dl_catch_error (errstring=0x80a67d8,
    operate=0x400323a8 , args=0xbffff884) at dl-error.c:141
    #5 0x400328b9 in _dlerror_run (operate=0x400323a8 ,
    args=0xbffff884) at dlerror.c:125
    #6 0x40032393 in __dlopen_check (
    file=0x80b2e58 "/usr/local/lib/videolan/vlc/idctclassic.so", mode=2)
    at dlopen.c:53
    #7 0x8094ec7 in AllocateDynModule ()
    #8 0x0 in ?? ()
    (gdb)

    - - - - -
  • You've got the dvd. You need a legal, authorized player to play it on.

    Ah, this is an important point of disagreement. Most folks who read Slashdot (myself included) think it's unfair for the movie-making companies to also control the means of distribution/playback. It's mostly a matter of opinion, I guess. But, just pointing out that it's currently illegal to circumvent controls on digital media means nothing to me, because I think that law should be changed. Don't get me wrong - I don't advocate piracy of DVDs, just more freedom to use the ones you've purchased.

    I'm trying to come up with some legalish reasons to back up my view, but I can't think of any. I still think it's unfair. It's also a darn shame that technology is being crippled in the way it is. Do you really think it's wrong for someone who has legally purchased a DVD and DVD-ROM drive to watch it using his free OS rather than buying another OS he doesn't want or a "approved" standalone DVD player he doesn't need? If nothing else, it's just wasteful - and there's no need.

    Why is the Linux player not "approved" by the MPAA anyway? Sure, the hardware companies might be upset at the loss of a DVD player sale, but the MPAA makes its money.

    And piracy? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the piracy can easily be done in Windows already, right?

    I could keep going, but the sun will be up soon, and I don't want to be awake to greet it.

  • Summary (Score:3)

    by Srin Tuar ( 147269 ) <zeroday26@yahoo.com> on Thursday February 15, 2001 @06:49AM (#431119)

    It seems we have gone from none to too many movie solutions for the free unices. I am amazed at the sheer amount of duplication, but I guess that is the way we do things in the free software world.

    GPL Movie systems listed from most mature to least, imo:

  • Q. Who would WANT to download commie hippie shit like that?

    A. NOBODY.

    So, therefore, Napster steals from artists who DON'T want their art disseminated FOR FREE by rich college students.
    Die, Theftster, Die.
    ----
  • illegal in the US != illegal everywhere

    Nuff said.

    //rdj
  • OK, I have only one question. What movie does this screenshot [linuxvideo.org] come from on the site?
  • Not by =not producing= a linux client, which anyway we can do ourselves, but by pretending any linux client is necessarily meant for piracy.

    This is an insult.
  • we're not simply reading from it, you have to be able to send keys to it or something in order to unlock the drive if it has a dvd in it. That's why... it can't be done through.
  • Look for an older 2nd hand one. It'll be slower. You need an RPC-1 drive. All the new ones (since 1st Jan this year or last year) are RPC-2. RPC-2 drives are region locked in the hardware. Unlocking it will take a lot more effort.
  • It does use some of the chipset functionality though as the change from 4.01 to 4.02 upped my frame rate in OMS from 14 to 23.
  • I also heard the same on various newsgroups. WinDVD is supposedly superior to PowerDVD in terms of picture and sound qualities.

  • dvds actually have 30 frames per second

    Some do, particularly TV shows, and almost all anime in the US. The set top DVD players available can play 24/25fps film at 30fps (on NTSC) sometimes by manipulating extra information encoded in the stream and also interpolating it by taking advantage of the interlace frame scanning.

  • Re:Why do Linux users assume... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @09:31PM (#431151)
    While the posting I am responding to was an absurd troll, it's possible that someone might take it seriously, so I'll respond to be on the safe side.

    Once you buy a DVD, you own it and, and of course you have the right to view it. Of course, all rights must be balanced against other rights (e.g. freedom of assembly can be regulated to ensure public safety). It's absurd to compare playing a DVD you've purchased to shooting your own children.

    The issues you raise about "script kiddies threatening the format" are off-base. DVD's can be copied without decrypting them, simply by duplicating them, and in fact well before CSS was cracked DVD's were widely pirated outside of the US because it's so easy (and DVD's are relatively overpriced compared to manufacturing costs). The only thing that encrypting DVD's does is make it difficult to produce a DVD player that doesn't enforce the region coding and licensing fees, and create all sorts of hassles for consumers of the sort that killed off the DAT format (where you often couldn't even copy your own personal recordings).

    Keep in mind that many other media formats have succeeded without any encryption: radio, TV, newspapers, books, CD's, LP's, cassette tapes, VHS, laserdisk ... you get the idea. There's nothing new about DVD's that innately requires the manufacturer's rights to expand and the consumers' rights to be more restricted -- they're just taking advantage of a shift in technology to attempt to create new rights for themselves. And since those rights are based on trade secrets and not legal rights, it's just fine for people to counter that effort.
  • On your Windows test, you should have used either Cinemaster(on an ATI Chipset, using ATI DVD player) or PowerDVD (2.55+, 3.0 preferably), because those two players are well known to provide the highest support and the best picture on the Wintel platform. They're both software players, and should provide more than equal performance to the Apple G4, especially if you're matching the technology (i.e., using a ATI Rage128 or Radeon chipset with ATI DVD, which is what the G4 uses). Your results would probably hold up better on the x86 side then.

    Otherwise....those Mitsubishi monitors are nice aren't they? I picked up one of those Diamond Pro 200's myself about nine months ago...I love it :)


    -Julius X

  • Re:I dont mind encrypted DVD's (Score:3)

    by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @11:26PM (#431156)
    I dont mind encrypted DVD's what I object to is the region coding. I understand perfectly why an artist, a studio or a softwaredeveloper wants to keep his/her movie/music/software from being pirated. After all they did put alot of effort, money, creativity and brainpower into producing it and want to be able to live off the results of their labour. Just like I (or any of I assume) do not want to slave away for years to pay for a car only to have it stolen a week after buying it. I do not save for a car so that some lazy bastard can get a car for free.

    What bugs me is this whole reginon code nonsense. There is really no reason for it to exist other than to create artificial trade barriers. I do not mind paying for DVD movies but I will continue to approve of efforts like OMS while idiotic schemes like Region codes continue to come out of messed up brains of Hollywood beancounters.



    For better or for worse, Da Rabbit has spoken!!

  • Nevertheless, they do NOT have a license from the DVD CCA, so therefore, it's illegal.

    DVD CCA doesn't have a right to license it in the first place -- neither algorithm, nor keys are protected under any law, they are merely trade secrets, so as long as they were not published by people who had access to them, everyone is free to discover what they are and do with them whatever they want.

    DVD CCA can license their software that implements the encryption/decryption algorithms, however no one needs it now anyway, as long as algorithm was reverse-engineered, so DVD CCA can stuff everything they can license into their collective ass.

  • No, it's illegal in the same way that breaking and entering is illegal- you break the lock on the dvd, then you 'look around inside'. No again... its like breaking the lock on the dvd YOU OWN, and then viewing the Data that YOU OWN, its like breaking into your own HOUSE, and getting in trouble for not getting a LICENSE TO USE THE DOOR.... Its the end of the world as we know it, and I feel Fine......

  • Support for dxr3 (Hollywood+)! (Score:3)

    by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Thursday February 15, 2001 @02:31AM (#431159)
    It isn't mentioned on the Livid-site (they mention support for dxr2, but not dxr3), but there IS an OMS-plugin for RealMagic Hollywood and Creative dxr3 -cards here [sourceforge.net]. Don't know why the OMS-site doesn't seem to know about it though.
  • Don't know about the german magazine, but I have tested Xine 0.3.7 with the 0.3 libCSS patch (you can grab it on the #xine channel on IRC.Openprojects.Net) and I have tested over 180 DVD's (region 1 and 2) and so far I got great DVD playback + subtitles support + AC3 sound without any problem...

    Machine: Athlon 800, Redhat 7, Matrox G400 Dual Head

  • Re:You criminals sicken me. (Score:3)

    by psergiu ( 67614 ) on Wednesday February 14, 2001 @11:39PM (#431164)
    > You are the reason why our great nation is facing difficult economic times right now.

    What ? Our Great Nation - Rhubarbhia - is doing just fine... Or are you a FOREIGNER ?

    --

  • MPAA: (Re)move DeCSS. For great justice.
  • From what I understand, some commercially-produced DVD's do not play properly.

    On my Powerbook G3 500, the only disc so far that I have had any trouble with is Creature Comforts, which plays really choppy, and I suspect the problem is they pegged the bit rate as close to 10Mbits as possible when mastering the disc. I have some region 2 discs which are pegged to the max bit rate, but I haven't had time to try them yet.

  • It is apparent to me that they don't care about pirates, and they are using this as an excuse to control the technology.

    You can stop the pirates just as well (ie poorly) with a completely open system, provided you make it illegal to sell blank disks without an unwritable track burned into them. It does not matter whether the contents of this track are secret or not, as in either case somebody could outwit this with hardware or software that provides the data on this track. That cannot be prevented, but if all commercial devices cannot do this it would make the bulk pirates job a lot harder!

    Since the existing scheme does nothing to stop the bulk pirates, it is apparent it's goal is something else. Like many here, I believe it is to control the players, so that users cannot fast forward through ads, and so that a pay-per-view system can be gradually implemented in the future.

  • Sorry, but it's still an unauthorized, rogue player.

    Didn't you hear? "Rogue players" have been changed to "players of concern."

    -schussat

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