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An anonymous reader writes "Following on from the recent spate of reverse engineering articles, there is an interesting summary of the reverse engineering of a binary only Linux driver. The driver is for the integrated MPEG decoder on VIA's popular EPIA-M boards. At the moment VIA has not publicly released the source code for the MPEG chipset on these boards and will only make the code available under NDA saying that "Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." As a result this is holding back development of open source tools (e.g. xine, mplayer, vdr) that would be able to make use of the interesting hardware on these boards."

Dr.Ruud asks: "What would be good ways to build a multichannel VCR? Think of a cluster of 4 PCs, each having 4 TV-cards (with MPEG-hardware on each) and (if necessary) a separate harddisk per TV-card, and maybe a 5th PC that controls the others, holds a DVD-writer and any other necessary hardware. Could it be done in a simpler and cheaper way? See also linuxtv.org, linuxmedialabs.com and of course SouceForge-vcr-projects like Freevo." What would be the best way to go about cutting down the number of machines such a cluster would need? Could this be done by building an all-in-one-wonderbox without it getting really expensive?

Spy Hunter writes: "Some people really dislike the X Window System. DirectFB seems to be the answer to their prayers. Building on the framebuffer support available in recent Linux kernels, DirectFB adds hardware acceleration, input devices, and window management. It has been made (and LGPL'd) by Digital Convergence as a Linux video/television solution, but it is much more than that. It has the potential to replace X for Linux desktops. You want a transparent terminal? How about a transparent video player? Development is proceeding rapidly, with a GTK port and even an X server for legacy apps in progress. Could this be the future of the Linux desktop?"

platinum wrote to us with the news that folks at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin are showing a board for Linux that will allow DVD under Linux. Specs for the board are on the site, and the board should be availible towards the end of the year-December, probably.

Yohahn wrote in with some news on the DVD for Linux effort. A company has developed a prototype DVD decoder board that does the decryption in hardware, versus software, meaning the that the drivers could be released under the GPL. However, because the board is only a prototype, investors need to be convinced - head over to LinuxTv.org and vote in the poll to show support for this. Please-I'd like to fully use my laptop, and this is one of those areas Linux needs assistance in.