Slashdot Mirror

Well, not counting mplayer of course.

MPlayer uses ffmpeg, which has an open-source DiVX implementation.

Do you have a reason to use the commericial DivX for Linux? I bet I'm not the only one wanting to know it..

Or you just haven't heard about lavc mpeg4 of ffmpeg? Or XViD? Those two are both much better options, not only because of their opensourceness but better quality IMHO -- especially lavc, although it's pretty unknown. lavc is used in xine and mplayer at least as main decoder, also ffdshow for windows is based on lavc [video] codecs. At least mencoder supports encoding with lavc, with some neat advanced options. AFAIK lavc is used as the main decoder (for mpeg4 atleast) because it's the fastest there is.

Get mplayer. Works with all movie formats. If you haven't got mplayer yet, get it now! Either download it here, or install an rpm provided by your distro!

• Nerds cannot think like users and expect that every user should either work hard to understand the system or quite simply fuck off and not use their software;
• Users' expectations are far too high from a bunch of tech-types who have no understanding of users' needs.

Ok, a little lesson on container formats and codecs. I'm no expert myself, but I think I can cover this much. The Mplayer formats document explains this a bit too.

Container formats do pretty much what the name implies: they contain other content. In multimedia terms, this almost always involves some sort of interleaving. A little bit of video... a little bit of audio... a little bit of video... etc. That's especially important for streaming purposes.
Examples of container formats are: MPEG System Stream (SS) and Transport Stream (TS), VOB, Quicktime QT/MOV, Microsoft AVI / ASF, Ogg, Matroska.

Codecs are the actual audio/video/whatever(?) data that gets put into those container files.
Examples of video codecs: MPEG I/II/4, Indeo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV.
Examples of audio codecs: MPEG I/II, AAC (aka MPEG 4 audio), Vorbis.

• Under MPEG, the individual streams are known as "elementary streams" (ES). These are multiplexed into a System Stream (SS). Now the Transport Stream (TS) format is being used in broadcast (DTV and HDTV) applications. I don't know the advantages/differences.
• DVDs use the "Video OBject" (VOB) format. The original MPEG SS (as I understand it) couldn't contain the extra data that the DVD guys wanted. Stuff like AC3 and DTS audio, and the embedded command stream that allows menus, "easter egg" extra features, and director/theatrical cuts without taking almost 2x the room on the disc.
• "MP3" is just an MPEG I layer 3 audio elementary stream.
• Some MPEG "movies" on the internet are really just the MPEG I/II video elementary stream.
• VCDs are MPEG I video with layer 2 audio in a System Stream. SVCD uses MPEG II video. Since a lot of DVD players include layer 3 audio ("MP3") decoding from a CD of files, some might allow layer 3 audio as well. They might also allow a higher bitrate than the SVCD standard (2.7Mbps), anywhere up to 5Mbps. These non-standard options are usually grouped under the "XVCD" name.
• I'm not entirely sure about Microsofts' WMA and WMV formats. The few WMV's I have here on my linux box get identifed as "Microsoft ASF" by the file(1) tool. I don't have any WMA's to test. WMA might be a bare "elementary" stream similar to the MP3 situation, or it could be wrapped up in an ASF container as well. Either way,, they're using the same container format but using different "filename extensions" so that people don't get confused, and so that they can launch different apps for each.
• In this message to the Mplayer-dev mailing list you can find some info on the "OGM" format (about a third of the way down. Just search for "ogm").

  On Windows all you need is to provide the FourCC for a VfW or dshow based player, and as most players on windows use a semi-automatic graph rendering ( again dhsow ) it wouldnt be too hard for us to simulate the behaviour of AVI for this. In fact, the existing muxer for Ogg ( .ogm ) from Tobias is based on Dshow also, Tobias created it to be used with Graphedit, being M$' tool around Dshow. In principal it is demuxing an existing video stream from an AVI, copying the codec related info from the AVI header ( WAVEFORMATEX ), writing these into the Ogg header and thats it.

  It works, I suppose. But there's the geeky opposition because Ogg wasn't meant to be used that way.

• Matroska seems (so far) to be ultimate container format. The authors first came up with EBML, basically a binary equivalent of XML. This could potentially allow almost any sort of metadata to be included in the descriptive head section. I suppose it could even allow for streams to be broken up into hierachical trees, perfect for interactive media. In case you can't tell, I'm really excited about the prospects of Matroska! :)
• Matroska could concie

Ogg WHAT?
Are you talking about using Ogg Vorbis as the audio codec? Yes, it is very good. I wouldn't use anything else for either my CD rips or DVD rips.
Or are you talking about the bastardisation of the Ogg container format that is the OGM container format? Do some googling. From the mailing list postings I saw, the Ogg guys aren't too happy about this effort by one windows programmer to hack the Avi/VfW information into the Ogg container format. If that's what you're referring to, and using, I recommend you instead look at the Matroska container format. It's much more flexible and is slightly more efficient space-wise than OGM. Mplayer supports it, don't know about Xine. There's a Matroska splitter/demuxer thingy for windows, don't know about Mac OS/X support.

In my extensive search for things that did this in Linux, this was the best guide available.

HOWEVER, the problem remains that transcode can only work with AVI files reliably, and even then it doesn't deal with any of the MPEG4 codecs, such as DIVX.

The other thing that I found out was that mplayer people have decided to build an output system into mencoder (their file-reencoder) to do DVD-compatible mpegs as an output format.

This is a big thing, because it is also something that gives Linux an edge over Windows encoding solutions, and probably over all proprietary solutions, since mplayer can decode more than any other video player. So you could take old cartoons you downloaded from the net in wmv format, add a video in mjpeg format from your camera, and put them both on the same DVD.

Best of all, I think, is that it's about twice as fast, or more, than any other processing solution I know about.

I imagine that the reason that there is no good Linux solution for this at the moment is that video re-encoding isn't up to the standard such that making GUIs to do things for it is too complicated to be really useful. This may change that issue.

1. Use kino to do the video editing, and output/export (i.e. save as) an MPEG-2 (DVD format). To get this to work you will most likely need Mplayer installed because you'll need the mplex commandline tool to "multiplex" your audio and video files. Some like to use transcode, but I like Mplayer much better. Split the MPEG into multiple MPEGs if you want to have different chapters -- the best way to do this is to use a commandline tool called mpgtx. Or just save different MPEGs from kino. BTW, if you need to get video footage to edit in the first place then use dvgrab to get video from your DV camcorder -- it should be a part of the kino suite of tools, but if it's not, get it from one of the pages in kino.
2. Once you've gotten your MPEGs all created, now you can author. I use dvdauthor. What you have to first do is create a XML text file to list the MPEGs you want to burn into the DVD. And example of such a file is found here. The easiest method is to create a new chapter for each MPEG file. Then you run dvdauthor like so:

   dvdauthor -o DVDdir -x xml-filename

   DVDdir is the name of the output you want -- name doesn't really matter; xml-filename is the name of the text file you created.
3. DVDdir will be a directory from which you then need to create a video ISO. You need the commandline tool mkisofs. Example is:

   mkisofs -dvd-video -o fileoutput.img DVDdir

4. Now you just need to burn fileoutput.img with your DVD recorder. I use dvdrecord (yes, it's a commandline tool):

   dvdrecord -v -eject speed=4 dev=0,0,0 -dao fileoutput.img

Thanks to the hard work of the Mplayer team, I can play any video format I want. If you havent tried it, you should.

Get mplayer

Now, with windows media being the only stream being offered, I will not be able to listen to the broadcasts as windows media player doesn't support either my linux machines (or solaris the other OS I use). So MLB take note, I probably won't renew this year if media player is all you offer.

Quick FYI: Mplayer's supported formats seem to include Windows Media formats. I've sucessfully opened ASF files and WMV files using Mplayer on Gentoo. I'm not sure about Solaris (I don't run it) but Mplayer's page on Solaris seems to indicate that it should work.

Now, with windows media being the only stream being offered, I will not be able to listen to the broadcasts as windows media player doesn't support either my linux machines (or solaris the other OS I use). So MLB take note, I probably won't renew this year if media player is all you offer.

Quick FYI: Mplayer's supported formats seem to include Windows Media formats. I've sucessfully opened ASF files and WMV files using Mplayer on Gentoo. I'm not sure about Solaris (I don't run it) but Mplayer's page on Solaris seems to indicate that it should work.

(PS. yes. I know it's a joke. I'm still an MPlayer whore though :P)

This sounds as useful as using a Windows .dll file in Linux-- it's not.

Wrongo. Windows DLLs have been highly useful to x86 Linux users in many situations.

If you want to write a Windows-formatted drive from Linux, for example, the safest way is to load the Windows ntfs.sys driver into Linux. (There's also native Linux NTFS support, but it's still not 100% reliable for writing to the disk)

Also, if you'd like to watch a video formatted in Microsoft ASF/WMV or Quicktime MOV, then installing a Windows DLL is your best bet (maybe only bet?). I certainly know that trailers.apple.com would be useless to my Linux system without several critical DLLs.

(Note that non-Intel-compatible Linux systems still cannot use DLLs reliably, as that would need CPU emulation as well)

Skilled OS developers have been able to achieve binary compatiblity with programs and libraries from other platforms for many years.

But don't blame Mr. Cone or Creative Commons, blame Xiph for not getting Ogg Theora finished yet.

Hope MPlayer will get support for it soon.

I grab copies of my favorite radio shows, or just grab a few hours of music off any one station. Streamripper's ability to separate title tracks falls apart slightly at the beginning of the song, but it'll numerically order them.

Thus, any show, just about any format, can be sucked off a stream and stored for your listening convenience. And I'll stuff them onto a flash or hard disk player and haul them home. I'd guess someone else can figure out how to timeshift an mp3, I'm sure it's in here somewhere.

Leave both in, they're no competition for some of the open source players.

Both Apple quicktime and Windows mediaplayer suck very hard. Finding obscure codecs is a big pain in the ass (don't trust the looking for codec in mediaplayer - it works maybe 1 in 20 times) and when you find one yourself, it's loaded with spy- and or adware.
Last time I checked on OS 10.1 I had to buy the full version (find a serial that is) in order to watch quicktime player fullscreen - great move Apple!

It's hardly competition for mplayer for example.

Both OSX and Windows can run mplayer, it's far superior to quicktime and mediaplayer and it has most codecs (even some very obscure ones) built-in.

The windows version is a bit hard to spot on the mainpage so here's a link.
You might want to redirect the default for .avi/.bin/.mpg/.mpeg/etcetera to mplayer and you're done just play a little with the keys so you know where to find all the controls. It also plays the subtitles if they're in the same directory and .wmv and quicktime movies.

Provide Link Please, I have never heard of an mplayer port to Windows.

Here you are:

mencoder's a part of mplayer, so yes, source is available.

To this day I can't run their quicktime movies on Linux:

here's the correct url for this
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

There, quicktime on linux.

Don't try and tell me that Darwin is their contribution because we all know it's crippleware.

Hrm... Looks like a full bsd distro to me, just no aqua. So I guess all BSD's are crippled?

I know I'll get flamed for this but I need to vent my frustrations

Why? Was it *your* work that they "took"? If you write code and release it in a licence that allows Apple to do this, is it's Apple's fault? Not in my book bub, it seems to me that Apple is doing the right thing for them as a company, for their investors and for the people who want the product Apple is selling. To me it seems like you just are a bit jealous of Apple for some unknown reason, maybe you just can't afford one?

Anyway, IMNSHO, fuck off...

While it is true that dumb apple zealots who have got money to burn on expensive cheese graters and think apple is god (thats why apple can get away with EXTORTING their users with annual $129 payments, while if microsoft charged one cent for a service pack they would be burned to ashes!), Apple isnt 100% leaches. They have contributed one useful thing back to the community, and that is webcore! KDE 3.2 has greatly benifetted from the contributions and now KDE is more advanced and easier to use than Mac OS X itself. Try it today if you havent.

Also, It IS possible to watch quicktime movies in Linux, its just that Apple dosent support it. Try mplayer it supports Quicktime movies!

Anyway, Apple does suck mostly and I think apple zealots should try Linux instead! If you use OSX, switch to Linux today, you can even get a version for you mac!

• Slackware 9.1
• Kernel 2.4.22 gcc 3.2.3
• XFCE4 (but have KDE and GNOME installed)
• jarnal ( http://www.dklevine.com/general/software/tc1000/ja rnal.htm )
• xvkbd ( http://member.nifty.ne.jp/tsato/ )
• mplayer ( http://www.mplayerhq.hu )

Overall, it isn't bad. I think the keyboard is a little dainty, but since it has USB, I can attach a(n) USB keyboard to it. I also get about 3 hours from the battery, this is while compiling kernels, so I know that it is a good test of battery life.

I got lucky, I didn't have to buy this, I got it via work. My wife feels that it is OK, but it is a bit pricy for a small(ish) computer.

Honestly speaking, if I had to go out and buy one today, I would get a thin notebook that had a wider screen. Oh yeah, and had a built-in DVD drive!

Thanks,

Mage...

You may be interested in this.. Anyway, Linux has been better for Porn downloads for ages. Get mplayer, konqueror, and of course the gimp.

The same copyright that keeps Windows secret keeps Microsoft (and others) from just stealing GPL'ed projects.

You bring up an interesting point. What if the Windows source was analyzed for stolen GPL code? Wouldn't it make that part of the Windows OS GPL?

Would anyone (FSF?) sue Microsoft for copyleft infringement? The developer of mplayer is having just that problem. Only in his case, it is blatent and easy to detect.

This, by the way, is not an excuse for proliferating the code. I for one agree that anyone who sees it is tainted. Just don't risk it.

MPlayer or if you're Microsoft's bitch then use the Win32 version.

• MPlayer
• Windows codec package

For those who don't know already, both mplayer and xine play streaming windows media just fine on Linux/FreeBSD/etc.

Go to TheLinuxShowwebcast from LinuxWorld today and listen to segment 2 (Interview with IBM).

Then ask yourselves if IBM will let the little Piss Ant SCO put this in peril.

Not a chance

PS Use MPlayer in Lieu of the horrid RealPlayer

I re-encoded it with mencoder and Rodrigo Gressler was kind enough to put it up on his website:

http://cscience.org/~ffishman/Linus-dunked-big.men coder.avi

Enjoy.

Felipe

For compiled programs see the strings(1) manpage or use a hex editor to pull strings and compare. it is what Mplayer did to show that KiSS was taking their GPL'ed code from the subtitle-reading portion. (see the posting for 2004.01.02)

Mplayer has been disputing a GPL violation with KISS Technologies. In the news on their website they go over how they discovered the violation. After they notified KISS of the violation, KISS changed the violating strings - but only by gzipping them, and the mplayer people still caught them.

I've sent emails, asking for the reasons why snippets of our source end up mysteriously in their commercial applications. In one case, a company (in Germany) came back stating that they happen to have the 5 same exact function names in their application, and byte-for-byte identical perror() strings to our application, but they insist they're not using any of our code, but claim that they did use it "for documentation purposes" when writing their application. That one is still open and pending, and we'll be doing protocol sniffs to see if theirs match ours. We have certain "fingerprints" in our protocol, which can only be done by using the source directly.

Another company I just found several days after the one above, seems to be using our code in a commercial BeOS project. They responded to my email, claiming that our code was used "as is" in their project, and then goes on to say "the use was re-configured to allow for easier additions". I don't see how they can claim both, in the same project. Either the code was used as-is (impossible, our code doesn't build on BeOS), or they modified it (and they must give us back the changes to those sources).

Another company directly took our code, removed all of our names from the project, replaced them with their own, slapped their own (non-GPL) license on it, and sold it to "partners" for quite a hefty fee. When we confronted them asking for an explanation, they basically told us to piss off. When we escalated, the CEO came back with, and I quote "If we end up in court, I will bankrupt these guys".

We also contacted this company's "partners", and asked them for the source to the changes they were also distributing. Every time we would contact these companies, the original company would threaten to sue us if we contacted their partners.

The FSF is involved in all of the cases. The investigations are still open, and pending.

Companies seem to think that because they have money, and most Free Software developers do not, that they can just slap us around left and right. The other point companies seem to try to "leverage" when they are clearly violating the GPL, is that the common myth that the "GPL Has Never Been Tested In Court(tm)", and since it has no basis, they can take whatever they want, and not give back. They seem to forget that the U.S. Copyright system backs up all of this code.

So what do we do? There are dozens upon dozens of cases where the GPL is clearly being violated; the MPlayer violation from KISS Technologies, the BusyBox Hall of Shame, and many more.

I know that the priorities of these two projects are different, I was just wandering if they will simply compete/coexist, or whether they will somehow combine their forces.

Unless you download the perfectly free Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OSX, of course, but why let the facts get in the way of a good M$ bash, eh? Oh yeah, Mplayer supports wma in Linux, too.

No matter how you try and spin it, it is undeniably possible to play WMA files on far more portable players than iTunes AACs. Like it or not, for WMA to present even an equivalently bad choice to iTunes AACs, MS would have to be running a music store and supplying a portable and ensuring that you could only use WMAs on their own portable. Are they? No.

Ironically I couldn't make mplayer play the file, so I used Real Player instead

Mplayer can play the file BTW

ftp://ftp1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/

of course shall we ask Apple,Microsoft,Franhofer,RealNetworks,Indeo etc etc etc if they are an authorised distributer ?

perhaps i should put a disclaimer on my site then i can distribute 50cents, j-lo and Eminem's mp3's

You should be aware that some of these DLLs have licenses that restrict them
to use with certain programs. We only distribute them, the rest is your responsibility.

I wonder why they couldn't just put links to the mirrors in the story as well? This happened with the last MPlayer item too. 1 2 3 4

I wonder why they couldn't just put links to the mirrors in the story as well? This happened with the last MPlayer item too. 1 2 3 4

I wonder why they couldn't just put links to the mirrors in the story as well? This happened with the last MPlayer item too. 1 2 3 4

I wonder why they couldn't just put links to the mirrors in the story as well? This happened with the last MPlayer item too. 1 2 3 4

Site seems to be on the virge of slashdotting, so here's the mplayer peoples' comments.

2004.01.10, Saturday :: Radio interview: Kiss VS MPlayer
posted by Gabucino

The Danish National Radio (http://dr.dk) has made an interview with me (as MPlayer representative), and Kiss Technology's managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen.

It is going to be broadcasted tonight at 20:35, but it is also downloadable from the Internet right now:

* streaming
* downloadable file

A written article is also available, in Danish.

We have made a rough english translation of the session (thanks to Anders Rune Jensen). Our commentaries can be found at the bottom.

Speaker: The development of MPlayer was started by a little group of Hungarian programmers 3 years ago.

Speaker: We needed a program that could play media files under Linux and were so unsatisfied with the existing choices that we started making a better alternative - said Gabucino, the spokesperson for the MPlayer programmers.

Speaker: MPlayer has reached a wide recognition in the Open Source community. Gabucino emphasizes the program's stability and ability to play many different movie formats as some of the obvious advantages.

Speaker: The trouble with Kiss technology started recently when one of the MPlayer developers was shopping for a new DVD player and went for a product by the Danish company. For fun the programmer started looking at the software in the Danish DVD player, the so called firmware, and compared it with MPlayer's own code. There were enough similarities to take a closer look at the case and make the MPlayer team angry - Gabucino said.

Speaker: The specific part of the code in which the similarities are found is the one controlling the subtitles when playing movies. The reality is that the code doesn't contain anything really brilliant. On the contrary, it's very simple. So Gabucino is puzzled why anyone would even bother using the code instead of writing it themselves. He suggests that it could be laziness on the programmer's side.

Speaker: I think it's actually a very normal thing that programmers borrow Open Source code because they are too lazy to write it themselves. There have been some cases prior to this which have caused quite a lot of trouble. I think there are hundreds of examples like this that we just don't hear about - Gabucino said.

Speaker: The MPlayer team has published the accusation of the code theft on their website and has tried to document it by listing the strings in the code which are identical in the two pieces of software. According to Gabucino, there are so many similarities that it's unthinkable that this might be a coincidence.

Speaker: Normally this type of code is different depending on who implemented it, so, when there are so many identical strings, it's obvious that we're dealing with theft, the Hungarians believe.

Speaker: GPL or General Public License which MPlayer is licensed under is a very widely used Open Source license, which gives the users certain rights and certain duties. Long story short, it is okay to take the code from MPlayer and develop it further, as long as the result is given back to the community. In this specific example Gabucino and the other Hungarians therefore demand that Kiss Technology should release the software used in its DVD players. And makes it clear that it is not a matter of getting some money from the Danish company, but a matter of fulfilling the requirements of the GPL and releasing the software.

Speaker: Kiss Technology at first didn't react to the Hungarians' inquiry, but after the story began to get large publicity in the different net-medias and forums the company began to investigate the case this week. There are two main questions: whether code from MPlayer really is inside the Kiss software and how the lice

2004.01.10, Saturday :: Radio interview: Kiss VS MPlayer
posted by Gabucino

The Danish National Radio (http://dr.dk) has made an interview with me (as MPlayer representative), and Kiss Technology's managing director Peter Wilmar Christensen.

It is going to be broadcasted tonight at 20:35, but it is also downloadable from the Internet right now:

* streaming
* downloadable file

A written article is also available, in Danish.

We have made a rough english translation of the session (thanks to Anders Rune Jensen). Our commentaries can be found at the bottom.

Speaker: The development of MPlayer was started by a little group of Hungarian programmers 3 years ago.

Speaker: We needed a program that could play media files under Linux and were so unsatisfied with the existing choices that we started making a better alternative - said Gabucino, the spokesperson for the MPlayer programmers.

Speaker: MPlayer has reached a wide recognition in the Open Source community. Gabucino emphasizes the program's stability and ability to play many different movie formats as some of the obvious advantages.

Speaker: The trouble with Kiss technology started recently when one of the MPlayer developers was shopping for a new DVD player and went for a product by the Danish company. For fun the programmer started looking at the software in the Danish DVD player, the so called firmware, and compared it with MPlayer's own code. There were enough similarities to take a closer look at the case and make the MPlayer team angry - Gabucino said.

Speaker: The specific part of the code in which the similarities are found is the one controlling the subtitles when playing movies. The reality is that the code doesn't contain anything really brilliant. On the contrary, it's very simple. So Gabucino is puzzled why anyone would even bother using the code instead of writing it themselves. He suggests that it could be laziness on the programmer's side.

Speaker: I think it's actually a very normal thing that programmers borrow Open Source code because they are too lazy to write it themselves. There have been some cases prior to this which have caused quite a lot of trouble. I think there are hundreds of examples like this that we just don't hear about - Gabucino said.

Speaker: The MPlayer team has published the accusation of the code theft on their website and has tried to document it by listing the strings in the code which are identical in the two pieces of software. According to Gabucino, there are so many similarities that it's unthinkable that this might be a coincidence.

Speaker: Normally this type of code is different depending on who implemented it, so, when there are so many identical strings, it's obvious that we're dealing with theft, the Hungarians believe.

Speaker: GPL or General Public License which MPlayer is licensed under is a very widely used Open Source license, which gives the users certain rights and certain duties. Long story short, it is okay to take the code from MPlayer and develop it further, as long as the result is given back to the community. In this specific example Gabucino and the other Hungarians therefore demand that Kiss Technology should release the software used in its DVD players. And makes it clear that it is not a matter of getting some money from the Danish company, but a matter of fulfilling the requirements of the GPL and releasing the software.

Speaker: Kiss Technology at first didn't react to the Hungarians' inquiry, but after the story began to get large publicity in the different net-medias and forums the company began to investigate the case this week. There are two main questions: whether code from MPlayer really is inside the Kiss software and how the licenses of Open Source software should be interpreted and applied. Apart from being accused of taki

Though I cant say that many other windows-based media players are better.

That's what I always thought too. Go download Mplayer for Windows. Works great, plays anything, fast as hell. Fool around and learn the few different keystrokes though.

I was considering buying one of those a few weeks ago, but Kiss technologies is apparently violatinn the GPL. Their player uses a verion (or at least parts) of MPlayer and they have ignored severel requests by the MPlayer team to release the source to their version. (follow the link for an email-by-email account of the whole story) I'm waiting to see how that gets resolved before I buy one. If they come clean and release the source I'll probably buy, but if they try to stonewall or litigate their way out of it, I won't.

There's some people who compiled the Linux MPlayer for Windows (see this page, scroll down to the Windows section). It works great for all sorts of stuff, including streams (mpeg, real), Quicktime, DVDs, etc. There is no user interface (command line), but you can just drop stuff onto the icon or tell windows to use mplayer.exe to open files. And you can do pretty much everything in MPlayer with keyboard shortcuts, so the lack of a UI doesn't bother me, at least.

There's also VideoLAN Client (VLC). It plays a lot of stuff and has a UI (not that great, but it works). It understands a whole bunch of formats, too.

Is there a Linux alternative?

Recent versions of MPlayer can play realaudio streams if you compile with Live library support. MPlayer will even let you save a stream to disk with the -dumpstream flag, which is nice if you want to do timeshifting.

Ahem... Since I actually RTFA now, I can see from the latest post on MPlayer's site that the problem is that there's no MPlayer source. Well, maybe it's just an oversite rather than an outright violation? The first big post recently was yesterday where they said their requests for sourcecode went unanswered... well, if it's been less than a week I wouldn't be too antsy, many businesses i know won't be all the way back in operation until monday and I'm in southern california. They probably get even better vacations in Denmark.

Also, from the updates on the last problem MPlayer had with Warpvision, maybe they're just being a bit hasty... better hasty than letting themselves get walked over, but hasty all the same. Also, going by the second update in the Warpvision issue, maybe KiSS didn't include the MPlayer source because it hasn't cleared their legal department yet, not because they want to violate the GPL (in which case they're still in the wrong, but differently, but who knows, maybe they'll clean up the MPlayer source and resolve any possible legal issues with it and contribute it back to the opensource community {hey, i can be an optimist sometimes}).

Open source needs to protect itself and to enforce it's rights, but should do so with tact and a little patience. Don't want to come off like a bunch of rabid hippies simply reacting to SCO by becoming bullies ourselves. That's my 0.02USD.

Maybe but it is distributed on and by the mplayer site, just click on "downloads".

You can compile mplayer entirely from source with DivX, mpeg4 and Quicktime support.

Yes. But they still distribute those binary codecs in clear violation of the law.

I don't seem to be having a problem with the site myself, but there are a few mirrors of the page already.
Main
2
Switzerland
Finland