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You do have to pay to ISPs fees on top unfortanetly but it's a great system. Plus you can get PayTV and free local calls down the same line. Using VideoLAN and the new i3 Set Top Box the're supplying you can even watch the TV on your computer, without a capture card. Yay!

that VideoLanis developed in France. By the way thanks to all that help out with the VideoLan project.

VLC media player uses ffmpeg too, and does have a mozilla plugin. So no problem there ;) Not even with the audio, because per the next release, VLC will probably also support a x86 dll loader, so the sound can be decoded trough that. (with the exception of ppc of course).
VLC media player

Win32 version available. Interface is a bit rough (Win32 port of GTK isn't great) but usable. Couldn't get it to work on Win2k, but that was a while ago.

From the Hacking the Tivo FAQ , here are several programs for windows.

Ligos: Windows based PTV.
PowerVCR: Windows based VCR.
WinVCR: Windows based VCR.
SnapStream: Windows based PTV (freeware and commercial version).
ShowShifter: Windows based PTV (freeware).
VideoLAN is an open source, multi OS video streaming program.

If you need a really good mediaplayer on windows, mac or other platforms, please check out VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ which is a VERY good alternative to both XINE and MPlayer. It plays video directly out of bin/cue-files and does all sorts of good stuff.

Free of course. Sister project is free videostreaming!

Here's a tough question for you, is vlc a legal DVD player (and WMV 1/2) under Linux? The developers think it is! Perhaps what you meant to say was the first legal DVD for Linux in the USA!

Here's a tough question for you, is vlc a legal DVD player (and WMV 1/2) under Linux? The developers think it is! Perhaps what you meant to say was the first legal DVD for Linux in the USA!

If Apple's hardware was competitive, they could compete without having to force hardware upgrades to run Jaguar

• Jaguar runs fine without it (and is still faster than Mac OS X 10.1.5 graphics-wise)
• the reason it's not supported on lower-end graphics cards is because they don't have the hardware necessary to support its implementation (they have to support textures with a size tht's not a power of 2)

Not making Quicktime for Linux is communist

I've read a couple of times in the past on the mac-games-dev list hosted at Apple, that developers considering to port their (small-scale) game from Mac to Windows were encouraged by other developers to simply require QTfW, since then they wouldn't have to change their code that much (nor really learn the win32 API in-depth).

So you see, porting Quicktime to Linux would mean porting that age-old toolbox stuff over to Linux. And no, they haven't already don't a *nix port for Mac OS X, since there they use Carbon (which is based on the old toolbox API). Given that the ROI would be quite small (who's gonna upgrade to Quicktime Pro for $29,95? What Linux pro-video app creators for Linux will go into a Quicktime-pro bundling deal with Apple?), I think they don't do it simply because it doesn't make any business sense.

File format lock-in (like Quicktime) is communist, because it's a barrier to competition.

Taking from BSD and giving nothing (or nearly nothing) back is communist

I mean, what should they do according to you? Give all BSD distro's a penny per line of source code that they used? Do you think that's what those distro's want? I doubt it. In general, what an open source project wants is that its stuff gets used, improved/bug fixed if necessary and that they get recognition for it. I don't see where Apple failed.

Apart from that, there's of course the obligatory mention of Apple's work on gcc (which is used by pretty much every open source OS out there, including the BSD's), resulting in (on average) 30% faster code generation for the PowerPC in version 3.x, altivec intrinsics and obj-c++ support. Yes, they were required to make their changes to gcc public since it's GPL, but

• they were never forced to use gcc (they could've also take MrC, which still generates much better code than gcc)
• they were also never forced to actively submit patches to the FSF, rework them when they're rejected and submit them again etc

It's of course obvious that Apple doesn't do all those things simply because it loves open source and wants to support us hackers. It does those things because it makes sense for them (in case of choosing gcc instead of MrC, that's because MrC's C++ support was quite mediocre; with the submitting of patches it's because otherwise they have to remerge all their patches with every new release, while now the FSF maintainers make sure that the accepted patches are maintained).

All the ranting about Apple being communist, capitalist and/or corporatist aside, I think it's clear that Apple currently tries to do as much things as possible in such a way that it's both good for itself and the open source community. Yes, when there are big trade-offs, it's the open source camp that "loses" (but that's logical, Apple is still a company and if it doesn't make such decisions, there will simply be no Apple anymore in a couple of years).

Well, that's enough ranting in an old thread for today <g>

Not VNC, VLC. Videolan Client.

It's a way to stream video content from a server and view it on a client, but as a nice side-effect, it's a DVDCSS-enabled DVD player, and a pretty good one at that. It's not skinnable, it uses your built-in OS widgets, so it's not as ugly as all the other media players. It looks like it belongs on your desktop with all your other apps.

Mplayer seems to have much better DivX/MJPEG/blah/blah support than VLC, however, so you can't just go whacking mplayer from your HDD. Sorry.

The simple way: download VLC for Mac OS X. It's small, it's fast and hassle free.

If you want to use QuickTime you have two options. You could download the codec from DivX, which I do not recommend, or you could download 3ivx, a nicer codec which does a very good job at playing divx encoded files. Be warned, depending on the way audio is encoded in the video file you may have to use other tools to have a proper playback

Yes, you're right: Jon Johansen never was a saint. No one in their right mind asked him to be one. He was a 15 year old script kiddie when DeCSS was written. He preferred FreeBSD to Linux (maybe without any rational reason), but that's not the case, and it never was. He might have violated the GPL, and then - he might not (search for "special licence"). That's also beside the point in this case.

Whether the defendant is a good guy or a bad guy should be irrelevant in any legal case in a civilized state. It shouldn't matter. It's just not relevant. Bring him to trial for infringement of the GPL instead, or for not being a good poster boy. It's still irrelevant to this case. You're not a good poster boy yourself for free software, and neither am I, Stalin, Hitler, GWB, Saddam Hussein or Mother Theresa. It's hardly illegal.

Of course, if his motives were to pirate films (which I doubt - why would he post to the LiVid mailing lists then?), he could be judged for contributing to copyright infringement. But he has contributed to developement of free DVD players for Linux, QNX, Windows, *BSD, BeOS, etc., just by releasing the source. Breaking the CSS algorithm was the most important thing about DeCSS. Today it's just an old-fashioned prototype to libdvdcss, used in most free DVD players. And by the way, Jon Johansen has contributed to such players. (Just search for his last name on that page.)

The point is: the priciple of DeCSS is important to the developement of free DVD software. Without DeCSS, no libdvdcss: no xine, no MPlayer, no Ogle, no VideoLAN. We need to break the encryption to read DVD's. And we need the right to do so.

I can't see Linux playing DVDs well (a la WinDVD)

And why not? Xine is about to hit v1.0 (and now includes the dvdnav plugin in the mainline source - all you need is libdvdcss dropped in, and you even get DVD menus!), Mplayer is loved by many, and vlc works well too, from what I've heard. And hey, for games on Linux, there's always WineX - yeah, it doesn't work for every game, but a lot of them do work.

1) Finding it very difficult to watch encrypted DVDs on non-proprietary operating systems such as Linux due to laws such as the DMCA. Although there are projects that exist outside the US that let me do this (for example the excellent VLC project), many Linux distributions do not come readily set up to be able to play encrypted DVDs.

2) Attempts to apply laws such as the DMCA outside the US (such as the case of Dmitry Sklyarov).

3) Proposals to pass laws requiring computer equipment to include DRM (digital rights management) hardware, such as that used in Microsoft's Palladium project. This has severe implications for both freedom of information, privacy, and free/open source operating systems and software. If the US were to pass such a law the rest of the world would be very likely to end up using the same technology, even though no such law may exist elsewhere in the world.

Essentially, the main problems I see are about freedom -- the rights of the individual, to use their computer hardware and software in ways they want to, must be protected as a form of free speech.

Yes, copyright theft is illegal, but just because I can break the law doesn't mean I will break the law. By electronically limiting the things people can do, huge power could be handed over to large corporations who themselves have very poor legal records (such as Microsoft).

In my opinion, if freedom is taken away from computer users we will be limited to viewing BigCorporation's approved content. Technological innovation in the US will be stunted and the US will slip behind other countries with more liberal technology laws. This will affect not only the US economy, but those of other developed countries.

So movielink is ignoring mac users - should I be surprised? Maybe they are specifically shunning us for lack of DRM, but it's just as likely they wouldn't have bothered developing for the platform anyway since it's a smaller market. To say nothing of Microsoft pressure. This could just be a cheap, convinient jab on their part. And a meaningless one at that, since this service is a few dollars too expensive and a few years too early for anyone.

If there's one thing Mac users are used to, it's getting locked out of content. Realplayer and windows media player took forever to make it to Mac OS and then Mac OS X. Every codec in development always makes it to the mac platform last, often long after it's available for Windows.

DivX:) AVIs still aren't supported properly even with the codecs, because Quicktime still can't handle variable bitrate AVI audio (a problem people have been complaining about for years now) - which is not part of the official AVI standard but is nonetheless the defacto standard for this supposedly obsolete but nonetheless popular format.

As far as know, content is something you fight for. The only solution that even comes close to no-hassle, no-conversion, no-wait playback is the cross-platform Video Lan Client, although it has a lousy interface. Thank god for OS X, which tied us into the *nix community, which has many of the exact same problems.

Okay, this is what you do:

1. buy an ethernet card for your Tivo http://9thtee.com/

2. Install it, and the software that comes with it

3. Add the module noscramble.o (find it on the dealdatabase.com forums)

4. Install TyTool on your computer to extract the mpeg-2 video to your PC(find it on the aforementioned forums)

5. Add a VideoLan server into the mix to serve up the video to any of your PCs!

Last time I checked on the status of that project it wasn't ready. Thanks for bringing it to my attention again.

VideoLAN.

what's wrong with vlc ?

Haven't tried it for OSX (haven't tried OSX at all), but Videolan seems to support OSX. AFAIK, libdvdcss doesn't care about region encoding, so any other player using that on OSX should work too.

Oh, BTW...not only is vlc open source, there's also a drag and drop method for OS X. You don't have to be an advanced user.

ooh...I figured out how to do links...I'm now dangerous!

I implemented a quite similar feature in VLC one year ago. See this or this.

I implemented a quite similar feature in VLC one year ago. See this or this.

I've heard the precise idea of Helix is that it will provide a client and server for streaming any kind of media, not just the ones Real has traditionally offered. So, I suppose this will one day be able to do this stuff.

There are some video streaming systems for *NIX, for example VideoLAN, but VideoLAN is raw MPEG (which means modem users and high ping baits can forget the whole thing)...

The only working streaming video I've seen on Linux has been Real, actually. And yes, I told many Windows users not to install RP, but Linux version of RP is definitely tolerable, if you watch the video from faaaar away. =)

Well of course anything which used libdvdcss under *nix already gets RPC2-agnostic CSS software-decoding. I, personally, have never set the region-code on my one-year-old drive and watch films quite happily using the wonderful players available.

Sounds like a job for VideoLAN and perhaps maybe also LinuxTV.

You can download the source for DeCSS (far more important than binaries :)) from

Here
Happy compiling... vandy (sorry about prev... formatting error (should've previewed))

The VideoLAN Server can stream video read from a hard disk, a DVD player, a satellite card or an MPEG 2 compression card, and unicast or multicast it on a network. The VideoLAN Client can read the stream from the network and display it. It can also be used to display video read locally on the computer : DVDs, VCDs, MPEG and DivX files and from a satellite card. It is multi-plaform : Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, BSD, Solaris, QNX, iPaq... The VideoLAN Client and Server now have a full IPv6 support.

VideoLAN is free software, and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Include vlc as a great DVD / VCD player, and maybe MPlayer too.

An excellent 'free' dvd player VideoLAN.
The download page is here.
The win32 binaries (Latest Windows self-installing packages) are here.

An excellent 'free' dvd player VideoLAN.
The download page is here.
The win32 binaries (Latest Windows self-installing packages) are here.

An excellent 'free' dvd player VideoLAN.
The download page is here.
The win32 binaries (Latest Windows self-installing packages) are here.

NOT TRUE. I have rpc-2 DVD drives with original shipping firmware (two of them, in fact), and I can tell you from firsthand experience that while rpc-2 does make life more difficult, it is not by any means a roadblock to region-free playing

VideoLAN and ogle both use libdvdcss for CSS authentication and decryption. What saves you in the case of rpc-2 drives is that libdvdcss implements not one, but three different CSS access mechanisms. Two of them (called "key" and "disc") use the drive for authentication and require the drive region and disc region to match. However, the third method (called "title") attacks the algorithm cryptographically, and in most cases works even if the regions don't match.

In fact, the "title" method can even be used in the case where you have an encrypted .vob file on the hard disk and neither the dvd disc nor the dvd drive is available at hand.

See the libdvdcss documentation for more details.

The inner workings of the cryptographic attack on css are actually quite interesting. As I recall, the attack relies on the fact that blank black mpeg video encodes in a very predictable fashion. Most movies which start with blank black video are thus vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack and the movie's CSS key can be guessed in this manner.

Snapstream appears to be taken a disproportionant ammount of credit for this. The real news here is the Broadq software which installs as on your PC as a media server which you can access thru a PS2 with a ethernet adapter. Supports MP3, MPEG1,2,4, DivX, and JPEG formats. Server side runs on Linux, Windows, or OS X.

The Snapstream software is just one way to get mediafiles on your server to watch. . . .

Closest Open Source project similar to this VideoLAN

I'll bite.

I have a lot of Mac&Bumble on my box. That's about 1.5GB. I have a bit of DOMAI. That's another few hundred MB. I have Kuniscans. That's another GB or two. Then there's my own personal photography. That's at least 12GB. Then there are all the pictures my wife has/saves. 2GB or so.

Then there's my database-backed image server. That's another 2GB or so.

Then all the code I've written and the code that is generated by the code I've written. Another 0.5GB?

All my MP3s? I think it's 30 or 40GB, and my collection is small (what, since it's LEGAL and all).

I guess that's more than 200MB, and I can't see how any of it's really recoverable if there's a fire. I guess I could book some tickets for another ONE FULL YEAR ABROAD in Taiwan, New Zealand, and Guam and try to get a semi-substitute.

Never mind nude pics of the ex-girlfriend, which are completely irreplaceable (I hear she plumped out a bit)... ;)

So yeh, I think a 320GB HDD or four (for redundancy) wouldn't make me unhappy. As it is now, my puny 200GB or so of storage on my five computers isn't enough for me to rip my DVD collection (which I'd like to do so that I can use VLC to watch them anywhere in the house).

DivX support on OSX is bad - if you use QuickTime. VideoLAN Client plays my DivX files perfectly on my 700MHz iBook. There is a small compatibility glitch if you have QuickTime 6 installed, but setting your display to Thousands of Colors instead of Millions of Colors fixes it. It's free, it's fast, and it lets you watch movies in full screen without the QuickTime tax.

Apple doesn't seem that interested in getting DivX to work well in QuickTime. Instead, they're pushing their own MPEG4 format. VLC is definitely the way to go.

Go here: Videolan Client.

Works under MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. Does DeCSS automagically. Somehow always starts playing the movie immediately, skipping over the annoying FBI commercials and lame pre-movie commercials.

Does subtitling, plays flawlessly under Linux, is GPL, plays DivX :-) format videos, and is just, in general, a great moving-video playback device.

As another poster pointed out, hardware players are a crapshoot, but VLC is just about guaranteed.

I was at Best Buy a few days ago and found a device into which you plug any two audio/visual devices, and which stated that it would "even out erratic signal levels, enabling the VCR to get a clean image again."

It is a MacroVision-defeating hardware device, prepackaged, for $50 or so.

I was actually a bit astounded that someone hadn't come and stomped on the balls of this company.

For my money, though, it's VideoLan Client or nothing.

Bruce, download and try the Videolan Client, which is available for both Linux and Windows, and includes libdvdcss as part of the distribution.

As far as I'm concerned, the DVD (region-free and encrypted) playback is flawless on a Linux box, assuming your DVD player is a normal IDE device (ie: not also a DVD r/w).

Videolan dot Org

Xine (with decss plugin), Mplayer, Ogle, Videolan

Both VideoLan Client and the MPlayer OSX port will let you play DivX files under OSX without having to doctor the file first. Sound works too!

See http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ and it's cross-platform too.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

I for one would prefer that Apple keeps to the spec. It maintains a better operating client because then they don't have to maintaing two branches of the file reading routines (one to handle the official, and one to handle the hacked). Also, with the DivX video codec, I imagine that it will not be included with QT because of its shady history. In its current incarnation, it has a chance if the lovely people at divx.com would get their act together and put out a decent version of the codec for QT.

If you want to play DivX WELL in MacOS X, get vlc. It plays VCD's, SVCD's, DVD, DivX, MPEG 1, MPEG 2, and supposedly MPEG 4. The MPEG 4 part is the only aspect I have yet to test in this client.

Apple has the problem of supporting stuff and at the same time keeping in good legal standing with other companies that might try to sue them. If they were to release a DivX codec, they might be walking a tightrope. Also, they may have code under a licence to read the avi file that doesn't allow them to modify to read VBR MP3's.

In short, put yourself in their place and try to figure out why they may not do something before you critisize them. I am not sure which country you are from, but in the US (where Apple is based) and most other countries, a companies primary goal is to maximize profit. I doubt that VBR MP3 in avi is a profitable venture for them, and so they are not likely to do it.

Contrary to popular perception, the primary problem with DivX support on macs is not lack of the proper codecs. There are actually three different DivX codecs for mac (the 3ivx, DivX, and ffmpeg projects - however windows media audio, which some files use, is only indirectly supported via DivX doctor). The real problem is quicktime's inability to read AVI files with variable bitrate audio encoded into them (vbr support was not part of the original official spec, and microsoft has since declared the format "obsolete" in favor of windows media). This has been a problem with quicktime for years, and they STILL haven't fixed it in QT6 preview, despite rumors to the contrary. The only solution is to extract the audio and video tracks and stick them together in quicktime format, using one of a variety of tools (see the sites above). DivX.com claims to have come up with an elegant hack around the issue, but they have yet to release it. Video LAN client claims to be able to play back DivX avis without doctoring, but doesn't work well at all yet.

The good news is you can play back just about any DivX file out there. The bad news is you're going to have to do a little more work than just downloading Quicktime and expecting it to play - You have to go get and install the DivX codecs yourself, and turn all your DivX AVIs into MOVs with the proper tools. I can only assume the Quicktime crew could have fixed this vbr AVI problem if they wanted to a long time ago, and possibly did - but for undisclosed reasons, they choose not to or aren't allowed to release or work on it.

Another alternative for Mac OS X is vlc. It seems to play most DivX files unmodified, and as a bonus also plays DVDs without the screen capture restrictions that Apple was forced to build into their player.

But if you run Debian, you can very easily install usable XFree86 bits, a usable kernel, and the current Xine bits. It's then just a question of finding a .deb for the Xine CSS plugin, and you should be able to watch movies---I can.

Use vlc. Much easier to use than xine, and it's packaged with debian.

It depends a lot on the stage of development. For a mature product it's probably true that source availability is less valuable. There are fewer bugs to be caught, and they're probably deeper in the code and thus more difficult to catch anyway. In the Free Software world there are also likely to be just one or only a few projects around, making code sharing more difficult.

But in the early stages of a project, though, source availability can be tremendously useful. A good example of this that I'm personally familiar with is with Linux DVD players. Different projects have focused on different parts of the overall picture, and the availability of code from other projects has allowed a lot of borrowing between projects to shore up their strengths. The player I use, for instance, had a very good MPEG player but lacked good menu support or the ability to read encrypted disks. But they were able to build a menu system by taking the code for menus from one place and a decryption library from another. Source availability makes that kind of thing possible.

It's sickening how depedent congress is on the media. The only thing congress gets is political control through the media hacking of ppl's mind{never count on the media for reliable medical information considering they won't say bad about one of their largest sponsers and they will blurt out downright lies in order to protect their $ stream and hack your mind for their pleasure.}

Perhaps broadband and free audio/video apps will bring competition to the mass media market, the fcc is a dated political toool of control and should be demolished; As it stands now, if you are licensed and do something that pisses off congress, you'll be fined and might even have your license yanked all through the fcc.

If they added a VideoLan Client, it would be practically perfect. VLC by itself probably doesn't support the hardware MPEG decoder, and the CPU isn't fast enough to do DVD decoding in software.

I fear most of his arguments are due to listening to RMS too much (I have great respect for genius, just a problem with his views in public). They don't reflect Open Source, more the FSF saying "all software must be mandated/forced open".

But, the valid case against Open Source is (realize I _AM_ a proponent, it's just good to know the negatives):

Suppose I tried to sell a customer a desktop Linux operating system and distribution.

The first consumer question is: is it compatible with MS applications?

The answer is "of course not". While Linux has many "Office" applications, compatibility with a proprietary protocol or format is a moving target, compatibility can't ever be guaranteed by anyone, and any competition is always one step behind, because MS changes their proprietary "standards" at will. As long as consumer's demand proprietary standards, their can be no real standards nor competition.

(It's very tough, but not insurmountable to overcome proprietary standards.)

Then, the consumer asks: I want to watch my DVD's... can Linux do that?

The answer is "yes... but it's illegal". No distribution can install the necessary DeCSS code, or the folks who sell the distribution would be charged with a criminal offense under the DMCA. Only those companies approved by the MPAA can legally sell the software for watching DVD's, and they aren't allowing any Open Source projects to do it. But you can go off shore (France) to get DVD viewing programs; but realize that software is illegal to possess in the states. Note that you bought or rented the DVD legally -- they're just trying to control the applications that allow you to watch it. The legislators decided that they couldn't stop those illegally distributing copyrighted material, so they wrote laws that make it criminal to write programs that compete with programs that handle copyrighted material.

When Open Source gets beyond proprietary standards, laws benefiting those with the proprietary lock-in kick in to help maintain monopolies and proprietary standards.

So, the customer asks: you mean to be compatible with Windows I have to use illegal "hacker" software.

The answer is, in the states, "yes".

As long as the answer is "yes", no Open Source distribution can be a legitimate contender for the desktop.