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http://www.videolan.org/

Stoped for me a long long time ago. But the point is you need to trust where you download from!

On a Mac, i believe you can get the Quicktime engine to have all the codecs you'll ever need by installing the free open source package Perian and the free (closed source) Flip4Mac WMV, which covers the last few.

Arguably, Apple should pre-install both of these packages - or variants thereof.

Now to get back onto the main topic..

One could also argue that the Apple-provided Quicktime player sucks ass big-time - and of course that is very true - but that's easily fixed by installing NicePlayer (also FOSS) - the other route is to ignore all the Quicktime-based solutions, and use something like VLC.

None of the above will stop an uneducated and/or unsuspecting user from clicking their way through an installer (and giving up an administrator password) believing it to install something great/fun/useful. If you try too hard to protect the naive and/or foolish from their own actions when administering the system then you end up taking the route Microsoft have with Vista (and their earlier Windows, each to a lesser extent) -- Are you sure? Are you really sure? Are you really really certain? Can i get a password with that? -- Ah.. Mac users are getting used to giving passwords during installs - bummer. (Mind you, they don't do it as quickly as the average Windows user/administrator can click Ok, Ok, Ok, Ok)

Being honest though, i don't think naivety or foolishness really enter into the equation - after all, it's a social engineering trick driven by the simple male quest for boobies - a somewhat unstoppable force!

Ballmer is currently trying to survive as M$'s CEO, the failure of Vista, the failure of Office 2007, the financial failure of xbox, and the financial failure of MSN, are destroying his career and personal ego trip of being better and greater than Bill Gates in whose shadow Ballmer has been forced to spend the last 20 years.

So expect lots of rants, screams and flying furniture on the way out.

As for Linspire, they seem to be going out of their way to make a version of Linux that is just as unstable, unreliable and insecure as windows.

Windows media player on Linux, how obscene, I don't even use it on windows, VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ and Media player classic http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli are both superior, what are they thinking at the Linspire team or have they stopped thinking all together. Next they will be adding, M$ windows DRM free, M$ windows WGA free and even that piece of junk M$ Works ;).

The other thing is of course M$ is trying to create the marketing illusion that it is a player of influence in the Linux world, that when M$ babbles, the computer and technology world listens and changes, that Ballmer's asinine opinions actually mean something to the technological future of the planet rather than just adding more content to the geek laugh library.

Because deep down everyone knows that linux distros (not linux itself, necessarily) violate patents en masse, just like most software does.
You see companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sony, IBM, getting sued all the time for patent infringement and/or making patent deals with each other and/or paying appropriate licensing fees to license other's patents. Are you really so naive as to believe that Red Hat violates NO patents? Come on now.

As an example, VideoLan admits that their VLC player runs afoul of mpegla patents, but says that since they are "free" and "open source" that it's up to the user to pay mpegla's patent fees, knowing full well that users aren't going to bother, and in fact, saying to MPEGLA, "You want your fees? Then sue our users, not us".
http://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_about_personal.2Fcommercial_usage.3F

It's a game that many OSS devs like to play: "I'm 'open source' so I can violate patents at will!!"

But big companies like Red Hat *can* pay the necessary patent fees, and they shouldn't be getting a free ride. They're one of the big boys, so let the act like it and license the patents in question by paying the fees or making licensing deals or whatever. Why should other companies like MS, Apple, Sony, Panasonic, Oracle, etc, have to pay patent fees and make licensing deals, but not Red Hat and other big-name linux distros?

To answer your question again, Red Hat and the like don't want to start a suit that could end up with an official declaration that they *are* violating lots of Microsoft patents, and would be liable to pay up for the entire time that they've been violating said patents. And that would open the flood gates, because while Red Hat might be violating 200 (or whatever) Microsoft patents, you can be sure they are violating hundreds more patents by others, and those others will come a-knocking.

I like Opera, modo, foobar2000, VLC Media Player, 7zip, Pidgin, Process Explorer, uTorrent, TCPView, Foxit Reader, and WinDirStat.

Here's my list: OpenOffice, e-Sword, Firefox, Google Desktop, TightVNC, Thunderbird, Picasa, AVG Anti-Virus, GIMP, IrfanView, VLC Media Player, FileZilla, 7zip

Stupid lame filter nuked my <ul>

If I needed a player for a non-Microsoft computer, I would simply use VLC as it plays just about anything I throw at it. A petition seems like a lot of pointless work.

Correction. I meant playback not transcode, big difference...

Also, you need a multithreaded decoder if you want to fully utilize a dual or quad core cpu.

I use VLC media player, but the H264 decoder is currently only single threaded. Also, there is no hardware acceleration support so it's practically impossible to play 1080p H264 content in VLC at the moment. Developers are working on a multithreaded H264 decoder, but that could take a while. From my understanding, VLC uses the libavcodec library which is also used by ffmpeg, ffdshow and mplayer.

Here's a thread about the lack of multithreading and hardware acceleration on the VLC forums (j-b is one of the developers).

While multithreaded support is being worked on, it seems like hardware acceleration may not happen unless Nvidia and ATI provide implementation details.

Radio Paradise is an internet radio station that works well with free software. I listen/streamrip using VLC. The only thing I don't like is the lack of an Ogg Vorbis stream (or some other free codec) :-P.

The obvious question now, IS --- why doesnt youtube use on2's superior vp6 codec and get the pretty video? Becuase ffmpeg cant legally support it (I dont think, but ive seen hacks) and to license from on2 is just not economically feasible from a business standpoint

As far as the legal constraints or fees, I dont think their are any (please correct me here if im wrong,

ffmpeg supports it out of the box ( apparently you can make standard h264 video files, or you can make a flv using the h264 codec, although the new file format the adobe guys are workign with seems to be superior.)

For raw source code, Video Lan has an encoder: http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html

I'd also have to think that the group would find a whole new slew of anoyances with Linux as well. Especially if they can't playback music or watch videos

Yes, I hear this argument all the time. "Wah, the latest codec my pirate video source is using that was written exclusively by and for Microsoft doesn't work under Linux! Linux is useless as a desktop OS!"

For the record, I haven't found a video file yet that VLC Player has had a problem with.

(does YouTube work w/Linux?).

Yes. I think you'll also find that Solitaire, Minesweeper, and a text editor also work under Linux. You can even play MP3s now! (That functionality was added ATLEAST a month ago! I think Linus wrote it ... )

Dude, it's a fucking video file (you know, kinda like YouTube). Download it (or stream it over HTTP) and watch it in your preferred media player. I recommend VLC.

VLC is just one player that can play Oggs, download it free here.

If someone did an ogg vorbis (just the sound) that would be good for us to listen to on the go, the main video file is 686.3 MB which would mean I would have to ditch a lot of stuff to get it on my rockbox.

What about personal/commercial usage?
Some of the codecs distributed with VLC are patented and require you to pay royalties to their licensors. These are mostly the MPEG style codecs.

With many products the producer pays the license body (in this case MPEG LA) so the user (commercial or personal) does not have to take care of this. VLC (and ffmpeg and libmpeg2 which it uses in most of these cases) cannot do this because they are Free and Open Source implementations of these codecs. The software is not sold and therefore the end-user becomes responsible for complying to the licensing and royalty requirements. You will need to contact the licensor on how to comply to these licenses.

This goes for playing a DVD with VLC for your personal joy ($2.50 one time payment to MPEG LA) as well as for using VLC for streaming a live event in MPEG-4 over the Internet.

I have mod points, but due to the lack of a "-1, Uninformed" option, I'll post instead. VLC can play Windows Media encoded files, right up to the latest version of WM--with no extra codecs needed. DVDs, Quicktime, WM*, ASF, AVI (divx, xvid, etc), MP3, FLAC, you name it.

VLC I believe.

I bought a ReplayTV 4500 on eBay for around $200. There's no way I could have built a rig myself that inexpensively which does everything the ReplayTV does. Sure, they're not making the hardware any longer, but it did come with lifetime activation, worth $299. The company is still in business, but no longer selling hardware; they have ReplayPC now which I think is around $50 plus $20 per year, not a bad solution either if you're building (but if you're building you might as well go with Myth).

I absolutely love the auto-commercial skip feature! (Myth has this also.) Just don't get the 5500 model, as it was removed from that release in an attempt to stave off the lawsuits; they "lost", folded and were bought by the company now providing ReplayPC. (Lost in quotes because they ran out of money defending themselves, so the trial didn't need to finish...)

With the ReplayTV, you can use DVArchive to transfer shows to your PC; they're in MPEG-2 format, ready to burn to DVD. You can set it up to auto-download as well.

If you're worried about them gathering data on how you watch (for instance freeze-framing the money shots, etc.) then just watch on your PC with VLC. But then you don't get the commercial skip functionality. However, it does download the index file, so I suppose someone could add that to VLC. Other than the "viewing habits" data it sends back it doesn't seem to have any "limiting" features, like broadcast flag support etc.

I've also heard good things about Vista's Media Center, but haven't used it myself.

I also believe the big issue with DeCSS is that it's infringement to distribute means of bypassing copy protection. Just as how it is copyright infringement to upload the data, the problem is distribution. A good way to bypass this is to download libdvdcss on your own, then compile it, and nobody has distributed the actual tool to break CSS. The basic idea behind the outcome of the DeCSS case (even though I don't believe it finished with an actual verdict) was that distributing the code was covered by free speech (hence the songs, poems, pictures, etc., with the DeCSS code in it), so by distributing only the source code to libdvdcss, they should be in the clear (even though they aren't in the US).

I don't believe it is disallowed by the DMCA to break copy protection on your own for fair use, but telling others how to seems to be kinda illegal in some way. IANAL of course.

The thing is, with Ubuntu Joe Sixpack doesn't need to buy Quicken, a DVD creator, a DVD player or Greetings Workshop, because their equivalents all available for free through the Ubuntu repositories! Commercial software doesn't have to exist for every need, just for the ones where there isn't an open source equivalent.

So (in bizzaro world, where Walmart employees know anything about Linux) the salesperson would explain to Joe that if he gets the $60 more expensive Ubuntu system, he doesn't need to spend $100 on all those other programs. Plus he gets a full office suite installed by default, so he doesn't have to spend multiple $100s on MS Office. Oh, and he doesn't need to buy those virus scanners and spyware removal tools, saving even more money. Then the saleperson will tell Joe that if he buys the Ubuntu system, he will get free upgrades for life, for all of the products it comes with. Sounds a bit more compelling when you put it that way, doesn't it?

The only thing you would have trouble with is games, which is a known problem for Linux as it used to be for Mac. Since Mac doesn't have DirectX, I would guess that they use OpenGL for 3D games, so it wouldn't take much of a Linux market to make it worthwhile for the games companies to port their Mac version to run on Linux too.

Ask your computer using (non-techie) Mother/sister/brother what's important:
1) No hassle
2) Use **exactly** the same apps as everyone else, pre-installed
3) Cost - under $200 every 3 years
4) Quicken!!!! (the current version, not a 5 yro version)
5) Ms-Office (Open Office doesn't support all the XLS macros)
6) All the apps I want aren't pre-installed.

Seriously, users don't want to be bothered with loading apps and hunting for an app that is the same as what everyone else uses. I guess wine is a good step, but even I with 20+ years C/C++, networking, and architecture - find having Windows is just **easier**. My laptop is windows. My desktops are not.

Notice that security wasn't in the list? Virus, spyware, firewalls aren't mentioned. Picture their face - "why does it have to be so hard?" they ask.

My list of apps mandatory apps: Quicken http://quicken.intuit.com/, Visio http://office.microsoft.com/visio, XLS http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/FX10048762 1033.aspx, and Toolkit 5.x http://www.iclub.com/products/tk5.asp

Besides firefox, thunderbird, VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/, videoredo http://www.videoredo.com/, MovieManager http://freshmeat.net/projects/xmm/, Putty http://freshmeat.net/projects/putty/

VLC played this mp4 and many others flawlessly.
http://www.videolan.org/
Open Source, includes all the codecs internally, and (if you're an American) probably breaks dozen of patent laws. :)

I have this for you!

I don't see on the VLC page that VLC is compatible with vista - is there something i'm missing?

You may try with VLC media player.
Works very well with tons of formats.
Uses its own codecs.
Free and open source.
Available for Windows (and also Mac OS X and Linux).

2. Microsoft was looking at making this available for linux too.

Did you use the method listed here to install:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html

Thanks Microsoft, but I've already got VLC.

http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Play_HowTo/ Advanced_Use_of_VLC#Wall_video_filter

VLC will work. Check out the link Wiki page that describes how to do it. It's also free =)

Just use VLC? (The Windows binary includes decss.)

VLC should work fine. You can use VLC to transcode it to a more modern format like Xvid or H.264 to save space as well.

Im pretty sure theres a Mac version, so why dont you go check it out?

-Red

I have not actually seen what is on their CD, but there are some examples of free programs, most of which, have already been mentioned, that are available for both Windows and Linux.

• Firefox Web browser
• Thunderbird full-featured email program
• GIMP Image Manipulation Program
• ImageMagick software suite for creating, editing, and composing bitmap images
• Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor
• ClamWin free antivirus scanner for Windows
• 7-Zip file archiver
• Celestia space simulater that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions
• OpenOffice office suite
• Scribus professional page layout program
• AbiWord word processing program
• Gnumeric spreadsheet
• LyX Document Processor
• Gaim multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client
• Audacity Sound Editor
• Blender the advanced 3D modeling program capable of producing high quality animations
• VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server
• Nvu complete Web Authoring System

Yeah, I endorse all of those, especially PDFCreator. Also, Inkscape, Audacity, and VLC.

It's specialized, but if you need a UNIX-like enviroment under Windows, Cygwin is wonderful.

mp4 is not a proprietary Apple format, but an ISO standard that anyone can support. VLC Media player supports it. Also, ffmpeg has h264. When it comes to which has better hardware support, mp4 wins. When it comes to software support, mp4 wins. MPEG4 is an open standard. There are patents involved, but no royalties. Matroska was created to avoid patents, whereas mp4 has many patents in it. Matroska surely violates someones patents, but we just don't know whose yet. MPEG 4 has all the patent issues sorted out.

I actually just finished transcoding all of my video to mp4 as i prefer its subtitle support over the cheesy avi hacks. DivX was created during the non standard days of MPEG4, as the spec was not finalized. That spec is now finalised, and the standard codec is h264 in an mp4 container. These videos play in Windows, Linux or any other OS which has an h264 codec. They can be imported into iTunes as best as i know. My iTunes question of the day is actually which subtitle formats they use, as I don't know the answer to that.

-- High quality IDE for developing apps?

-- High quality video and multimedia support?

• Navigation
  • Thumbs - Shows the first thumbnail from each linked gallery, letting you skip galleries that don't look interesting.
  • Linky - Open all links in tabs, etc.
  • firefusk - view all images from galleries with numerically named image files.
  • Browse Images - Use the Forward button or Alt+Shift+Right to go to the next image.
  • Location Navigator - Select a portion of a URL that varies, then navigate up or down.
  • Digger - Navigate to parent directories in URLs, etc.
  • refspoof - Modify your HTTP Referer to gain access to sites that use insecure login mechanisms.
• Downloading and saving
  • DownThemAll - Download all the links to images/movies on a page at once.
  • FlashGot - Download all the links on a page at once using an external download manager.
  • Download sort - Save files to folders based on extension or download date.
  • spiderzilla - Download entire web sites.
  • Super DragAndGo - Drag a link to open it in a new tab; drag an image to save it.
• Videos
  • Launchy - Open links to video files in an external player, streaming, so you can watch a video without waiting to download it. (Note that not all video players support streaming video; for example, WinAmp 5.111 hangs. VLC works well. Here's my launchy.xml for VLC.)
  • MediaPlayerConnectivity - Open embedded video in an external player, so you can use features like Full Screen.
• Images
  • Image Zoom - Convenient shortcuts for zooming images.
  • mozImage - Browse images on hard drive or view them in a slideshow.

Most of the authors of these extensions are not yet members of the Pornzilla project.

Linked version with condensed summary. I wanted to find out more about some of them. Others may benefit too.

Ecto a blogging client (but the site seems to be down: try this for more info). Shareware, $17.95.
Transmit an FTP client. Shareware, $17.95
Sync Services -- comes with 10.4
BBedit text/html editor. $125, but worth it.
Missing Synch for Windows Mobile - synchronize with PDA/smartphones. $49.95/$39.95
OmniGraffle - diagramming / flowchart program. $79.95 / $149.95
ConceptDraw - another diagramming / flowchart program. $299
IChat AV - built-in to 10.4
AppleScript, Scriptdebugger - also built-in. No link. I'm getting lazy.
Microsoft Entourage -- part of MS Office.
Sketchfigher 4000 Alpha -- a game from the great Ambrosia Software. $19.00
TypeIt4Me - keyboard macro expander. $27
NetworkLocation - automatically trigger configuration changes depending upon where you are on the network (e.g., at home, work, etc.). $15
Apple Remote Desktop 3 - control / configure Mac systems remotely. $499 / $299 (unlimited / 10 systems)
MacLinkPlus - file conversion software (e.g., from WordPerfect documents to/from Word, and many others). $79
Parallels Desktop for Mac - virtualization software (e.g., run Win XP simultaneously with OS X). $79.
Remote Desktop Connection - connect remotely to a Windows desktop. FREE
Snap X Pro - screen / movie capture. $29
Boot Camp - dual boot Windows. I'm lazy.
PDF - Portable Document Format from Adobe? What?
Lingon - tool for making launchd scripts for 10.4.
Workgroup Manager - manage local systems - part of 10.4 Server.

---
Okay, a mildly interesting list. Here's a few more suggestions:

Cyberduck - FTP and SFTP client. Donationware.
VLC - cross-platform video viewer / transcoder.
Blender 3D - cross-platform 3D modelling / rendering.
Bookends - excellent bibliography software. $99
Celestia - cross-platform real-time 3D astronomy simulator.
Plot - a, uh, plotting / graphing program.
proFit - another plotting / graphing program, non-free. $95
WordService - adds a bunch of text reformatting tools to the Services menu, making them accessible in any program. The same page has a bunch of other useful and free services.

The original article lists PDF, but no tools. While its true OS X native support makes PDF pretty easy to use, there's still some tasks that are awkward and some useful tools out there to do t

• Transmission (Get the latest beta; the 'official' version hasn't been updated in awhile)
• VLC
• iTunes
• Seamonkey
• TextWrangler
• MS Word

That's all I can think of now.

Problem solved! Nowadays, most QuickTime movies are just H.264+AAC, both of which are MPEG-4 standards, so support for said media files is far more widespread than the old widely-used QuickTime audio and video codecs.

Hey, please inform yourself before saying such crap.
VLC is 100% opensource, the player itself is linked with opensource codecs, all 99.9% independent of the OS.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html

I don't see why not. I use a Mac as my primary machine, but the media player I use for all videos, including DVDs is GPL'd, and also runs fine on my FreeBSD box. The preferences UI is a bit rough around the edges, but apart from that it's a very nice piece of software. I can't remember the last time I ran across a video file it couldn't play.

Quite well as far as I'm concerned; Speex is useful with Asterisk (a popular and extensible open source telephone system), I use it to make high-quality low-bandwidth encodings of talk shows I work with, and a lot of players play it (including VideoLAN Client which works on many operating systems). I never have to worry about patent hassles, proprietary software hassles, or losing control of my audio to digital restrictions management.

you mean like mplayer? vlc?

I'm advising my customers to break the law? What law is broken when the law itself breaks its own law? Quick recap: The DMCA explicitly permits fair use, but the same DMCA explicitly prohibits the exercise of fair use. I'd be advising my customers to break the law just as well by advising them to buy a product which denies them their rights under the law and just live with it, as the HDCP system within Windows Vista seems designed to do.

In spite of MPAA victories such as the banning of 321 Studios' DVD X Copy, victories for the consumer such as the legalization of DeCSS (and the overdue vindication of DVD Jon) and the existence of libdvdcss going unchallenged set a precedent which will create similar victories against HDCP-style DRM.

Those victories won't come until the laws allowing lock-in or lock-out (depending on your perspective) are challenged. What else will get the law changed for the better but a slew of teed-off consumers wronged by Microsoft caving in to the immoral and possibly illegal demands of the music and movie industries?

Besides, they're not going to turn to me for help until they buy an HD disk that already broke their Windows boxen, or until their boxen break without the aid of actual protected content.

What is the difference? Well for one thing X11. When someone downloads an OSS app such as VLC or ffmpeg they get a DMG (disk Image) file they click on and a window comes up where they simply drag the icon to their hard drive to install. When they next want to use the app there is an icon they click on. Click on the icon and the app opens and the normal menu items are there where they are used to them. File, Edit, View. The user needs to download no extra files and needs to do no command line commands in the terminal etc.

It simply works and the user needs no instructions either to install or use.

Compare that to open office. They download the file the same as they are used to. Get a file they have no idea what to do with. Finally go back to the site and are told they must install an X server app but one is available called X11. Read thru pages of documentation and find that their are several versions of X11 they can install but none of them are at all easy.

Try to find that 3rd disk that came with the OS, find out that they have lost it because they have never opened it because everything else was installed when they bought the computer or had some friend that installed it for them. They call the computer store and are told by some salesperson that yea we can't sell you just a single disk we need to sell you the complete OS in a newer version.

Then they find out by searching online that all the X11 servers are free downloads and they can get them for free but which one to use?

Fink, Darwin ports apples own X server? They find that the file size is huge and comes with a large list of dependences. They have of course never heard of any of these things and so by default try to install everything. Many of these people are on dial up connections. So hours or days later they are left with a bunch of stuff that rival MS office in size and are even more complex. Now they go back and install the open office. It installs like nothing the user has ever seen. And installs it in a place they never knew existed.

Finally they have it installed and open it. Ok where do I open a new document? Go to file? Where is it on this? It isn't at the upper left corner where it is supposed to be. Its attached to the window? What's it doing there? Drag and drop a document on the icon to open it, it won't open. I must have messed up something. Well I guess MS office might be worth the money if it avoids all of this stuff and how do I get rid of fink and X11 and especially open office? If they all work like this I don't want to ever accidentally use any Open Source Software ever again.

I look at any X11 app as a testament to and complete proof that the developers are completely incompetent. I have had about 10 people so far that have tried to install and use Open office. All of them have so far decided to never use any OSS ever again and it's hard to get them to even try any workable OSS apps after trying out an x11 app. I can't say I blame them a bit.

If you want to make a Mac app make a Mac app. If you cant make a Mac app then say so and ask for a real programer to help make one. Don't make a unworkable piece of crap that 1 user in 200 might be able to get running after a fashion and claim oh! It will work on Mac too. All you are doing is making sure that users will go well out of their way to make sure that they will never use any OSS ever again. Its hard to make any Microsoft product look good but when you come up with a X11 app for OSX you are actually driving people towards buying Microsoft and away from Open Source

xbmc ... plays stuff I can't play on my windows machine.

Mac users actually appreciate well-designed interfaces, so that's not really an option.

If you don't like the interface that comes with vlc, pick another one. Incidentally I've found quicktime to be one of the most annoying fucking apps ever. The wanky little pull-outs that slide out unnecessarily are just stupid. I guess "pretty" is what stands in for "well designed" in apple-land these days.

.. while others are switching from OS X to Linux because they feel more comfortable about the transparency under which security vulnerabilities are handled..

Anyway, as on Linux and on OS X, if you install mplayer you'll still need to find external support to play WMV's. Just as on OS X, as on Linux, if you install VLC you can click a WMV and it'll play.