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Linux Drivers For Hollywood Plus DVD Card

Posted by Hemos on from the trying-to-make-it-work dept.

Robotech_Master writes: "Someone's written and GPL'd Linux drivers for the Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card. Source code available, but very primitive so far -- this is only the very first release. " Looks rough -- anyone been able to get it to work yet?

7 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. A/V synch problem? Nothing new.... by imac.usr · · Score: 4
    What is yet to be done: Video/Audio synchronization

    If anybody ever gets this part working, please apply for a job at Apple so you can fix their &$%#@! software DVD decoding....

    In fairness, the recent updates to the system make it perform much better. But still.

    --
    I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
  2. Re:Will people never learn? by cdrguru · · Score: 4
    The problem isn't that people are trying to "steal" from MPAA, the DVD Consortium and so forth, but that these people want to have their hands in OUR pockets.

    When they decided that we could "buy" products and still have no control over their use, this became silly. Intellectual property is one thing, but how about property rights?

    If I buy a book, I can do anything with it, except copy it. If I buy a DVD I can do less than I can with a book. This is progress? Look at where things are going. Will it stop with DVD's? No, it hasn't stopped there already. You can now buy a "music player" that the manufacturer has booby-trapped so that some functionality can be disabled remotely. What???

    I just want my physical property to be "mine" and to have control over it. If someone wants to rent me the rights to read a book but no other rights over it, I expect to pay less than I would for buying the book.

  3. Fighting the wrong fight by DeeKayWon · · Score: 4
    But then our chief weapon against the evils of DVD encryption is lost. The content is still encrypted. Those MPAA idiots are still locking us into their commercial interests, and are not thinking about the future long-term culteral heritage. 100 years laters, archivists interested in what we see, how we think will laugh at us for trying to protect the unprotectable. The region-locks are also provide too much power over how we use the technology.

    Ah, the weakness of society.

    I myself am outraged by what the MPAA and the DVD people are trying to do. And the way I'm dealing with it is to not buy/rent/watch DVDs!

    Saying "jeez, what they're doing is really bad" and then turning around and buying their product is like sticking a big "rape me hard" sign on your back. If you don't agree with their business practices, don't give them your patronage! It floors me how people often neglect to vote in the most effective way - with their dollars.

    People are inherently selfish. We're seeing a lot of that here, from those whose main argument was they they couldn't watch The Matrix on their Linux boxes, and are now thinking that they have no argument since DVD playback through licensed players are coming to Linux. What about those running *BSD? Any other Unix? Hell, what about BeOS? Wasn't Be meant for multimedia? Sure, there's open source drivers for two decoder cards out there (H+ & DXr2) that could theoretically be rewritten for any other OS, but why should we be so limited in our choice of hardware? If I run BeOS on a system that doesn't have a free PCI slot for a DVD decoder card, does that mean I should be shut out of watching DVDs on that system?

    Our "chief weapon" never was that "Linux users couldn't play DVDs". Our chief weapon is that we are being denied fair use and that the MPAA and DVDCCA are illegally profitting from various tactics in the DVD market (player licensing and region coding/price fixing). That and some legitimate users (such as myself, whose copy of SoftDVD won't work with the ViperV550 it legally came with unless I use hideously out of date drivers) are being sorely inconvenienced by these schemes.

    In my second term EE design class this year, we had a mantra: "If the customer ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." And why should the customer pay for soemthing that doesn't satisfy them or outright pisses them off? Anyone who detests the MPAA and DVDCCA's tactics should vote with their wallets. We're the customers and we have to show them that we ain't happy.

  4. Hollywood by PSiLiCON · · Score: 4

    I've read (on the Sigma Designs site) that there is a digital set-top box reference design based on Linux and the Intel Celeron processor. You can check the full press release here.

    I can only hope that the drivers created for this device would be released to the public in at least binary form. Unfortunately, I doubt that the greedy company (Sigma Designs) will be so generous. I'm sure they view this as a proprietary trade secret which could generate serious revenue for their company.

    PSiLiCON

  5. Necessary steps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5
    Yeah, I got it working, but it was a bitch. The source is patchy, but what do you want? I can't recall an application that didn't start off kinda sketchy. This is how I got it to work:
    1. Turn off all the lights in the room (gives it that theatrical atmosphere. Also gives you a chance to sneak up on the card. More on this later)
    2. Be vewy vewy qwiet. Youw hunting dwivers. hehehehe
    3. Insert the DVD card, and boot up linux.
    4. Surruptitiously connect the card to a standard car battery. This is why stealth is important. If it's paying attention, it won't let you do that. Let it be fascinated by all the daemons firing up. I used jumper cables, but I'm sure there's a better way.
    5. Softly hum "Just Can't Get Enough" by Depeche Mode. If you really don't want to, you could try "Entertain Me" by Soft Cell, but it's important that you hum.
    6. Nibble on a hunk of swiss while compiling the drivers. I tried it once without, and once with gorgonzola. Didn't work either time. There's just something about swiss I guess.
    7. Summon any fourth circle or greater demon. This may require additional ritual, depending upon your relationship with the denziens of hell. If you're a consultant, a phonecall should suffice.
    8. Dance your heart out. You ARE LORD of the DANCE!!!
    9. Bang your head precisely fifteen times off your keyboard. The random sequence of characters generated should take care of all the switches you need.
    10. Fly! Fly like the wind!
    11. Drop in your copy of Troll 2, and you're good to go! It's important that you watch this movie first, as that the DVD contains a little bit of operational code to properly install the drivers. After that, you're good to go.

    All in all, not any more difficult than getting a Sound Blaster to run. I was quite impressed. Goodbye, windows partition!
  6. What about the encryption? by (void*) · · Score: 5
    Isn't some form of DeCSS needed to handle the decryption? Or is this handled all by the hardware? If this is the case, there a whole lot of interesting issues.

    Firstly, Creative has shown that it can comply with CSS (fsck them!) and still make cards that have open-sourced drivers. More power to them! This mean that there is chance that the other unices can too have DVD playback.

    But then our chief weapon against the evils of DVD encryption is lost. The content is still encrypted. Those MPAA idiots are still locking us into their commercial interests, and are not thinking about the future long-term culteral heritage. 100 years laters, archivists interested in what we see, how we think will laugh at us for trying to protect the unprotectable. The region-locks are also provide too much power over how we use the technology.

    Well, it's hard to judge if this is a good thing or not.

  7. RIAA will have a hart attack by roman_mir · · Score: 5

    More teenagers to be arrested, do folks at 2600 know about this one?

    --
    You can't handle the truth.