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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?

3 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. 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!
  2. 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.

  3. 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.