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Linux DVD hardware support From SiS
An anonymous reader pointed us to a press release from SIS that
proclaims that they will support Linux DVD soon as well as 3D stuff. It's a little sketchy, but looks positive on the 3D stuff, and aims to support LiViD. Here's hopin'
I've had so much crap using a special application for watching dvd movies. The worst part is that the creative labs program only supports overlay. But we can't use the decoder card's overlay because it makes the passthrough image crappy when you're not watching a movie. The tv output is excellent, but it's damn near impossible to click on the bonus goodies sometimes. I'd love to have the opportunity to choose from several programs that utilize the card from a universal driver.
"Woah... I know Chmod"
Unless SiS has some kind of leverage against the MPAA, expect a binary-only driver with an undocumented API/ioctl() set that basically only lets you play DVDs in a window. Exposing a general API would allow (gasp!) copying or other "unauthorized" digital manipulation of the MPEG stream.
Personally, I'd like to be able to drive the decompression process myself, so I can use the movie as an OpenGL texture to map on to a sphere and bounce it around. The Cthugha-like possibilities are endless, but only if programmers can get at the data in a meaningful way.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Will most of the people fighting the RIAA give up and go watch their movies? How much of the rebellion is about freedom, and how much is about playing DVDs under Linux?
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I suppose this could be taken to mean that they're going to open up the specs to this chipset. However, since they refer specifically to the LiViD projet, I am more inclined to suspect that this actually means that they're preparing (closed source?) codecs that interface with Lamp's plugin API. Which isn't terrible, but isn't an optimal solution, either.
But since we don't actually know anything, I'd say do one of two things: 1) Find an e-mail address for their marketing department (or, preferably, someone more informed) and politely ask for clarification, and 2) don't flame them in the meantime for not telling us more, not promising to open-source the spec, etc.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
I admit there is some coolness factor in having a dvd play while you're on irc or something, but having seen pc based decoding and a standalone machine, you get a more immersive feeling when you dont have to be distracted by the occasional mouse pointer, or the chuntering of hard drives. Not to mention the eternal humming noise of your average PC's overloaded fans.
Even worse, when the damn screensaver kicks in just as the hero is about to do something dangerous/sensuous.
So, what are people's preferences, and reasons for them?
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
It will NOT be opensource.
Get on the livid-dev mailinglist, one of the SiS guys is on there.
Commercial efforts can NOT open source DVD programs. The legal risk is worse for them than for people like LIVID, who have no financial stake in a DVD player.
--ryan.
Don't say, "don't quote me," because if no one quotes you, you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
What exactly is loose-knit? I think that he's trying to call us stupid! j.k.
Notice that just the commercial shipments will increase at that rate. Does this include downloaded free versions? The chip that is the point of the article will help ensure that non-commercial shipments will continue to increase, too
--
Linux DVD
Promised but not delivered
Blame MPAA
This is awesome, except not really. It's great that a company is offering Linux support, but an announcement like this in the Windows world would be met with laughs. SIS has never made even a mediocre graphics chip. All their chips have rated from Man this sucks to Man this sucks as much as Windows 2000! It really shows how easily exited the alternate OS community is about any support whatsoever.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The administrators of this site need to get their act together. This is probably the 20th time I've submitted a story and a week later it gets posted to slashdot under someone else's name. It's hard to believe that someone actually sent this in before me, since I submitted it the night of the press release...
It pisses me off, they should bother to actually read the submissions rather than postign randomly.
When will slashdot realize that Linux isnt the only other OS besides windows? Just because one company decided to do a DVD thing for linux doesnt resolve the whole issue. The root of the problem of not having dvd support in OS's other than windows is that DVD is not an open format/protocol, simply because Linux has become popular and there will likely be DVD support in the future for it. What about BeOS, *BSD, and everything else, attack the root of the problem and not just your specific needs!
You're complaining about SiS hardware, but who wrote the poor drivers? The open source community or SiS?
SiS has opened their specs in the past, which is what the open source community wants. Don't blame them if the drivers are not up to par, blame the open source community.
Let's have a little consistency here. NVIDIA gets bashed for releasing good drivers, but they won't release their specs. SiS gets bashed because they've released their specs, but the open source drivers suck.
What's it going to be?
"Good people drink good beer"
Does anyone know if having a computer DVD player means you have to pay the TV license (in the UK)? I know they say you have to if you've got a card which can pick up broadcast signals, but does it apply to DVD?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Pretty much the only reason I ordered the DVD option on my Compaq 1800T running BeOS, Linux and NT was so that I could watch movies on airplanes. Being a consultant who just moved away from Silicon Valley, I expect to be traveling a lot.
The machine came stock with Windows 98. Installing NT ate my hard disk so now I have to install a third-party DVD player and I'd rather use Linux than try to get a licensed one working on NT.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
They officially support the OpenBIOS project, of which I am a member (ok, so I haven't been active in a while, I got a Linux job, etc...)
SiS provides BIOS code *and* hardware, so there.
Stop trashing them, they're really on our side.
SiS support had just been included in XF86 when i had an SiS card, but the driver for my particular card was one of the ones that was supposed to be complete. It was crap, the hardware was slow, and the resolutions offered were rubbish. I gave up with the SiS and bought a cheap S3 Virge based card, which worked fine, no problems.
Now, don't even get me started on the cheap soundcard i used to have too....
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Windows Media player under WINE works. Havn't tried the Apple player, but i have a feeling that would work too. Only problem i have is that the audio has to be downgraded to 8bit, 16bit gives nasty results with lots of extra noise. But the movie codecs work.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I was using the latest (Not CVS) release of WINE (The version escapes me, and i'm not using that box atm). The player was mplayer2, pretty sure it was a 6.4 version, and it worked fine (Apart from aforementioned audio problems).
Something we may be doing diferently is that i have Winblows 95 installed on a small partition, and have WINE set to use the Windows native DLL's, rather than the built-in's that WINE has.
Syllable : It's an Operating System