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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'
"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.
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!
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.