New IBM Linux Notebook Includes DVD Player

An anonymous reader noted that there's a story on Newsforge about IBM's new ThinkPad. This story says it's the "first commercially available Linux computer with the ability to play back DVDs." The 900MHz Linux T22 will come with a commercial Linux DVD player. Meanwhile Xine, Xmovie, and OMS race to be the first one to support all the features (I need subtitles for anime darnit!) in an open source project, but since CSS plugins float around the net for each of them, actually playing DVDs is something they can do pretty well depending on your hardware. Most interesting about this LinDVD included with the ThinkPad is the implementation of one feature no user needs: Macrovision... done as a kernel module? Hrm.

Comments

xine does subtitles (almost)

[jandrese]

Xine lets you display overlays (subtitles) but it doesn't do a very good job of it yet. Unfortunatly most Anime houses use the overlay feature in ways it was never ment to be used in valient efforts to get a third color on the screen, which confuses the heck out of many software DVD players.

Also, I've never been able to get xines .ifo support to work correctly, so on some DVDs you'll only get 1/2 or less of the subtitles.

Still, the feature is there, and possibly even useful in some circumstances.

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

Macrovision module security

[acb]

Out of purely academic interest, how much care has been taken to ensure the integrity of the Macrovision module? Anyone know whether it is possible to recompile the kernel in question and get the binary driver to work with it, optionally hacking the driver? Does the Macrovision module have any sort of cryptographic integrity checking mechanism? How hard would it be for a rogue user to (a) replace it with a dummy module, or (b) interpose a "man in the middle" module which loads it and tricks it into disabling Macrovision?

The intersection between "trusted client" security (as demanded by the MPAA/RIAA) and open source OSes should be interesting to watch.

Re:macrovision ...NO-COPIES explained

[victim]

That message usually means you have a `reviewer' copy of the tape or dvd. The studios send out dumptruck loads of tapes to newpapers, tv news shows, and basically any creature that might generate some press for them. In order to keep these from dilluting sales they mark them.

Wrong

[b1t r0t]

Macrovision doesn't mess with timing at all. It puts a spike signal into the vertical retrace. This messes with signal levels in such a way that the cheap AGC (automatic gain control) circuits in most VHS video recorders freak out and mess with the brightness of the picture. There's also a Macrovision II (aka Colorstripe) which messes with the colorburst signal on a couple of lines of the picture, but this can't even be recorded onto master VHS tapes, and is only generated by DVD players. Either way, since this is patented by Macrovision, studios must pay MV whenever they enable either of these features on a DVD disc.

Betamax video recorders were not vulnerable to this signal and would supposedly copy it perfectly. Ditto for Go Video VHS recorders, although I think they were eventually forced to put the crappy AGC circuit into their stuff a couple of years back.

Time Base Correctors fix the problem because the nasty signals are in the sync areas of the screen, which they throw out and replace with clean signals. But a true TBC (which makes sure that entire scanlines come through with the right timing, something that videotape is not accurate at) is overkill for Macrovision.