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Linux DVD Players Reviewed
Anonymous Coward writes "Linux Journal have posted a review of DVD players on their site. Interesting review, that covers most of the main players, although there are a few minor errors." I've
settled on Xine since it does most of the divx, wmv, and mpegs I want to see. If
it just did Sorenson QT, it'd be perfect.
Well...I have a 13" television, and a 19" monitor...what would you do? =)
~Windfinder
DVD how-to this is a great how-to for getting xine to work with dvd nav! great how-to!
keanmarine.com
This is false. If you start gmplayer, and then middle click in the video window, you get a menu which clearly states: "Play DVD"
So in fact, you do not need to start it from the command line. A real problem though is that sometimes this does not play back the desired audio track. Depending on the DVD, you may have to specify the audio track on the commandline.
All in all, mplayer is a sweet piece of software and arpi and the others deserve thanks for providing us (me at least) with a great media player.
For some reason mplayer doesn't seem to get too much press. But honestly, it is easily the best one..
At the moment it is easily the fastest (I know; I have a p500, and the speed difference between it and many others (I've tried way more than this review) is incredible), and development is very fast at the moment (xine is rather stagnant). The team is working hard at getting core features down before they hit the frills. Some people may argue that all the optimizations aren't supposed to be considered core issues, but screw that. I want smooth DVD playback!!
At this moment they have lots of amazing features like mencoder, which is a related video encoding project, vidix output (their own hardware accelerated video output, which is blazing fast), support for many many file types, and the speed is incredible.
Some gripes people have had, for instance (a) wasn't GPL and (b) binaries need to be compiled on a specific machine for optimization--both are moot points now! They are now fully GPL and are moving all the optimization to runtime configurable rather than compile-time defined (they are very far along with this). You should expect official packages to enter all distributions soon.
Really, it's an amazing project. They catch some flak, but honestly, it performs very well, and is going to get even better! Once the core has stabilized they will polish up all the outside stuff.
First step : run Xine. Oh, except it sucks, because the version packaged with my distro is several months old. Watch out for this.
Second step: uninstall current Xine, go to the Xine homepage, and install the latest version. You may need either the tarball like I did, or there may be an RPM for you.
Third step: look in the links section at the bottom for CaptainCSS, download it, follow the instructions carefully, as they are non-standard, and you will have a fully working DVD player.
Final step: remember to click the D4D button rather than the DVD button.
Oh ... actual final step: curse the MPAA for making your life harder than it needs to be. Yes, DVD encryption sucks, but I won't go into why here, there are plenty of other /. stories that cover that. Anyway, that should get you going. If you get stuck, then try opening a ticket at protonic :)
... even with the same video signal. Whoever modded the parent post up as "insightful" has shit for brains.
In answer to the question posted: Why not just get an el cheapo dvd standalone unit for your TV. You get a remote and probably a bigger picture. Why would anyone watch DVDs on their computer, Gnu/Linux or Windows?
Television looks like shit. It is interlaced, with only 480 lines of resolution (NTSC) or 576 lines (PAL). This means that each stroke of the electronic pen only writes 240 lines (288 lines PAL) per stroke, with each stroke happening 60 times / second (50 times / second PAL). In short, the image is low res, flickery, and fuzzy.
Contrast that with a 1920x1200 24" LCD monitor, which can play DVDs in progressive, rather than interlaced mode (meaning each swipe of the electronic pen across the screen, 60 times each second, writes all 480 [PAL: 576] lines, rather than just have of them), and can do so at resolutions most consumer televisions simply cannot match, such as 720p.
Hell, you can take analog video signals, captured with either V4L(1|2) or firewire, encode and compress them into xvid format, and have a better picture than the TV was capable of displaying during the live broadcast. I know. I've done this with two episodes of Max Headroom, with astonishing results. Even my old 8-mm college videos (not hi-8 mind you, just 8-mm video tape) looks better after it has been digitized, deinterlaced, and displayed on a computer monitor than it does fresh from the master source displayed on the same monitor (but still interlaced), much less the low res television.
Then there are all kinds of scaling issues involved when trying to use consumer DVD players with high quality monitors or plasma screens, so much so that many videophiles build HTPCs (Home Theatre PCs) in order to fix the scaling artifacts and achieve better quality output than is possible even if spending tens of thousands of dollars on specialized scan converters and scaler hardware designed to do the very same thing.
The general purpose computer is the best A/V display device available to normal people today, and will remain so for the forseeable future, unless congress decides normal folks shouldn't be allowed to possess the power of a home computer and passes the Hollings Bill or some variant thereof, in which case it is time to emigrate.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
you just buy a £30 controller and usb dongle i think to make X-box work properley with dvds.
--
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
mplayer and xine work ok. My favorite is ogle, as it is the most complete dvd support you will find. vlc (video lan client) I have heard also works well. non-ogle players typically take a long time to wade through css encryption when present, and has better sdupport for dvd menus (dvdnav works mostly, but still has a few issues compared to ogle.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I think you're talking on a different level than most of us who would think of DVD APIs. No, there's not yet a "DVD player library" that everyone can use - but that's because unlike Microsoft, where (a) their source is closed, and (b) they have gobs of money to toss at the DVD CCA to get a copy of the DVD book specs, Linux DVD players are being developed largely by way of reverse engineering.
However, stuff like libdvdread (which hooks to libdvdcss, if it's present) is pretty much used by everyone who's interested in DVD playback. I know the Xine guys have done some work on writing a Mozilla plugin that hooks the xine-lib backend for embedded media content playback. Don't get stuck in the Microsoft way of thinking though - that we should all just use what is gifted to us by the likes of MS, and not ask questions. The different groups developing DVD support on Linux are (at least to some degree) cooperating and learning from one another, so eventually all the Linux DVD players will be really good. Though I personally like Xine a lot (its DXr3 support is actually getting pretty good).
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I have not tried the DXR3 support in Xine, but in mplayer it has an annoying habit of getting out of sync with the video. I have patched my version of mplayer to fix this, but the sync problem seems to depend on the DXR3 board rev - some people have no problems, others (like me) get the problem.
My friends are underwhelmed that I have managed to turn a $2000 PC into a DVD player that does not work quite as well as a $200 dedicated device. However the big advantage of mplayer+ dxr3 is the ability to play *any supported media format* to the TV. DivX included. That is the real win for me - If I could not do that I would have thrown in the towel by now and bought a "real" DVD player.
With this facility I can capture TV broadcasts from a BT878 card, save in the disk space economical DIVX format, then play back at leisure. So I have now turned my $2000 PC into a bad version of a $500 TIVO device ! Actually if I could buy a TIVO I would, except they are not available where I live (Australia).
So you don't have to turn your head away from the monitor every time you want to watch a part of the movie. Most geeks' computer chairs are more comfortable than their couches, anyway. :P
Now I can donate my hard earned money to the MPAA and watched their css crippled movies only on their terms.
Since these players pretty much all use libdvdcss, which is an unlicensed implementation of CSS and even exploits weaknesses in CSS to recover the DVD keys (rather than having an official player key), I'd say you can safely consider yourself to be watching their movies on your own terms, having successfully circumvented their lame copyright control system.
Rest easy; there is a very good chance that using these players not only pisses off the MPAA, but might even be illegal as well! What more can any self-respecting geek ask for?
In case that's not quite enough for you, you could always make your violation of the DVDCCA complete by buying some out-of-region DVDs and modding your DVD drive to play them. Or just pop over to China and buy some non-region-coded, non-encrypted pirate copies of your favorite movies! Put your money where your mouth is and support those hard-working pirates.
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From the article:
Xine only supports the playback of unencrypted DVD directly, but support for encrypted DVDs is provided by a third-party plugin (xine_d4d_plugin).
...
Unfortunately, Xine does not support DVD menus directly; however, there is a plugin called dvdnav (available from prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dvd) that adds this functionality to Xine. This plugin is a must-have if you intend to use Xine for DVD playback
Actually, the current recommended way to play all DVDs, encrypted and unencrypted, is with dvdnav. If you have installed libdvdcss (preferably the one available at the Ogle web site, I believe), dvdnav will recognize it and use it.
The xine_d4d_plugin isn't maintained well and doesn't work at all with the latest versions of Xine, AFAIK. dvdnav is the better choice.
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mplayer is the shit. it can output with aalib, AND also play movies from the *console*, using VESA
I have both a PlayStation 2 and an Xbox, both of which I have purchased the DVD playback kits for. Though it's not necessary for the PlayStation, the remote certainly is more useful for DVD playback than the controller is.
:)
Anyway - the remote for the PlayStation 2 is $20 at Wal Mart or Best Buy. The DVD Playback Kit for Xbox is $30 and contains a remote and a piece of hardware that fits into one of the controller ports (same as on PS2). Whereas on PS2 you can play DVDs without the remote, it is necessary for the Xbox. That means that the cost is nowhere near £80 - more like £20 or USD $30.
While it may just be a matter of personal preference, I do feel that the Xbox remote is better all-around. I don't like the ergonomic look of it, but its function far surpasses the PS2's. The PS2 basically made their remote a "wireless controller" complete with Triangle, Circle, Square and X buttons. I shit you not. Why they couldn't have omitted these and made something a little more normal looking, I'm not sure. But they're there.
The Xbox remote, on the other hand, is just a perfectly normal DVD remote. No silly buttons - it's all about playing back DVDs. It works. That's the most important thing.
To use the newer DVD software, one must buy a $35 memory card for their PS2 and install the software to that. The Xbox, of course, has the software on the hard drive, which isn't getting filled up any time soon. But an 8MB memory card can go relatively quickly if you play a lot of games and have the DVD software installed.
As for actual DVD playback quality, hands-down Xbox. The PS2 has several display problems that have already been noted in replies here. The Xbox just looks like a normal DVD player. I consider this a good thing.
You may want to purchase the "Advanced AV Pack" for the Xbox if you plan to use it as a DVD player - it comes with S-Video cables, which I personally consider necessary to viewing DVDs. YMMV.
To break it down: The Xbox will cost you $330 with a DVD playback kit and will put out some great looking images. The PS2 will cost you $300 to play DVDs and will look okay most of the time but will really irritate the living hell out of you at others. To make it an actual home-theater DVD watching component, you'll want to spend another $35 for the memory card and $20 for the remote, for a total of $355.
To break it down even further: useful DVD playback will cost you an extra $30 for the Xbox or $55 for the PS2. And the Xbox looks better. Don't be stupid. Use the Xbox.
One caveat: the Xbox doesn't support progressive scan. This probably won't be an issue, unless you have a progressive scan TV. If you do, you probably have enough money to buy a separate DVD player that supports progressive scan. So just do that.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
A screenie shows the DVD playback working (using the xine engine) but it will have a KDE wrapper. It works but is a bit rough :)
I also hate the xine GUI and I work on the xine project but the emphasis at the moment is increasing stability, flexability and quality of playback (oh and ironing out those pesky DVD-menu bugs).
Rich
Smart-ass...
Look at the link again and then go to their shop and try to buy it. I'll save you the search. You CANNOT buy this product since it's for EMBEDDED OEMs only!
Same shit is also with InterVideo: "LinDVD, InterVideo's Linux software DVD player, is currently available only to manufacturers for evaluation and integration. Linux users should be aware that we are engaged with top computer, Internet appliance, and set-top box manufacturers to provide the highest qualilty DVD playback for their devices."
Which leaves you only with the open source players option and you simply CANNOT buy an end-user Linux DVD player application..
Hetz (Heunique)
You might try ogle. I get so-so performance from videolan, sometimes losing sync or getting halty video. Ogle is just beautiful - menus work great, sound is awesome, and the video doesn't halt. I haven't tried Xine or mplayer since I don't need anything but ogle.
MPlayer supports the framebuffer and I have it working on my box.
You might want to look at NuppelVideo. I've used it to create mpegs froma tv-tuner card, which I subsequently burned to VCD. I've been very happy with the results. The tarball includes documentation and scripts to convert the recorded files to mpeg using lame, mpeg2enc, and mplex.
Also, the Linux VCR HOWTO may have some useful information for you.
Most DVDs will play on a "regionless" DVD player, i.e. one that does not check region code. The free software DVD players do not check region code.
Some DVDs have menus that ask the DVD player what region it is, and if they don't like the answer, they put up a menu that says "you can't play this disk". I haven't tried the others, but Xine has a setup menu where you can tell it what region you want it to report. Thus if you are playing a region-locked disk that wants region 2, you can set Xine to report region 2 so it will work.
If you can decrypt CSS yourself, are you still affected by regions? Does the DVD player deny the whole disk or just access to the deecryption keys?
It depends.
Older DVD-ROM drives didn't do region checking themselves, and relied on the software player to do it. Obviously, none of the free players bother. All newer DVD-ROM drives, however, do the region checking in the hardware (well, firmware), and if the region code on the DVD doesn't match the code on the DVD-ROM then the drive will in fact refuse to give up any data. If you fopen() a file it will succeed, but fread() will return no data (IIRC, it's been a while since I looked). There are hacks for most of them that can fix this defect, however. In most cases this involves loading new firmware and you can download and install the update in a matter of minutes. Of course, you do risk ruining the drive if something goes wrong.
But that's not the whole answer, because there's a scripting language for DVDs (that's how they make all those interactive menus and games), and some DVDs implement some checking in this scripting language. Basically, the script queries the drive and asks it what region it is set to. If it answers anything other than the region the DVD is intended for then the script directs the player to show a "you can't play this" screen and to disable chapter selection, etc. controls so that you are stuck there.
Even *that's* not the end of the story, though, because it's the player that executes the interpreter that runs the scripts from the DVD, and in the case of open source players, the interpreters are open source as well. So, interpreter authors are trying to write interpreters that will second guess the scripts they're executing and refuse to honor the code that would lock you out.
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