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Windows Media Player 9
captainclever writes "The Register has an interesting article about the posibilities for WMP Clients for Linux.
Would anyone want to use MS WMP in Linux?" See also a news.com story.
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After reading about the DeCSS case I finally decided to sit down and devote some time to getting DVD playback on my FreeBSD system. Xine seems to work pretty well. I'd prefer seing Xine and mplayer move forward rather than have WMP.
scott
For playing media there are already many solutions for all intersting platforms, and the only reason for using WMP would be for the DRM stuff...which no-one honestly likes.
I think it's a Good Thing regardless of whether people use WMP simply because it demonstrates MSFT's acceptance of a widening world where they are currently looked down on.
I use Intervideo's stuff mostly and only use alternatives eitehr by accidental association or when I'm forced into it.
Personally, I'd avoid anything that restricted my use of media I own. I don't care who produces it.
...it's the fact that these are controlled standards. The internet is a free place, and standards should be as free as possible. MS may be releasing WMP 9 such that we'll see a client on Linux, but that doesn't mean that this is a good thing.
What we'll see is a proliferation of WMP DRM through our systems, as well as Real and QuickTime. What we really need is a single open standard that can be played back on anything without proprietary software. If it's secure, so much the better for the content creators - but I don't see why they can't settle for a simple copyright at the end, like they do for their web pages.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
Hey it is wishful thinking that WMP for Linux would solve many of your media playing wishes. However, from my experience useing WMP (current) for Mac OS X (10.2) not all media is playable. Nor does the WMP work nicely with browsers other than IE.
In one word MS doesn't fully support WMP on any platform other than Windows. I must admit some of the problems are due to third party hack up solutions. (read tuning in to your fav air wave station over the internet) Maybe MS would provide some plug-in architecture to improve its media playing abilities.
Yep, NIMBY. Not In My Back Yard. The whole reason I use Linux at all is to get away from The Machine. I don't want M$ branded crap bundled in with the next distro I pick up.
I'm gonna venture a guess here, and I'll probably get modded down to the 10th level of hell for it, but here goes. My guess is that, since M$ knows it can't directly attack Linux and the GPL, it figures it'll go along with it, then tear it apart from within. Get inside the game, then start picking it apart. Since they'll more than likely want the source of their apps closed, we won't really know what's going on with it while it's running.
If the current Media Player is any suggestion, it won't be good. Media Player theives all file associations, making you go back in and change them back to the way you had them before you installed it. And who knows to what extent this DRM crap will get to. Would they go so far as to disable anything they don't find "trustworthy" in the Palladium model? Knocking out XMMS, MPTV, and locating and disabling the open OGG format's plugins?
The real problem lies in the obvious. Noone but M$ knows. And you know what they say, Knowledge is Power. Right now, M$ is holding alot (but not all) of the cards. Honsestly, if this gets any worse, I'm more than willing to move outside of the country I love, just to get away from Micro$oft. Extreme, yes. But I enjoy my personal rights and freedoms too much to have them yanked away by the likes of M$, the RIAA and the MPAA...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Could you please do a favour to the community and pack the system into an RPM and make it available on the net? I just hate having to compile stuff and taking care of the depencies myself.
Xine RPMs are available from http://freshrpms.net/ with DVD menu support and all compiled in.
As for WMP for Linux, a year ago it would have been interesting. These days all relevant players do DivX 3-5, Quicktime (_including_ Sorenson codec), DVD playing etc. MPlayer is quite possibly the most advanced player ever, with more post processing and general purpose filters and features than you could possibly need. All WMP has is name recognition.
This person has the technical clue and geek thinking abilities of a small piece of cheese, and they did just fine - Mozilla, KsIRC, KDE Patience (Freecell!), MP3 playing, KWord for editing their .DOC resume ...
I realise I'm working from a sample of one here, but IMO, KDE 3 is ready for prime time. The Unix usability problem is solved. The hard part now is greater application integration, easy hardware support and so on.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Maybe because it's a nasty, semi-legal hack using MS/Apple binaries.
You forgot to add "that works extremely well". I think it's better than WMP. It's much much much more stable (in my experience, can't speak for everyone) and supports about as many formats (more?).
I will not install proprietary binaries on my computer.
Then no soup for you!
So I assume you're talking about the codecs, anyway. Well guess what, if you don't like the fact that mplayer uses binary non-opensource codecs, then write your own. mplayer itself is opensource and they don't need to re-write every fucking codec themselves. Why don't you volunteer your support?
And if your'e not talking about the codecs, then check this (from the mplayer website): MPlayer is GPL now. In the past it contained non-GPL code from the OpenDivX project, which did not allow binary redistribution. This has been removed.
Anyway, I hope you're not thinking that MS would release WMP opensource, cause... umm...
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
Let's see here: Redmond giant creates a native client for their media formats to run on a competing operating system. If they release a Linux client, Microsoft will be acknowledging the sizable (and growing) user base of Linux and would show by their actions that ignoring the Linux crowd would be harmful to their business. That would be the story, not that Linux users can get WMP9 audio/video (which, BTW, is already possible).
... and just when everyone and their dog has switched - the cock will probably not crow today until you have all denied three times to ever start using WMP - then Microsoft will suddenly dump WMP support for Linux - or even better, WMP will cost money, as "the free days are over and Linux users should know that software costs money". Embrace and extend this is called. Been there, done that.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
It would be nice to have the option to run WMP in Linux
Crossover does just exactly that. It only runs WMP 6.4, but at least that plays proprietary WMP files. It can also play as well Quicktime files and Shockwave. Well worth the $25 to register. I know I've been extremelly happy with it.
is not whether you will use WM9, but whether or not the content providers use will it? And that answer, unfortunately, is yes, the content providers will be swayed by the monopoly and use the largest installed base media player. In fact, they already are.
Just to see where these things were going, last weekend I watched a few movies from movielink and cinema(something) and they had a 'few' requirements:
1. Windows
2. Either Real or WM
Regardless if we choose to use either of those, the content providers definitely will not, so we'll all be relegated to watching Quicktime trailers and definitely not DRM stuff, which both Movielink and the Cinema(something) site had.
Personally, I'd much rather log onto a site and watch a movie that way instead of going to the video store. And either of the sites will let you download the movie and watch it. I think they both last for 24hrs.
One thing about the 'service' tho that I thought sucked was that I paid $10 for a month of 'premium' access, but all the new movies were 'pay-per-view' which has an additional $3.95. That was pretty inconvenient. Actually kinda pissed me off. In that case, I'm better off going to the video store and freeing up my bandwidth.
Anyway, back to the players; remember they're just the client and are the keys to the really bigger things: the content on the back end. Unfortunately, 95% of the computing world runs Windoze and their path of least resistance, monopoly pushed apps. These are always gonna be the people that the content providers will cater to. So I don't know what there is to do about that since it won't matter to the providers one bit if the Linux folks can't watch their movies.
Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the Real Helix stuff or even Quicktime pick up some steam. Apple has stated that they think that DRM as it exists for content now is not the way to go. So maybe they can use our support too.
One other note, the only way I see the content providers backing away from WM9 is if it is found as insecure as IE. This could persuade them to go for something else. But then again, once you have a big catalog of digital flix that you have to re-encode for another platform, that decision to just ship, even in the wake of security concerns, seems highly unlikely. Or maybe not..
Here is the list of codecs their website has listed:
# The most important video codecs: MPEG1 (VCD) and MPEG2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video
# MPEG4, DivX
# Windows Media Video v7 (WMV1), v8 (WMV2) and v9 (WMV3) used in
# RealVideo 1.0, 2.0 (G2), 3.0 (RP8), 4.0 (RP9)
# Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3), Cinepak, RPZA and other common QuickTime codecs
# Intel Indeo codecs (3.x,4.1,5.0)
# VIVO v1, v2
# MJPEG variants, HuffYUV, ZLIB/MSZH, ASV2 and other capture/hardware formats
# FLI, RoQ and other old/rare animation formats
# The most important audio codecs: MPEG layer 1, 2 and 3 (MP3) audio
# AC3/A52 (dolby digital) audio (software or SP/DIF)
# WMA (DivX Audio) v1, v2 (native codec)
# WMA 9 (WMAv3), Voxware audio, ACELP.net etc (using x86 DLLs)
# RealAudio: COOK, SIPRO, ATRAC3, DNET (using RP's plugins)
# QuickTime: Qclp, Q-Design QDMC/QDM2, MACE 3/6 (using QT's DLLs)
# Ogg Vorbis audio codec
# VIVO audio (g723, Vivo Siren) using x86 DLL
# alaw/ulaw, (ms)gsm, pcm, *adpcm and other simple old audio formats
Now...why would you want to run WMP9 when it doesn't support any where near that many codecs? Oh...you want more you say? What about these output options:
# General: x11:X11 with SHM extension
# xv:X11 using overlays with the Xvideo extension (hardware YUV & scaling)
# gl:OpenGL renderer
# gl2:Alternative OpenGL renderer (with multiple textures)
# dga:X11 DGA extension (both v1.0 and v2.0)
# fbdev:Output to general framebuffers
# svga:Output to SVGAlib
# sdl:SDL >= v1.1.7 driver (supports software scaling, and versions >=1.1.8 even support Xvideo, thus hardware rendering)
# ggi:similar to SDL
# aalib:Textmode rendering
# vesa:display through the VESA BIOS (also needed for Radeon TV-out)
# directfb:DirectFB support
# Card specific: vidix:VIDeo Interface for *niX
# xvidix:VIDIX in X window
# mga:Matrox G200/G400 hardware YUV overlay via the mga_vid device
# xmga:Matrox G200/G400 overlay (mga_vid) in X11 window (Xv emulation on X 3.3.x !)
# syncfb:Matrox G400 YUV support on framebuffer (not tested, maybe broken)
# 3dfx:Voodoo 3/Banshee hardware YUV support (/dev/3dfx) (not yet tested, maybe broken)
# tdfxfb:Voodoo 3/Banshee hardware YUV support on tdfx framebuffer (works!)
# Special: png:PNG files output (use -z switch to set compression)
# jpeg:JPEG files output
# gif89a:Animated GIF files output
# yuv4mpeg:yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools
# pgm:PGM files output (for testing purposes)
# md5:MD5sum output (for mpeg conformance tests)
# null:Null output (for speed tests/benchmarking)
I love Mplayer...it loves you...why use something from MS when you don't have to?
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Um....
.ogg files.
A fixed point decoder "Tremor" has been released and licensed BSD style. http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/hardware.html
So you no longer need a floating point capable processor to decode
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
MPlayer reads all formats, including Quicktime Sorenson 1 and 3, RealVideo, all Windows Media Player formats (WMV 1, 2 and 3) and does not cost anything !