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Jon Bringing WMV9 to Linux
julie-h writes "DVD Jon has done it again. This time it wasn't Apple the target, but Microsoft's WMV9 video format. There is as always a working Proof of Concept program with screenshots."
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He's just a front for a large group of hackers. He's talented, but he doesn't just sit around and do all this by himself.
Is it going to support those annoying-as-piss instructions in some files that open IE and point it to random websites?
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I have a mother in law who is Hungarian, when she visits, she watches hungarian language programming, offered only in, windows media format.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I suppose I'm pleased that this will give me access to a wider range of material playable on my Linux boxen. On the other hand, I feel uneasy, knowning almost certainly that this isn't legal (C'mon, this is DVD Jon!). While I might disagree with the law, isn't Linux still trying to regain respectability after the SCO accusations? They may have been false, but claims of pirated software in Linux wrt this are almost certainly true.
Damn his desktop looks nice.
My fedora desktop looks like garbage.
Of course, noone in the linux community give a ripe fuck about whether or not the code they run is legal.
Fool!
That's all we care about. Why do you think we make so much of an issue about companies making exclusive deals to release video and audio in formats that don't have any sort of official support from the format creator? It's not like we own DVD-audio players and our music only comes in SACD; the ability to play WM9 is only several hundred lines of code away and yet we're expected to purchase a completely different operating system to be able to play them.
The sad story about using "illegal" code in Linux (isn't libdvdread still like this?) is that it is often more useful than the a) hard to find b) not that great altenative. I personally find that where there is both a commercial and free version of a linux program ported from Windows, the commercial version acts like cripple-ware.
Direct away from face when opening.
Gee, that's great. Fantastic. Except I have Linux running on a PowerPC. What's that? I'm SOL because those closed-source DLLs are for a different processor? Darn. Maybe this is a good thing after all.
The worst thing about this is that if software companies actually *supported* Linux, they would never have to deal with any of this. They are forcing people to crack copy protection so they can view media that they purchased online. I don't really understand it. There's Windows Media Player for Mac OS X and its market share is roughly equal to that of Linux. It really wouldn't be that hard for Microsoft to release a generic codec pack for Linux.
There is no such thing as illegal code.
Only illegal laws.
Yeah - but he's the one who get his "brass ones" nailed to the Inquisition chair every time some DMCA twit gets a knot in his gonch.
one better than mcleodeight
When people who didn't get permission from the site owners stop posting stories. Oh, and when the editors start informing site admins before they post stories and link to mirrors if their site can't handle the load.
Sleep is futile.
WMV9 is a fairly new codec that does not have native support for anything but Windows. If you have it working in Linux, that's because you're running x86 and are using the Windows dll to decode it. If you're not running on x86 or aren't using a closed source library, you're not watching WMV9, but an older WMV codec.
Personally, I'm quite happy to see this. For one thing, using the dll is slow; too slow to run on my Epia. For another thing, an open source decoder means it should eventually make it to VNC on my Mac. A fast cross-platform decoder. Yes, please!
The president is not appointed by god, and just because the president says stuff about god doesn't make it true...
I'm too tired for real examples, but think of how often Dubya invokes God - very unsavory, if I should say so (see sig)
Yeah, xine and mplayer can do it, but it's not native. They load the windows codecs from MS's dll files, which is a) probably illegal, b) slow, and c) only works on x86 processors. This new open-source implementation should work with all architectures.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
...note that this type of work may become illegal if the EU embraces software patents.
As you're in the one region of the world that seems to not be bowing down to corporate interests at every opportunity, please do what you can to ensure it doesn't happen.
I *want* to watch video on my Linux box; I don't want to have to buy MS product just so my kids can watch movies that we've paid for.
Oh, I dunno. the last time they tried that 'round these parts the Økokrim prosecution got slapped down by the courts. Since it appears to be a solution based around the VC-1 standard, and not using anything proprietary as far as I can tell, the likelyhood of Økokrim trying for a second charge is ... well, I'd say low, but not non-existent.
Their chances of getting a conviction if they try approach zero though.
Q. What's a valid patent?
A. One that hasn't been tested in court.
Who's to say that there's any valid IP in WMV9 ? Of all organisations, MS and the US Patent Office are the last I'd trust to tell me.
I suppose the problem is that regardless of how good a piece of software is people generaly don't like change, and in many cases it's a matter of who has gained a certain amount of power over consumer's based on their sense of safety in familiarity. It goes even further then that, as software companies purposely make it very difficult for people to switch to alternatives as they use thier political and monetary power to force the adoption of standards that require licenses when there are open standards of the same or better quality that don't have the same kind of power behind them that if adopted would give the consumer more options, increase competitivness in the products that use the standard by making it easier for new companies to enter the market, and ultimately provide consumers with better inexpensive products.
now THIS post will probably get me a justly-deserved flame-bait rating, but
i don't listen to that guy...how does the joke go?
what's the difference between rush limbaugh and the hindenburg??
one's a big fat nazi windbag, and the other's a blimp
if this message came across as 'w00t g0d' or something like that, it was not supposed to...
You only really need a decoder, because there's plenty of other, much more open formats to encode into when you're on a Linux system.
WMV is a closed, proprietary codec. Please don't encode your files into that format. }:)
-Z
WMV the file format is not WMV the codec. The WMV file format, sometimes goes by the extension of asf, but precisely the same thing, is just the container.
You can put, for example, XviD and mp3 inside wmv, and it will be perfectly playable with MPlayer on almost any platform.
wmv9, the video codec, however, has no open source implementation. Thus, xine and mplayer will at most only play such files on x86 machines.
Norway tends to stay aligned with most EU directives. It is possible that they will resist the Euro-DMCA, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
If you call paying without the possibility of changing anything "part of the fun", you are correct.
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
That is most definately the WRONG way to go about it.
The RIGHT way is to push content providers to use technologies that we don't have to license, such as Vorbis, Theora, MPEG-1, Dirac, etc.
Imagine if all the percieved gaps in Linux were fixed the same way... People using Linux will want photoshop, so license Photoshop for Linux, rather than creating The GIMP.
Pay the license fee to get DVD decryption in a Linux player, but it must be binary-only, and limited to the same features you find in Windows DVD players (no DVD-backups for you!).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And this is the problem and why MS are going to have a hard time trying to crack down on any attempts to stop Linux being able to run WMV.
Thanks to the "marvel" of Windows Movie Maker people with Windows XP can create these files from their Home PC without needing to either shell out on over-expensive software (except maybe Windows XP) or use pirate software (again, except maybe Windows XP). Unless there's a way of getting Windows Movie Maker to use other codecs then there is going to be more and more home content that will be open by nature but closed by implementation.
And unless there's a decent free alternative (which I'd like to know about, too) for editing video on Windows I can't think of any way of persuading these people to use formats that can be easily read elsewhere - hence needing to use what's unfortunately not a legal implementation just to play the stuff back.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Sure... license it.
r chives.php?id=143
And then watch Micro$oft take the liberty of NOT licensing the DRM-related parts of it... just as Linspire's Michael Robertson unfortunately did for the Linspire distro just last week:
http://www.linspire.com/lindows_michaelsminutes_a
Conclusion: Forget it! We need free formats, not such utter crap! And financially supporting such crap is even worse...