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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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From the article linked to the blog post, it seems that he got the reference decoder for the VC-1 standard, which is compatible with WMP9, to work in VLC. The headline makes it look like there was some sort of reverse engineering done here, but after actually reading the article (gasp), it doesn't seem like that's the case.
Just not legally. Of course, noone in the linux community give a ripe fuck about whether or not the code they run is legal.
You got modded flamebait but you raise a valid point, Linux previously did try and adhere to legality whenever possible. There was the whole not including a mp3 codec debacle.
I have proposed a Black Hat Linux, it will come with a windows installer on the same DVD and a bunch of closed source apps.
Unfortunatly I also believe in the Linux movement, the idea of freeing all software may be forwarded more rapidly by creating free alternatives and having them widely adopted to the extent that no one will WAMT to pay for software, (as opposed to everyone agreeing to steal it and driving the closed source companies out of business). Either way would accomplish the same purpose.
According to the blog, it seems it uses VC-1 reference decoder to play WMV9 on Linux. IIRC VC-1 is open source now after it was submit to SMPTE for the review. Is there any difference between VC-1 and WMV9 except for four CC code and other trivial things?
Also, at the first glance at the headline of this story, I'd thought DVD Jon cracked DRM on WMV9 and delighted, but he didn't apparently, so non-Linux people don't have much to rejoice about this story anyway. If I'm mistaken and this story can be related to Windows Media DRM somehow, please point it to me as I'm happy if that's true.
Hasn't this been possible all along, with MPlayer? Their codec status table lists "Windows Media Video 9 DMO" as working. Is that not the same thing as the WMV9 referred to here?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
The answer for a video decoder is 10 cents per unit with a $40,000 cap. Windows Media Licensing Fees and Royalties (September 2004)
You want to see Linux on every desktop? Would it kill you to admit that shelling out the bucks to license proprietary technologies that might actually get you there makes some sense?
None of the commercial Linux distros are going to touch a decoder that has "lawsuit" written all over it.
Uh, some of us sit around broswing Slashdot while we're watching football. I have the WVU/Pitt game on right now.
/var/log/messages.
That includes me, experimenting with Ingo's new RT linux kernel patch. Unforch, there enough over head that tvtime loses a frame several times a second, duly reported in the log of course, so now its thursday and I have a 58 megabyte
Yeah, even us old farts take a chance on bleeding edge occasionally.
OTOH, tvtime is running 10x smoother than it does without the patch. The box is stable, and snappier than I expected, and snappier than if it was running a normal kernel by quite a bit.
Cheers, Gene
Oh, I hope we're a step closer to freeing up DRM restricted WMV files and here's why...
I bought (as in I paid for) WMV files from MLB.com of this year's baseball playoffs because I didn't save my TiVo'd copies and wanted to have the games in my personal archive. At MLB.com, they used advertising verbiage like "watch them whenever you want!" and "burn them to CD!". Apparantly I didn't read the fine print close enough (or maybe it wasn't in the fine print), but those files are heavily DRM restricted. I have to be connected to the internet and log onto MLB.com to watch them. And even then, I can't even fast forward. Pathetic.
All I wanted to do was to convert them DVD-compatible MPEG2 for MY USE. I want to watch them on my TV instead of my computer. I paid for them and I should be able to view them somewhere other than my PC. I searched high and low and couldn't find a way to break the DRM. Sheesh, it's not like I'm trying to do anything that could be construed as illegal, at least by any rational person. Really frustrating.
If Jon's thing helps free these files in a way that will allow me to media-shift them, then I'm all for it! Even if it's not so I can watch them on Linux. Heck, I've had to use DeCSS to extract MPEG files from DVDs of MY OWN HOME VIDEOS because the original tapes were damaged. How pathetic is it that I needed a tool like that in order to view files that I and I alone own copyright on?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
If you're worried that owners of the linked sites won't get usage statistics, the cache could be set up to count how many times it was accessed, and the statistics could be emailed to the site owner. The email would look something like this:
You get the idea.