VLC Hits the Device Market

JoeBorn writes "VideoLAN has long been known as a mature open source project for video playback and transcoding on the PC. Now, Neuros and Texas Instruments have sponsored a port of VLC to their next generation open set-top box. The idea is to allow developers to easily create interesting plug-ins for recording and transcoding applications for the set-top box which will automate functions previously requiring a PC, like formating recordings for a portable player or streaming to another device on the LAN or the Internet, etc."

Comments

subtitles

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

Have they made it accurately display subtitles in different positions yet?
I know giant fighting robot anime that I watch look like crap in VLC when compared to MPC+CCCP, and would hope that VLC would fix that before they start porting it all over the place.

Re:subtitles

[houstonbofh]

I would not be surprised if Ti and company fix this. That would mean the code comes back and it fixes it for all of us.

Re:subtitles

[JoeBorn]

Luckily VLC decided to drop wxWidgets entirely (which they say was causing a lot of issues) and rewrite the UI in Qt4 for the upcoming version. It's not perfect, but it's already a big step up. The Neuros device will use its own UI based on Qt4 FWIW. Remember the device will be a TV + remote control living room type device, so it's expected to be full screen and remote navigable, so the UI will be quite different from the PC version.

technology has never been the barrier here.

[spazdor]

Not to poo-poo what looks like an awesome technology, but we're all free culture varmints around here and we're well-acquainted with the reality that the more useful things a media-playback appliance lets us do, the harder Big Media will work to bury it.

Here's hoping that once this box is ready, it's still legal to buy one and plug it in.

Re:Like Tivo Hijacked Linux?

[tpgp]

Its nature was NOT about keeping people *snip* from locking down the hardware that it ran on.

I'm afraid you're wrong; the purpose of the GPL was to allow the user to take back control of their systems; the GNU manifesto, predating GPLv2 even states:

As a result, a user who needs changes in the system will always be free to make them himself, or hire any available programmer or company to make them for him. Users will no longer be at the mercy of one programmer or company which owns the sources and is in sole position to make changes.

patent license fees

[yincrash]

there are a lot of patents that VLC implements that the market generally says other people own. For the most part, the patent holders don't go after personal downloaders, however I would think that this company would have to pay for quite a few licenses if they want to sell this.

Re:patent license fees

[TheRaven64]

Most of the world does not recognise algorithmic patents as legitimate. VLC is developed primarily in France and so can be distributed with no legal issues. They can make devices using them in China and sell them in the EU without any legal problems. Sure they'll miss out the US market, but with the way the US economy is going at the moment it's not likely to be a market with a lot of spare cash to spend on luxuries for much longer anyway.

Re:patent license fees

[hakr89]

Sure they'll miss out the US market, but with the way the US economy is going at the moment it's not likely to be a market with a lot of spare cash to spend on luxuries for much longer anyway. You overestimate the financial responsibility of the US.

Re:How open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably, Neuros did this with all of their media players, I don't see how this device will be any different.

Re:Like Tivo Hijacked Linux?

[jedidiah]

Tivo certainly violates the spirit and intent of the GPL.

The fact that there was some weakness in the way that
RMS tried to make them "play nice" doesn't alter this.

Re:Like Tivo Hijacked Linux?

[RiotingPacifist]

The spirit of the GPL is to keep the code open so everybody benefits. For example, if TIVO were to write new device drivers or a nice TV interface, everybody would be able to use them. GPL was always about the code never about the users or the hardware, just because RMS has gone off in a new (IMHO worse) direction doesn't change what the GPL (2) was about, and tivo did not violate that, by locking their hardware

Doesn't work? Then just f*cking fix it!

[meist3r]

God, I could shoot all of you "this and that doesn't work properly"-crybabies. It's OPENSOURCE ... you don't like the way it works ... change it. VLC is the first player that I didn't need a ridiculous codec pack for. It was the only software that properly played DVDs from different regions for me. And god damnit it's free as in "you're free to leave if you don't like it". Now I use Linux and there are good alternatives. For Windows on the other hand ... not so much. I'd still rely solely on VLC for playing back everything just because I don't want to infest my system with dozens of outdated decryption routines and scrap codecs that corrupt my registry. This app is in version 0.8.6 for years now. And when was the last time a pre-1.0 version got such a broad user base? You're all nerds here and if you complain about VLC then grab your reference books and start coding to make it work the way it should. What are you waiting for? For Rupert Murdoch to buy it as his next step toward a unified replay solution? Screw you guys, start hacking for a change.