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Linux Software

New IBM Linux Notebook Includes DVD Player 118

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
An anonymous reader noted that there's a story on Newsforge about IBM's new ThinkPad. This story says it's the "first commercially available Linux computer with the ability to play back DVDs." The 900MHz Linux T22 will come with a commercial Linux DVD player. Meanwhile Xine, Xmovie, and OMS race to be the first one to support all the features (I need subtitles for anime darnit!) in an open source project, but since CSS plugins float around the net for each of them, actually playing DVDs is something they can do pretty well depending on your hardware. Most interesting about this LinDVD included with the ThinkPad is the implementation of one feature no user needs: Macrovision... done as a kernel module? Hrm.
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New IBM Linux Notebook Includes DVD Player More

New IBM Linux Notebook Includes DVD Player

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  • Re:Another linux DVD program (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've been using the VideoLAN client (0.2.72 is the latest, I think) on my machine for the past few weeks and I've been very happy with it. For comparison's sake, I could get neither Xine nor OMS/OMI to really work in any useful way on my machine (P3 550MHz, kernel 2.2.19) -- they both compile OK, and I can get a picture, but either the sound is screwed up, the program hangs/segfaults, or both. Also, I believe that the VideoLAN client uses the "DecVOB" approach to descrambling, which implements the brute-force attack on the keys described in Frank Stevenson's cryptanalysis of CSS, rather than the DeCSS approach, which has the keys hard-coded. (Someone may want to correct me on that, though.) So you get the intangible satisfaction of being able to dismiss the (misguided) argument that your player somehow relies on illicitly-obtained keys. Plus the whole project is done by about 20 CS students in France -- they seem like good guys, and have been really good about answering questions and accepting suggestions.
  • If you can buy an off the shelf Linux DVD player, does this remove the justification for DecSS?
  • Well, DXR-2 card is great.. if you watch you DVD in a seperate TV or and old monitor (like those who were used with Atari ST or Amiga)

    But it sucks in quality when you watch your DVD in your monitor.
  • And it's slow - compared to Xine. I have tested it on 6 machines with various graphics card - starting from top line GeForce-3, Matrox G400, TNT2, all the way down to Trident.

    Xine beats the crap out of VideoLAN in terms of picture smoothness, and the need for SDL (Xine doesn't need SDL)
  • VA Linux sold their development machines to pay the electric bill.

    All work is now done on the production site.

    - A.P.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • xine does subtitles (almost) (Score:4)

    by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:51AM (#279246) Homepage Journal
    Xine lets you display overlays (subtitles) but it doesn't do a very good job of it yet. Unfortunatly most Anime houses use the overlay feature in ways it was never ment to be used in valient efforts to get a third color on the screen, which confuses the heck out of many software DVD players.

    Also, I've never been able to get xines .ifo support to work correctly, so on some DVDs you'll only get 1/2 or less of the subtitles.

    Still, the feature is there, and possibly even useful in some circumstances.

    Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

  • Re:GPL? (Score:1)

    by cduffy ( 652 )
    Run-time linking, that is. Not compile-time.
  • Xine supports subtitles too (as long as your display driver supports XVideo). CSS support is easily added by grabbing and building a CSS-enabled DVD plugin. I've watched several movies with it, and its playback quality is quite good.
    _____
  • Except you can't. InterVideo will only sell it to OEMs (for putting in set-top units and as part of preinstalls), not to end users. That's one reason many people have been working on open-source DVD players - the commercial DVD player for Linux aren't even available to the end user.
    _____
  • IBM is playing commercials on TV that actually mention "Linux."

    Their earnings are up and/or on target this quarter - as seen by this morning's NASDAQ-boosting announcement.

    Bring it on, Big Blue!

  • >I have discovered, much to my anger and regret, that having a Time-Base-Correlater in a VCR does not mean that it will ignore Macrovision/Copyguard. I have a JVC HRS-76000U, which is otherwise a very nice VCR. The good folks at JVC has sabotaged the machine to respond to the MacroVision signal. Nowhere in the VCR documents or manuals does it state that the VCR has built-in copy protection!

    If you reside in the US it is required by law that all devices respond to macrovision, or at least for consumer devices (I don't recall if pro equipment is exempted.)
  • Not at all.

    Yes, one of the reasons was so you could watch DVD's on Linux. Now, if IBM puts this out you can.

    But what if I have a DVD drive on a non-intel version of Linux?

    What if I sit around tomorrow and hack out my own OS just cause I want to use component PC parts and build my own DVD player?
  • Apparently subtitles work on graphics cards whose XFree86 driver supports the Xv extension.

    Which, unfortunately, doesn't include the NVidia Riva TNT2 I picked up recently.

    Hopefully, either (a) Xv support will be extended to other cards, or (b) xine will get the ability to do subtitles in software without special drivers.

  • Macrovision module security (Score:4)

    by acb ( 2797 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @09:04AM (#279254) Homepage
    Out of purely academic interest, how much care has been taken to ensure the integrity of the Macrovision module? Anyone know whether it is possible to recompile the kernel in question and get the binary driver to work with it, optionally hacking the driver? Does the Macrovision module have any sort of cryptographic integrity checking mechanism? How hard would it be for a rogue user to (a) replace it with a dummy module, or (b) interpose a "man in the middle" module which loads it and tricks it into disabling Macrovision?

    The intersection between "trusted client" security (as demanded by the MPAA/RIAA) and open source OSes should be interesting to watch.
  • I think it sends a special kind of signal hidden in the overscan area which then activates a special Macrovision chip in your VCR. These chips are a requirement so every VCR has one. There are electronic workarounds (example [sonel.com]) however. Of course you can do like me and get a cheap DXR3 / H+ decoder card and installed the hacked Linux drivers which have Macrovision disabled (*).

    -adnans

    (*) Disclaimer: This is in no way an endorsement for DVD piracy. I use the DXR3/ H+ without Macrovision for archival purposes only.... >:-)
  • Actually DVD players on Laptops are wonderful. They are great for plane trips and car trips and such. Of course you could buy one of those portable DVD players, but why, if you've already got a laptop....
  • VideoLAN doesn't *need* SDL either. It *can* use it, but if you prefer to use the XVideo output plugin, then just don't build the SDL one. As for the speed, it's a lot faster than Xine here, but I suppose YM varies a lot.

    --
  • I think the question was not why *you* keep the code secret, but why the ASIC supplier has a NDA.

    The idea is that they would sell more hardware if anybody in the world could write a driver. And people would still pay money for your closed-source driver if it provides added functionality that they cannot figure out for themselves.

  • Linux has had UDF support for a while now.

    In fact, Yggdrassil (yes, they are still around, but they don't make a distribution of Linux any more) and SuSE make DVD-ROMs targeted for Linux users.

    -Sam

  • Scroll on down to the bottom of the specs sheet.

    Other
    Recommendation

    IBM recommends Windows 2000 Professional for business.
  • $3500 for a laptop.. That's not much money for new stuff. IBM has always been quite expensive (Aptivas and Thinkpads both). 900.. Probably thin and big screened..

    I bought my first laptop (Dell p133 w/16mb and a 12.1 Active Matrix LCD) for $3300. If you are into cutting edge stuff (and are a linux DVD zealot) then you would be into paying for that.

    I would rather just tote around my Cassiopeia myself (any support for the USB cradle yet?)
  • I know what you mean about the 15" screen. I got a Hollywood Plus card and a DVD drive, but I was still watching on an old 15" monitor that wouldn't die. As soon as we got DVD in the living room, I stopped using the drive on my PC upstairs. Then I bought a nice 19" monitor (Stealth Black IBM G96, Trinitron tube: buy one). DVD on the computer got a LOT better, to the point where it's my favorite way to watch a movie when I'm by myself. It's basically an HDTV picture, and if you're sitting in front of it it's plenty big.

    I'm split on DVD on the laptop: it's nice, but it's too expensive, and the machines I want (older, cheap laptops) don't have it.

    Jon

  • Macrovision doesn't mess with timing at all. It puts a spike signal into the vertical retrace. This messes with signal levels in such a way that the cheap AGC (automatic gain control) circuits in most VHS video recorders freak out and mess with the brightness of the picture.

    Stupid question time - does this mean that a pair of back-to-back $0.05 zener diodes would remove Macrovision?
  • No, Zeners won't work; the issue is *when* the spikes are injected, not so much their size or polarity.

    Perhaps I was misunderstanding the description of Macrovision, then. If it messes up decoding by fooling the automatic gain control, that means out-of-band voltages, right? You should be able to tailor a very simple circuit to cut out out-of-band voltages, thus making timing irrelevant (as far as the AGC's concerned, which is what we presumably care about).

    If the spike is much slower than the retrace pulse, on the other hand, a simple low-pass filter should do the trick. Another $0.10 worth of components.

    If the spike has a voltage range and time scale similar to the real sync pulse, then it should muck up tracking, as there'd be no way to distinguish it from the real sync pulse.

    I'm obviously missing something, here. What is it?
  • If I were selling laptops to businesses I'd recommend windoze, too.

    Why? MS Office. It's the only thing out there that can reliably read MS Office files,
    and chances are, business customers are already using it on Win or Mac.

    Linux just doesn't have the app support to make it viable on many corporate networks.
    Sure, StarOffice and friends are nice programs, and have most of the capability of Office,
    but until they can flawlessly exchange files from MS Office, they won't be able to compete.

    C-X C-S

  • This is OT, but couldn't you just rebuild your kernel with just the security patches, but not patch the top-level makefile so that the module version number remains the same? You wouldn't want to pick up every change from a new kernel version, just the security stuff. I've never tried this, I'm just curious as to whether there would be problems with this approach or not. It would probably be a huge pain to get this to work right, though.

  • I thought that DVD's needed UDF suport ?

    so thats complete in linux and IBM done all the debugging ?

    strange I thought that this was sort of shaky in linux with SUSE doing most of the work

    regards

    john jones

  • Re:Does this remove the justification for DECSS? (Score:3)

    by scav ( 14941 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:57AM (#279268)
    The point of DeCSS is to have the flexibility to watch the videos you *buy* in whatever manner you want. If I want to be able to convert the MPEG2 video to MPEG1 to watch on my portable VCD player, what is the problem? I do not want to pirate the movies I buy.

    The main reason CSS was put onto DVDs is to stop people watching movies bought in other countries, so the movie companies could actually control prices for these movies.

    CSS does not hinder pirating....it hinders consumers' rights to watch the movies on the player of their choice.

  • It's not like there's a good way around making it kernel dependent. They can't release the source to the CSS code, and I'm sure the their licensing agreement for CSS requires copy protection such as Macrovision.

    Actually, there is a way to get around the whole mess: don't license CSS. The main reason to license CSS is that it used to be a secret, so licensing was the only way to get it. But it's not a secret anymore.

    MPAA wouldn't be able intimidate them. It's not like IBM can't afford lawyers. Just showing that you are financially able to fight, is 90% of the battle. IBM probably wouldn't even need to spend any money.

    And DVD CCA has already shown itself impotent in the California case. The whole "trade secret" argument fizzled.

    IBM could get away with it.


    ---
  • The Dell Inspiron 8000s have had s-video outs for a while, along with S/PDIF (digital) sound.
  • Some PC video capture devices (notably Matrox' Rainbow Runner series) have "macrovision detection" circuitry. This simply looks for a video signal with a faulty time base and will report it to the drivers, which theoretically cease recording and notify the user via a dialog box. However, some users experience problems when attempting to record material from their camcorder source tapes. It is a "false positive" to the macrovision detection, usually at points where the original recording was stopped and started again (and thus the fields on the video casette weren't spaced perfectly).

    You can tell when a time base changes on a source video signal by a distinctive picture rolling for a moment that looks like your video resolution changing -- but since NTSC (e.g. televisions) only have one resolution, the resolution can't be changing.

    I bet if you tried to record a Playstation 2 game, a macrovision-detection enabled video capture device would bitch about the flicker between the PS2 boot up screen and the video game boot up screen.

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

  • Re:Macrovision@Everything2 (Score:3)

    by the_tsi ( 19767 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @09:49AM (#279272)
    Macrovision works by messing with the time base on the outputted video signal. Normal NTSC video consists of 60 fields/second (well, 59.xxxxx) regularly spaced through that interval. Macrovision increases the timing between the fields slightly. This doesn't affect viewing, but when you record, the tightly-synced 60 fields are go in and out of phase (anyone remember "beats" from your high school physics class on sound waves?).

    To overcome macrovision "protection," you need some form of a time base corrector. Most TBCs sell for a couple grand -- they're used by video editors for making sure the source and record decks are synced perfectly. Some consumer VCRs, however, do time base correcting internally (I have a Sharp VCR that I use between my DVD player (with composite out) and my TV (with coax in)). It overcomes macrovision, and could probably be used to tape macrovision-enabled video sources, but I haven't tried.

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

  • I am not aware of many people who use linux and want to be dependent upon the hardware vendor to supply kernels and binary-only kernel modules...

    Dell does the same thing with the Linux servers they sell with onboard RAID -- the RAID drivers are provided as binary-only kernel modules. (Or at least they were ~6 months ago). This is espescially ugly on a server, where you don't want to get locked into a particular kernel build that might later prove to have security issues.

  • couldn't you just rebuild your kernel with just the security patches, but not patch the top-level makefile so that the module version number remains the same? You wouldn't want to pick up every change from a new kernel version, just the security stuff. I've never tried this, I'm just curious as to whether there would be problems with this approach or not. It would probably be a huge pain to get this to work right, though.

    I think the key phrase is "it would be a huge pain to get it to work"... and the idea of doing that kind of experimental kernal patching (around a binary-only RAID driver no less) on a production system doesn't strike me as wise. Even if you could "probably" get it to work with enough time, that's not the sort of black box I like to go messing around with unnecessarily.

  • My Thinkpad A21p was way more than that. 850MHz, 15.something" screen, lots of video ram, 128mb, 30gb, dvd, etc. It's a desktop replacement for work, so it's worth the money because it frees up a desktop (as opposed to having a desktop for heavy processing etc and the laptop for portability.)
  • Most hardware with Macrovision support defaults to it being switched off. That way it has to be deliberately switched on in software, proving that you're using it and letting Macrovision claim their license fee. Oddly enough, most Linux drivers don't bother poking the register that enables Macrovision. The Linux drivers for em8300 based cards (Hollywood Plus, Creative dxr3, a few others) certainly don't enable Macrovision.

  • Re:macrovision ...NO-COPIES explained (Score:4)

    by victim ( 30647 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:49AM (#279277)
    That message usually means you have a `reviewer' copy of the tape or dvd. The studios send out dumptruck loads of tapes to newpapers, tv news shows, and basically any creature that might generate some press for them. In order to keep these from dilluting sales they mark them.
  • I'm happy to see that IBM is putting so much effort into it, but damn, that binary only kernel version dependent crap has got to stop...
  • If you're interested, the Thinkpad in question is available here [ibm.com].
  • Nope. the justification is still there.

    A $3500 "off-the-shelf" DVD-capable laptop is small comfort for those of us that purchased DVD drives and decoders long ago, and will probably never see drivers, binary or otherwise, released by the companies we purchased the equipment from.

    Quite frankly, the DVD business is the only reason I still have Windows installed, and I keep watching the em8300 (DXR3/Hollywood+ card) driver releases, as well as Xine and OMS developments, for the day I can get that crud off my drive and I can happily watch DVDs on the platform of my choice.
  • I think it sends a special kind of signal hidden in the overscan area which then activates a special Macrovision chip in your VCR. These chips are a requirement so every VCR has one.

    This is not the case. VCRs do not have a Macrovision chip. This is a quick explanation, and might have an error or two:

    The Macrovision signal is primarily a set of flashing white squares in the "vertical blanking interval" (VBI), the area just above and just below, the rest of the picture. A television tube's Automatic Gain Control (AGC) circuit ignores these flashing squares as they don't appear on the screen. But most VCR's AGC looks at the entire picture. The VBI should be black, or have some information like Teletext or close caption data...but NOT flashing squares. So the AGC, trying to control the gain of the signal being recorded to the tape, raises and lowers the gain as the squares flash from white to black. So your dubbed program flashes.

    Macrovision removers replace the flashing squares with the black that should be there in the first place. Some of us with projection TVs have to use Macrovision removers in order to simply watch our legally purchased VHS tapes, as the Macrovision signal screws up our picture. Macrovision reps are scumbags and lie like dogs even when confronted with evidence.

    Anyway, there is no chip. VCRs vary in their sensitivity to the Macrovision crap.

  • Another linux DVD program (Score:3)

    by slackergod ( 37906 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @09:39AM (#279282) Homepage Journal
    They forgot to mention another linux dvd program
    called VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org [videolan.org])
    works on my system, does css (i think),
    and has subtitles. get a pretty decent framerate too.

    I saw it annouced over on freshmeat,
    but never see anything mentioned about it.
    just though I'd post a link.

    -Slackergod
  • Thanks for your thorough and well reasoned reply, you've given me a bit to think about. It sounds like you're closer to a service model than I first thought.
  • We've run into this problem where I work. Our hardware uses an ASIC produced by someone else. We
    developed our software with information on the ASIC that we received under NDA, so we can't make the entire driver open source. Not to mention that other companies could just slap the ASIC on a card, use the software we developed, and undercut our price, since they'd save 90% of the development costs.

    The ASIC maker would sell more hardware if there was an open source version of the driver and people didn't have to pay your 90% markup.

    IP laws and trade secrets have their own inefficiencies. Isn't it ironic that capitalists strive to avoid competition as much as possible?
  • Since macrovision is only to prevent dubbing of the video output, I assume that this kernel module will be responsible for feeding the DVD video stream to the S-video output...

    Unloading the kernel module would probably just disable the S-video output or something like that.

    So, who the heck is this aimed at? I am not aware of many people who use linux and want to be dependent upon the hardware vendor to supply kernels and binary-only kernel modules...

    Another thing I would be interested in is if the DVD player sovtware or the hardware will regionalize. I think that the player is REQUIRED to regionalize if it is a 3rd generation player or later...

  • macrovision (Score:3)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Thursday April 19, 2001 @08:45AM (#279286) Homepage Journal
    Is this why the DVD divx rip I watched the other night had "if you bought or rented this movie please call 1-888-NO-COPIES" or whatever on the bottom of it? I tell ya, if it was there the whole time you wouldn't care, but it's because they do a smooth fade in of it that it's really distracting (like win2000 popup menus, *shudder*) after about the 15th time I was ready to call the number and tell them to piss off.
  • This is a business notebook. $3500 isn't that bad for a good business notebook. My X20 with ultrabay and DVD-ROM was $3300, and the T series has more in it than mine. Mine is just 3.5lbs though. :)
  • For those looking for notebooks, check out the Thinkpads. Yes, they usually cost a little more than others but I think they are worth it. They are very solid and work very well now that they got rid of the mwave chips.

    I just bought an IBM X20 and run Debian and Windows 2000 on it. The only piece that Linux has a problem with is the modem. If you order it without the NIC it comes with a Lucent modem that is supported, but if you get the built-in NIC it has a 3COM mini-PCI NIC and modem, and the modem is a non-supported software modem. I put a Lucent 802.11 card in it and now have a great 3.5lb wireless Linux box.
  • Mine isn't a Lucent. It's a 3COM. Some of the X20s came with Lucent modems..just not this one.
  • The article claims that IBM obviously couldn't use the current open source projects to produce their own DVD player, but my question is why not. Sure, they'd probably have to licence the DVD spec from the DVD-CCA, for the sake of looking legitimate, but once they've done that they'll basically want to be producing the functionality of DeCSS - after all, all that program is for is decoding DVDs, just like any DVD player has to, which is what IBM have to do if they want to produce their own solution.

    If they're worried that IBM couldn't open source their own work, sure they could. Nobody in their right mind would use IBM's alterations, but they could certainly publish the changes (presuably without altering the main part, and thus without having to republish that).
  • That must be some laptop! At $3500, I guess they have a few nickles in the budget to pay off the MPAA. Maybe they figure that anyone spending that much on a laptop probably doesn't have the time to pirate a $20 movie :-)

    It's interesting that this apparently has S-video output. Aside from big screen TV Quake sessions, this might be just the thing for business presentations.

    It's nice that IBM seems to see the light in regards to DVD capability on Linux, but at this price, I don't think this is the one "for the rest of us"...
  • Anybody else check out the spec sheet for the T22 linked from the newsforge article? All the way at the bottom listed under the 'Other' category the following statement appears:

    IBM recommends Windows 2000 Professional for business.

    What the ?????

    All this after just half a page up they list the Operating System Provided as Caldera OpenLinux 2.4 and the included Productivity Applications as StarOffice. Me thinks somebody over at Big Blue still doesn't quite grasp the concept of using an operating system other than Winblows! Linux on my laptop and desktop has served me just fine and saved me countless hours of work from not having to rewrite code and documents after system crashes.
  • Yes but you have to reboot the laptop every time you do something useful. With linux and DVD on the laptop, now even YOU can watch an entire DVD without having to reboot :)

    Windows has detected that you have moved your mouse. Windows will now reboot in order for this change to take effect.

  • They also called 'screeners' and go out to video rental stores (schlockbuster and the like) to help them preview new releases and calculate how many copies they want to order. Screeners will vary their copy protection from title to title. IIRC, I saw the "Scream 2" screener a week after it opened in theatres and it simply switched from color to b&w every 20 minutes. (I used to work PT at a video store to get free rentals and a piddly secondary income)
  • Damnit, Jim....

    Must use Preview next time...
  • You'll prolly find they can't sell the product to end users because that would require them to give away source code which they're not allowed to do.

    If you're a system integrator, you probably have to sign an NDA which says you will only compile the code and release binary versions.

    ====================
    Paul "TBBle" Hampson
  • The article says:
    Windows' video driver architecture offers developers a standard mechanism for enabling Macrovision; no such standard exists for Linux. Frechette's group worked with InterVideo to develop an interface that allows LinDVD to enable Macrovision's copy protection when it's needed. Pratchette considers IBM's work a start, not a standard, instead hoping that "perhaps the Linux community will define a standard interface for this, possibly taking advantage of some of the work that we did."
    Yes, that is a good idea. Let the Linux community put such a function in the kernel. Then producers of closed-source apps for Linux shall use the kernel function to enable macrovision, and not put any built-in protection in their DVD Player.

    We can disable the protection in the kernel, since we have the source. We cannot disable such protection in closed-source apps. So lets hope indeed that the Linux kernel shall contain such a function soon :).

  • Guess it's off to the computer show to pick up some more OEM (for sale only with a new computer) software. After all, I stuck in that extra memory DIMM and loaded the OS, that makes me an OEM, right?
  • The ASIC vendor does have an Open Source driver which has a portion of the functionality of our driver. If that driver suits your needs, then you can buy the hardware from whoever you want.

    Production Costs != Development Costs

    It doesn't take a huge development effort slap an ASIC into a reference design card. If the driver is simple, then the software effort isn't that great either. However, our driver is about 30000 lines of code and runs on six OSs, and multiple hardware platforms for many of those OSs. Yes, we do support Linux on the PPC. Developing and testing the software is a huge development effort and required a large investment by our company. In order to pay for that we have to charge $$$ for our products.

    Our cards are more expensive that the ASIC developers cards, however you get more for your money.

    The ASIC maker would sell more hardware if there was an open source version of the driver and people didn't have to pay your 90% markup.

    The ASIC manufacturer has decided that there are some markets they aren't interested in because the customres require special features or additional support that they aren't interested in providing. We provide additional features in our software, and more personalized support to those customers that need it. We can't just sell the support seperately, because that's not the way the business works. Customers, especially the government want COTS (Comercial Off The Shelf) products. However, a large percentage of our customers don't want the common off the shelf product, they want something a little bit different. They don't want to develop it themselves, because that would be way to expensive. Me make products that fit those niches, and have the experience to make our products work in non-standard environments. We add value the the product that the ASIC vendor cannot or will not provide.

    Now, the ASIC vendor could just fully publish their specs and let the open source community provide drivers. However, many of the non-mainstream projects just never reach a high level of quality control, and most open source developers really can't afford the hardware we need to properly test and develop our software.

    The other issue is that developing sowtware costs money. Most of our ASIC vendors customers don't need the software we develop. They don't need our specialized protocols or a driver for a PPC single board computer. Why should all the vendors customers have to pay more for their boards to pay for development of software they don't need. Let the people who need our software pay us for our software.

    Free software has a place. We do have a hardware product to which we have always provided the source to the driver. For that product there is a definate benefit to the customer to having source, and it uses our own custom ASIC, so we make our money off the ASIC in that case.

    The sell the hardware, but all software should be free also bothers me because it's getting harder to define what's hardware and what's software. We have a product that is mostly implemented in a FPGA. VHDL is just software to me. You compile it, load it into the FPGA, and you have a hardware product. Change the VHDL and you have a significantly different hardware product. Should that be free too? How do you expect developers to recoup costs? Where do you draw the line? How can companies make money so they can pay for the development tools, and pay their employees? There's lots of people pushing for free software, but how does it work as a business model when you aren't talking about a mass market product. How does free software address a complicated, software product that has relatively few people that need it?
  • It's not like there's a good way around making it kernel dependent. They can't release the source to the CSS code, and I'm sure the their licensing agreement for CSS requires copy protection such as Macrovision. Therefore it has to be a closed source binary. The problem is that Linux doesn't have a binary driver interface. You have to include a bunch of kernel headers, which change from one kernel to another. They also often change when someone applies a kernel patch, so you either have to have some kind of open sourse interface layer for your driver that can be recompiled, or if someone patches their kernel you driver doesn't work anymore.

    We've run into this problem where I work. Our hardware uses an ASIC produced by someone else. We developed our software with information on the ASIC that we received under NDA, so we can't make the entire driver open source. Not to mention that other companies could just slap the ASIC on a card, use the software we developed, and undercut our price, since they'd save 90% of the development costs.

    The code for the binary driver can't call kernel functions directly. It goes through a layer which is open source and contains the kernel headers. That layer needs to be recompiled every time the kernel is recompiled to ensure the driver works with the new kernel. It's a pain for our customers, and it makes Linux the most difficult (and therefore the most expensive) OS for us to support. Fortunately, we have enough customers using Linux to still justify supporting it, but tech support really dreads getting calls on our Linux products.

    As for InterVideo's particular choice of going with a binary only approach, they really don't have a choice. The MPAA dictates the rules of the licensing agreement, there choices are a closed source LinDVD or no LinDVD.

  • First off, I think you're talking about the driver for NVidia's family of GPUs ...

    We're not in the graphics market, but the issues may be similar.

    So why don't they, and why don't you publish that which you can publish and ship only the NDA'd stuff binary? (which would also aid the reengineering effort because then there's a lot less to work on).

    I really don't know why the ASIC vendor doesn't publish their spec. The firmware specification which tells us how to interface with their ASIC is under NDA, but a lot of that information can be determined from the GPLed Linux driver, but definately only a subset of the functionality that we use. Since the material under NDA is at the core of the driver, it wouldn't do users much good if we released the source to the rest of it. It would however help our competitors which have access to the NDA information.

    By releasing the source, we risk having the software we developed stolen and used by our competitors, but what do we gain. In our particular market the hardware our board interfaces with is very expensive. The average open source developer doesn't have $100,000 worth of equipment sitting around. Because of this our market just doesn't lend itself well to open source development. We do have certain partners who do have access to the source. We had to execute a 3 way NDA with the ASIC vendor to give them access, but it is possible.

    You of all people should know that a chip isn't done when the VHDL is done. Even if people get it to work on a FPGA (and they're sometimes more expensive than purchasing the device!) all they l get is an underpowered version of the real thing.

    That depends a lot on the product. When you aren't talking about huge volumes, then FPGAs are a reasonable and even cost effective solution. Rolling an ASIC is very expensive, and mistakes mean rolling it again. With a FPGA you can change how the hardware works across the PCI bus, while the board is in the system. We have two products which perform significantly different tasks, on which the only differences are the parts externel to the FPGA and the VHDL. You can actually populate the board with parts for both functions and change what it does while it's in the system.

    As for a FPGA being an underpowered solution, this is completely untrue. There is no reason that a FPGA solution is inherrantly less powerful than an ASIC solution.

    Your comments on FPGAs being expensive it very true, especially at higher densities. However, you can save money if you can split the design into a couple less dense chips.

    One more thing, I'm also aware that making the device available with only proprietary closed software to use it with also has the advantage of controlling what functionality/features of the device are available to the end-user. That way, you can keep people from exploiting the hardware of the device to the point that it prolongs the product's lifecycle and thus possible impedes sales of a successor device.

    We are a small company that's trying to put our the best product we can with the most features we can in the shortest time we can. We aren't holding back features for the sake of our next generation products. This may be true of other companies, but I can say that it's not true of ours.

  • I can't tell you why they have a NDA on their firmware spec, but they aren't alone. I know of no vendors in their market that don't. It may be that they are trying to hide some of their IP from their competitors. Most likely they are trying to hide the limitations of their products from their competitors, so their competitors can't exploit them or market their products at those weaknesses. You can say that they shouldn't design products with weaknesses, but everyone has to make design decisions, and no product is perfect. A large percentage of the time spent on driver development is working around limitations or flaws in hardware. It's amazing what you can fix in software, and with the speed of today's processors, a few extra clock cycles doesn't effect performance. If you use dma and write your software well, you can keep the cpu load low, and still saturate the PCI bus with data.
  • I think that the Macrovision is only inserted into the NTSC/PAL video output -- it inserts spurious signals in the blanking interval to mess up the gain control on VCRs, right? So wouldn't it be impossible to embed the signal into a VGA RGB signal?
    <P>

    If that is the case, then all you need to do is get a scan converter to convert VGA -> NTSC, and skip the Macrovision entirely.
  • I think that the Macrovision is only inserted into the NTSC/PAL video output -- it inserts spurious signals in the blanking interval to mess up the gain control on VCRs, right? So wouldn't it be impossible to embed the signal into a VGA RGB signal?

    If that is the case, then all you need to do is get a scan converter to convert VGA -> NTSC, and skip the Macrovision entirely.

  • Funny, my Dell has had a DVD drive for some time and they support linux? Or is this because it ships with software for it?
  • From Everything2 [everything2.com]:

    Macrovision [everything2.com]

    (thing) byZorin
    Sat Nov 13 1999 at 14:28 utc

    An extremely annoying copy protection used on commercial VHS videos and the output of DVD players. Although it is easily worked around with a Macrovision Buster, it's a necessary evil that content producers need to use to protect their assets.

    (thing) bygetzburg
    Sun Apr 2 2000 at 00:54 utc

    I lack technical details on this one, but basically what it does is mess with the gain control on whatever device you attach it to, particularly VCRs, so that the picture keeps alternating between light and dark. Tremendously annoying.

    (No, I wasn't going to merge all the node linkage! Some people [] too much! Perhaps Slashdot needs some E2 intergration... that would rock...)

    Anyway, hope this helps!

  • WinDVD (Score:3)

    by The_Messenger ( 110966 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @09:01AM (#279307) Homepage Journal
    I've never used LinDVD, but I use WinDVD, which is produced by the same company. I've been very impressed with its performance, so much in fact that I ditched by RealMagic MPEG decoder card because WinDVD produces much better results, assuming that your CPU is fast enough. I was plagued with visual "noise" and shaky video with the RealMagic, which are not present in WinDVD. So if LinDVD is based on the same codebase, I expect that the DVD playback quality should be pretty good.

    IIRC WinDVD is only $30, so LinDVD should be similar in price. I was unaware that the product had even gone gold... perhaps I should pick up a copy for my Debian laptop.

    --

  • What is this fuzz about?? I play dvd's since 2.4.x on my Dell Inspiron 8000 without any problems. Just by using VideoLan I can watch any movie(encrypted too) - full screen, subtitles, nice alsa-sound ...
  • Dunno about Ygg's specific products, but DVD-ROMs can be made using the ISO-9660 file system (with or without Rock Ridge, Joliet, etc.).

    DVD-ROM does not imply UDF.
  • I just looked at this and noticed at the bottom in the Other section:
    IBM recommends Windows 2000 Professional for business.
    Seems kinda silly to be selling it with Linux and recommending Windows 2000.
  • DVD-Video does, though.
    Yes. But all the DVD-Video disks I have tried have ISO9660 filesystem as well.
  • you guys should check out videolan for playing dvd's on linux. It supports encrypted DVD's, and plays subtitles too. check it out: www.videolan.org [videolan.org]
  • Which wouldn't remove the justification for DeCSS. The Supreme Court would just be wrong, and not for the first time.
  • I totally concur. I'm currently using a new T22 (with Win2K), and it is spectacular. Great keyboard, 1400x1050 resolution, 32GB HDD, built-in 56K & 10/100 (intel chipset),
    One thing to note on the NIC is that most models have options for either 3Com or Intel. In my experience, Intel has far fewer driver problems with their NIC products.

  • IBM's actually partnered with a number of distro vendors, including SuSe, for different ranges of hardware. I get the feeling that IBM's still trying to figure out which distros they want to offer for PCs and notebooks, where there are a lot of "mainstream" choices and they're not (yet) equipped to support/manage/ship all possible configurations.

  • Show me a laptop that plays vinyl LPs, THEN I'll be impressed.

  • Depends on your vendor, but there are many hacks available: See http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/support/macrovis ion.html
  • Now I can play DVD's on a notebook. Wait, I've been able to do that on my Windows 2000 notebook for a year now...
  • Yes but you have to reboot the laptop every time you do something useful
    Some of us can do something useful in win2k and learn how to use an OS before bitching about it
  • I assume you're posting because you're lying.. its said how far linux zealots will go really..
  • RTF == rich text format.. kind of like a generic txt file but it is able to store some basic formating options that just about any program can understand/edit/save back in that format.
  • They should.. its more stable on a laptop and actually has business applications written for it. Thats just a fact.. just because you can put linux on a laptop doesnt mean itll work well or that you can get anything done.
  • Check out the pricing here [ibm.com].

    Am I missing something, or is IBM hoping people won't notice?

    If it ran Debian I'd buy it tomorrow. I wonder what their motivation was behind choosing Caldera OpenLinux.

    g

  • I have discovered, much to my anger and regret, that having a Time-Base-Correlater in a VCR does not mean that it will ignore Macrovision/Copyguard. I have a JVC HRS-76000U, which is otherwise a very nice VCR. The good folks at JVC has sabotaged the machine to respond to the MacroVision signal. Nowhere in the VCR documents or manuals does it state that the VCR has built-in copy protection! There is a small note on the JVC website FAQ ("Q:Why does my copy look fuzzy? ..."), but I don't think that is an adequate notice. I still have not decided what I plan to do, but I am thinking of demanding my money back, or filing a suit for deceptive advertising. I wonder how much cost it added to the unit to make it respond to MacroVision signal despite the built-in TBC? PS: I discovered this problem when it stopped me from making a fair-use media transfer form DVD to VHS so that the movie could be viewed in a room that does not have a DVD (since I learned how much copy protection DVD players have, I have pretty stopped purchasing both the players and the discs).
  • recompiling your kernel.
    Frechette's solution was to drop the code into a binary-only kernel driver. "This provides adequate protection, but it does tie the Macrovision support to specific kernels," he admitted.
    Now you have an excuse to be downloading and running that latest test-preAlpha kernel anyways.
  • I don't have one now, but if I can find one, I'll post it - maybe submit it as a story. "No more banner ads, now it's sidewalk graffiti!"
  • They're also painting SF sidewalks with "Peace, Love, Linux" stencil graffiti. Weird. I wonder if they will get hit with a fine for that one...
  • er... yeah i does. Every NVidia card supports XV. I've used it with a tnt1, geforceddr and right now I'm using xv with a tnt2.

    "just connect this to..."
    BZZT.

  • The timing on this is funny: Three major record labels announced an online music venture the day before the Senate Judiciary Commitee's latest Napster hearing so that their execs could say, "Hey, we're providing music online!" when Hatch et al asked them. Now that the appeal of the 2600 case is just over a week away, the studios can say, "Nobody needs DeCSS! Look, we licensed a Linux player!"
  • I found a commercial DVD player for Linux called PowerDVD [gocyberlink.com]. Unfortunatly they say it's only for embedded systems. I wonder why that is? And wouldn't this mean that they are using DeCSS??
  • Mine doesn't (Riva128). That is because you must use Nvidia's driver to be able to use Xv, the XFree one doesn't support Xv.
  • Yes, UDF is in the kernel for a while. It works nicely on my PC, but oopses on my ppc machine (kernel 2.4.3)

  • GPL? (Score:3)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @12:18PM (#279333)
    So what about our favorite "viral license", the GPL? If this is a loadable kernel module ONLY, they can get around it. But if they link with the kernel, they have to release source code, which I'm sure they do NOT want to do.

    On the other hand, if it's just a LKM, then it's in a nice self-contained file where it's easier to disassemble and patch, or even replace with code that does nothing.

  • Wrong (Score:4)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @10:05AM (#279334)
    Macrovision doesn't mess with timing at all. It puts a spike signal into the vertical retrace. This messes with signal levels in such a way that the cheap AGC (automatic gain control) circuits in most VHS video recorders freak out and mess with the brightness of the picture. There's also a Macrovision II (aka Colorstripe) which messes with the colorburst signal on a couple of lines of the picture, but this can't even be recorded onto master VHS tapes, and is only generated by DVD players. Either way, since this is patented by Macrovision, studios must pay MV whenever they enable either of these features on a DVD disc.

    Betamax video recorders were not vulnerable to this signal and would supposedly copy it perfectly. Ditto for Go Video VHS recorders, although I think they were eventually forced to put the crappy AGC circuit into their stuff a couple of years back.

    Time Base Correctors fix the problem because the nasty signals are in the sync areas of the screen, which they throw out and replace with clean signals. But a true TBC (which makes sure that entire scanlines come through with the right timing, something that videotape is not accurate at) is overkill for Macrovision.

  • Now here's [club-internet.fr] where you can get a firmware upgrade that'll make your T22's drive region-free. Nice to have Linux users in on this now.
  • $2500 [apple.com].

  • Don't forget VideoLAN (Score:3)

    by AmX ( 229879 ) on Thursday April 19, 2001 @09:01AM (#279340)
    It's a nice DVD player that supports on the fly subtitles and language selection, that directly reads your DVD without having to mount it first, reads encrypted DVD (without using DeCSS), has multiple front-ends for different platforms.

    I don't know if it's "the best one" or not, but it's the only one I managed to compile AND make work, so I thought I'd mention it.

    More info on their web site [videolan.org].
    --
    Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,

  • Mod this guy up.

    Boy, this software would be perfect if they had a Win32 build. Sadly, I'm still stuck in Windows for most of my multimedia work.


  • Dang, that crap sucks. If anyone figures out how to disable it in ANY player, esp. a Linux player, post below, eh?
  • If you can buy an off the shelf Linux DVD player, does this remove the justification for DecSS?

    No, because the justification for DeCSS is that source code is free speech, and is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

    Ways to remove the justification for DeCSS would be:

    1) Open Source the DVD format and release it into the public domain
    2) Amend the Constitution to remove the first Amendment
    3) Have the Supreme Court rule that computer source code is not speech.

    Of those three options, 3) is the most likely.

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