Commercial DVD Software Comes to Linux

timekillerj writes "Turbolinux launched a new version of it's Linux distribution today. The key feature is the first commercial DVD player, provided by Cyberlink. PowerDVD for Linux supports menu navigation, Dolby Digital sound, subtitles, and more."

Re:commercial?

[eviltypeguy]

Well, as most people have realised by now, that will probably never be legal in the USA or most of the world thanks to our software patent overlords.

It is not the first.

[stm2]

Lindows (or Linspire) has one commercial DVD player. It was released more than a year ago. It cost 4.95 for CNR members.

Yes...But...

[reality-bytes]

There are already some great players for Linux available (they've been around for ages) but they exist in a legal grey-area.

Remember, just because you bought the DVD and bought the hardware to play it back with doesn't mean you are neccesarily allowed to choose what software you use to play it back!

Re:Mplayer? Xine

[DAldredge]

What license fees? CSS was a trade secret, there are no keed to use it.

Or are you talking about somthing else?

BFD folks

[Bohemoth2]

There is no mention of a linux version on thier website, nor is there a linux version available for purchase in thier webstore. Nothing to see here, move along please.

Re:commercial?

[tmk]

Could it be like on Windows?

Windows Media Player or Real Player can not play DVDs by default. But when you installed WinDVD the players WMP and RealOne can do.

Re:commercial?

[Dave2 Wickham]

Just wondering; have you tried Ogle [chalmers.se] or Xine [sourceforge.net]? IIRC they both support DVD menus...

Not for PowerDVD

[tmk]

Its 69 dollar for Turbolinux not for PowerDVD.

It is like Acrobat Reader or Realplayer for Linux.

Re:Could DeCSS become legal?

[Firethorn]

DeCSS was basically a reverse engineered copy of the decryption portion of a dvd player, not to mention using a key.

To join the group, besides paying $$$, you have to agree to all sorts of rules about player operation like listening to the force play flag, macrovision, and region coding. Oh, and not disclosing some of the specifications (they're a trade secret).

Re:Yes...But...

[rjw57]

which DVD menu doesn't work with xine [xinehq.de]? And I watch DVDs on my 500MHz PIII so a 700MHz Celery should manage it.

Re:compare!

[13Echo]

In most respects, DeCSS is actually old and busted. In fact, it's seldom used anymore. Most players use "libdvdcss", which was written independently of DeCSS. MPlayer even includes patched versions of libdvdread and libdvdcss within its own source.

Re:Ask and you shall receive?

[LordArathres]

Thats not true at all. I went out and bought both Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tournament 2004 when they came out specifically becuase they came with a Linux Binary. I emailed the Vice President of ? the company that made UT2004 and he actually replied and said that although Linux sales are miniscule, the only way to judge them is by the sort of email I sent him.

Go out and buy the software, email the company that made it and everyone wins. I didnt care that the source was released for either game, I was happy with the fact that I could play them on my Linux box.

I like Xine but if PowerDVD comes out for general Distros and its good, (free preview), I will probably buy it. I bought the Boxed set 10+ from Mandrake even though I downloaded the Distro earlier just to show my support.

The only way to show support for companies that make Linux based products is to BUY them.

Later all.

[e-mail]

Re:commercial?

[LostCluster]

It's not the software patent overloads as much as the DVD CCA and DMCA overlords. They own CSS, and DeCSS is illegal. There's no way to legally distribute anything that can decode CSS without sending them a royalty for every copy, so any form of free or Free software is ruled out.

Re:It is not the first.

[13Echo]

This is true. Linspire's DVD player is essentially just XINE with an alleged "commercial license" to utilize the DVD libraries.

http://www.linspire.com/lindows_dvd_info.php

Of course, odds are that they do have to have the source available for the GPL libdvdcss libraries that it uses, so does that mean that they are violating trade secrets as well? Or, I wonder if they rewrote portions of XINE to link against some commercial DVD libraries instead?

Re:commercial?

[Anonymous Coward]

"PowerDVD has been my favorite software MPEG2 decoder for windows for quite a while"

Not trying to start anything but PowerDVD is widely hailed as having the worst picture quality of any commercial software DVD player. At the AVS forums and pretty much every decent HTPC forum it goes something like Sonic's, Nvidia's, WinDVD, and PowerDVD way at the bottom. Just something to think about.

Re:compare!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, libdvdcss is developed by VideoLAN [videolan.org]. DVD-Jon is a VideoLAN developer [boingboing.net] and is even listed in the libdvdcss AUTHORS file. So how "independently" is up for debate. It certainly wasn't developed in a vacuum.

From a legal perspective it doesn't matter. DeCSS has been ruled legal in Norway. If DeCSS is illegal in a non-free country like the US, then libdvdcss most likely is illegal in the US too.

Old News

[danda]

PowerDVD was first announced on Linux in 2000. See this article in the Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/18/dvd_play ba ck_on_linux_just/

To my knowledge, they have never released it for end-users to buy/download.

However, in 2001 I purchased a ThinkPad T22 from IBM pre-loaded with Linux and it had PowerDVD installed. The software required some funky thinkpad driver to be installed or it could not playback. I long ago dumped that distribution (caldera) and now Xine/mplayer et al run just fine on the same thinkpad without any special drivers.

Re:Yes...But...

[ScottGant]

Totem Movie Player.

Full menu support, subtitle support. Alternate audio track support.

Also, what other player other than the built in one does the Xbox have?

Does it work on a 700Mhz celeron...don't know, do they even make those anymore other than for the Xbox? If so, why would you want to when there are better processors available that are just as cheap.

Anything else?

Re:commercial?

[Anonymous Coward]

DeCSS is legal in Norway.

Re:Ask and you shall receive?

[WindBourne]

I'd submit that this is a big reason why software companies don't want to embrace the Linux market.

Sigh:

• DataBases
  • DB2
  • Oracle
  • Sybase
  • In fact all DB's except for sql server.
• ERP:
  • SAP
  • Peoplesoft
  • Just about everybody of consequence except those that is trying to sell itself to MS.
• General Office Applications: Many are being re-written into java so that they will work on all platforms. These have gone to Java to be able to support Linux, Mac, *nix, etc.
• Office clones: Many have been ported to Linux with the notable exception of MS, Lotus (IBM's stuff which I think that they will allow to simply die), and Corel (who is in the process of port again).
• Games? A small number are starting to support linux. I think that this will grow over the next year or two.

Too be honest, there is more commercial software for Linux than many people realize. Perhaps the two area that Linux has not made inroads yet, are home and specialized. That is changing.

Re:Yes...But...

[Thomas Shaddack]

Two things. First, you need to upgrade your libdvdread to the "illegal" one that supports decrypting. Second, you have to make a symbolic link from your DVD drive device (/dev/scd0 or /dev/hdc or something like that) to /dev/dvd (eg, as a root,
ln -s /dev/scd0 /dev/dvd
so the software would find your DVD drive where it expects it to be by default).

Try oKle!

[graviton137]

I'm the author of the oKle DVD player [sf.net] (for KDE). Many comments are complaining about ugly user interfaces - and rightfully so! I also thought of xine and mplayer being unusable by non-experts. So I scratched that itch and wrote my own player (based on the Ogle engine) where the goal was high usability and less eye-candy. It has full support for DVD menus and also more exotic features like bookmarks or taking screenshots. If you are not content with xine and mplayer - go and try oKle and please let me know what you think of it!

Re:Why is it ...

[Ben Hutchings]

Try Totem. It's a GNOME front-end for Xine.

Re:Commercial Linux Software

[dvdeug]

You people who are whining that you actually have to pay for something need to get off your high horses. If you ever want to see anything supported in Linux in some fashion you need to pay for it.

But there are many things supported in Linux right now that I don't need to pay for. I've got much better support from Debian than I've got with several commerical software providers.

Re:Do I have to buy TurboLinux?

[evilmonkey_666]

PowerDVD is by far the best DVD player for Windows

I disagree. The best DVD player for Windows (and Linux) is VLC [videolan.org]

It supports menus, surround sound (even DTS) and AFAIK all the other things PowerDVD does. But on top of that it is region free and allows you to skip the commercials and copyright warnings that PowerDVD forces you to watch :)

It's also free as in beer and speech.

Re:OS Requirements

[dvdeug]

Anyone else notice the OS requirements? Seems like bloated software to me

MPlayer would usually drop frames when running DVDs on my PIII-450 so the CPU seems about right for reliably running a DVD perfectly, especially if you want to scale it. The hard drive space and memory seem a bit excessive, though.

Re:Which is a good deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's my strategy: Most DVD player software has a free trial that cuts out after 10 minutes or something. That restriction is implemented in the player software, however, not the decoder (which is a seperate .dll). So, get a free, no-decoder-included player like InterActual, and connect it to the fully functional decoder that comes with the comercial player demo.(InterActual has a config thingy that scans the computer for DVD decoders, so it's easy)

Finally

[mosb1000]

No moe people can claim that DeCSS is perfectly okay because you can't buy a commercial DVD player for LUNIX. What's that? It's still perfectly okay? I just don't understand some people.

Re:commercial?

[tepples]

It's not the software patent overloads as much as the DVD CCA and DMCA overlords.

DVD-Video uses MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital codecs, both of which are covered by U.S. patents and foreign counterparts. See also MPEG LA [mpegla.com].

Re:Which is a good deal...

[dgoodman]

I watch a lot of anime, and what's with all these movies I'm seeing interlaced lately?

It's called telecining, and as long as anime is produced at 24fps, you're gonna see it. Telecine is a method for producing 29.97fps DVDs from 24fps material: essentially extra copies of existing fields are interlaced together to create the extra frames needed each second. Sometimes in awkward ways which are really obvious on a computer screen. There's really nothing that can be done, unless you rip the DVD and create a 24fps avi file using computationally expensive un-telecine algorithms (not the same as de-interlacing!).

Re:commercial?

[Nutria]

Stealing is using force (or fraud) to take something that someone has and therefore cannot have anymore because you took it.

Having just spoken to My Aunt The Lawyer, I can categorically say: your view of "stealing" is limited. There is also plain old theft. Think of shoplifting if you are confused.

For example, when you shoplift, you aren't using force (unless it's hard to jam that CD under your belt), and it's not fraud, but you are stealing. So, it's simple theft.

In the case of using commercial software which you did not pay for, well, there are laws against that, which are about as effective as dope laws, but, still, it is a crime.

Re:commercial?

[broeman]

well, it might be illegal in your country. My Danish government (and neighbour-countries) allow DeCSS, because of unfair treatment to Linux or other OSes.

This is not something I made up. I went into my government homepage on Digital Rights [www.kum.dk], and it clearly states: "You are allowed: to break codes and encryption of a DVD-movie, a music-cd or netradio in that extend, that it is necessary to see the movie or listen to the music in private. It is for example not illegal, that if you break the encryption on a DVD, if it is necessary to play the DVD on your private PC by help of an Linux Operating System". (Excuse me for the bad translation ;)

Re:Finally

[juhaz]

If this product had been there in the beginning, developing of DeCSS might have been illegal, but since it was not, the point is moot.

It was perfectly legal to reverse-engineer DeCSS for compability purposes, all charges against "dvd-jon" have been lifted. It doesn't become any less legal retroactively just because someone finally bothers to release an alternative n years later.

Using DeCSS may be illegal in US, and some other countries, but that's only because DMCA is insane, and prohibits owner of DVD from taking use of his fair use rights, and doesn't have anything at all to do with DeCSS itself.