Good work Microdigital!

Gulli

Problem with DVD is that commercially mastered movies are all encrypted using special algorithms which are only made available in source code form to very trusted and very rich PC/Mac decoder software companies.

Hence, there's no 'above board' DVD player for Linux and likewise, I doubt we'll see it on RISC OS for a while.

However, MPEG hardware support gets us half way there but the next stage could be harder.

Cheers,
a

Perhaps the film industry will see sense (yeah, right) and open up the standards...

DVD and the movie studios never cease to amaze me. The latest being that (apparently) new scripts will be added to future DVD's that will make them check if your machine can be reconfigured to multiple region settings. If the script finds it can then the DVD won't play (even if its the CORRECT region for your player).

Hmm, that doesn't stop people from buying another DVD player with a different region code and it probably will not take long before someone has found a way to bypass such a script. The bad thing for the consumer and in the long run for the movie studios is that people like me who like watching alternative movies that may never be released outside the US will not be able to buy these movies without buying a second DVD player and it's hard justifying two players! Then again, why not just buy region one players and no others :-)

Maybe it's time to start boycutting (sp?) DVD and go directly to DivX?
That would paralise all these distribution constraints! Anyone for converting that?
Maybe a hardware player can be created for DivX.


[Edited by 172 at 22:30, 26/11/2000]

Ones that are changed by hand as needed are not detected.

As far as i'm aware the multiregion script only detects players that play all region disks automatically.

Ones that are changed by hand as needed are not detected.

And indeed its also that case that most auto-change players can be set manually to a region on a 'temporary' basis, so bypassing the script as well.

Getting back to the point that started this thread - mpeg acceleration in hardware. Isn't this just mpeg1 acceleration? I'm thinking it won't help much play back DVDs at speed. Anyone know for sure?

The old SA-110 would need some help though !

DVD and the movie studios never cease to amaze me. The latest being that (apparently) new scripts will be added to future DVD's that will make them check if your machine can be reconfigured to multiple region settings. If the script finds it can then the DVD won't play (even if its the CORRECT region for your player).

I need a Asparin quick

It will only knock out all region players meant to be sold in the far east. People who have players who can simply switch regions indefinitely with a remote control hack won't have problems.

I must admit I'm more into divx now as I hate the way europe and the uk are treated with inferior releases at inflated prices that take a damn site longer to get here.

If I remember correctly (in short if I've got it wrong correct me please ). DivX was originally pushed as a means of "rental" DVD distribution.

The concept was you'd buy a DivX disk and then have a restricted number of "plays", to get more you'd "top up" (by paying on-line).

Yes it was and apparently it has completely bombed in the US as people go "what do you mean I have to pay more to watch it AFTER I've already paid for it?"

Conclusions? It does not seem to be hard to cater for DVD playback up to the point of actually decoding the sound and playing the video. I guess the Linux tools could be ported quickly, and access of the DVD-ROM is no problem at all (given some SCSI/ATAPI expertise).

We would need a vastly improved hardware (e.g. the Omega or a good AGP card for ViewFinder which does most of the MPEG2 stuff "automatically" and following that some better software. It *is* possible.

If I have time, I will look into it (up to the MPEG decoding stuff - that's foreign territory I'm afraid).

BTW, DVD decoding is not illegal in Germany at all, so all you have to wait for is a German guy coding the software ;-)

Steffen

The concept was you'd buy a DivX disk and then have a restricted number of "plays", to get more you'd "top up" (by paying on-line).

The problem with opting for Region 1 only is that if you want to view a film once you can't (you have to buy - as you can't rent region 1 disks). That's why I opted for R2, at least you can rent some disks and buy the ones you really lust after.

I suppose (real world time guys) some cleaver sod will come up with a patch that hides multiregion on your player so that it can be enabled but not by a script on the DVD (and so the DVD will play as it will be fooled into believing that your DVD is a single region deck).

I need a Asparin quick

What would be nice would be a DVD\CSS filing system, using something like DeCSS. So you could see the plain mpeg files, then an mpeg 2 player could play them.
Maybe a bit of scandal would raise RISCOS awareness.

It is possible to license DVD/CSS (it is subject to non-disclosure terms but is available for a cool $5000). So perhaps someone with deep pockets will by a license and do a "legit" version for RiscOS, ARM10's/xScale and possibly ARM9's may be up to doing a good software decode.

The way CSS normally is implemented is such that unencrypted files are never viewable without the licensed software (or hardware) and attempts to copy CSS encrypted files in an unencrypted form is prohibited (I imagine if a legit DVD software player appeared on RiscOS I doubt if the movie moguls would relent and allow it to behave like a normal ROS filing system - a pity really !)

Right now any publicity would be good publicity... (unless of course it was "RiscPC blows up and destroys school..." !)

See http://www.2600.com/ if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Since the RISC OS market is so small that no one knows anything about it, let alone gives a damn, we probably could have a commercial or shareware player that no one would ever hear of and therefore not have to worry about an international scandal like the Linux folks.

So, if there is one, it was a long time coming and took an international scandal before it appeared