[plug] Good news for DVD playing on Linux?

[John Knight]

Whether or not things are fully legal with the patents is another issue, 
what I do know is that msot distros are coming with DVD playing as standard, 
minus the CSS decryption. If you have an unencrypted DVD, most major distros 
will play it with no hassles. I think distros will still steer clear for a 
few months of DeCSS, but it's worth watching. Check out xinehq.de and 
mplayerhq.hu every few days and see what gets mentioned.



"...it was brilliant, there was three up against a thousand, and boy, did we 
give those three heaps!"


>Ben Jensz wrote:
>>If the CSS encryption on DVDs is no longer considered a trade secret, then 
>>wouldn't that mean that CSS decryption to play DVD movies under Linux 
>>would now be legally possible?
>>
>>Could be good to see distributions coming with DVD playing functionality 
>>out of the box...
>
>Alas, you still need MPEG or MPEG-II (I think it's MPEG-II) decoding 
>support. That means Fraunhoffer patents - the same issue as for MP3 
>decoding. For that matter, a few DVDs have MP3 audio. The rest have AC3 
>audio and ... you guessed it, Fraunhoffer patents.
>
>Consequently, I don't see it happening. It should make it easier for 3rd 
>party players like Xine and Mplayer to distribute DeCSS though.
>
>Craig Ringer
>
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