Playing comercial dvds
 

Hi has anyone managed to play commercial dvds under suse 10.1. I had them fine under 10 but not in 10.1. i installed libdvdcss win32codecs to no avail. then after uninstalling Kaffeine and xine i tried mplayer with all the required extras and still to no good. i am using a packard and Bell easynote laptop and have fetched all the latest patches.
cheers showwaddy

Sounds like you've done the things you should on SuSE. Perhaps if there was some detail as to error messages and your observation we could be helpful. You could try running mplayer from a terminal session. That should give you more detail than you get when a failure occurs after launching an application with the GUI.

DVDs play on my laptop with Suse 10.1. I used the packman packages for mplayer and etc.
Basically the same process I used on my 9.3.

The only i get is no stream with a fatal error message.

Could your DVD drive be set to another region than the DVD?

have you checked that libdvdcss is corectly installed as i belive that packman no longer offer it

You really should try vlc. It is the only player to play all of my dvd's. xine and kafiene wouldn't play one of mine at all. Mplayer would play one title at a time.

The problem was (probably to stop piracy) that the titles were not in order on the dvd, ie episode 1 was title 7 etc.
vlc plays it with no problem, even plays the title screen.

You still need libdvdcss though

Also suse's own kafiene etc won't play dvd's even with libdvdcss installed you have to get them from the apps homepages.

Eureka Thanks all
 

Thanks every one after much head scratching and poking about i have mplayer working fine at last. why suse cant include it and say sod to international moaners i dont know. everyone that has purchased a dvd player has purchased the decoders anyway.

The reason Novell cannot include it is because to open source the encryption methods means people to copy DVDs easier. At least that is what the MPAA is moaning about. Personally I say screw them. If I own the DVD I can do as I please with it. I have SUSE 10.1 and I watch DVDs on it. I work for Novell, and while we officially cannot inform people how to do it, doesn't stop us all from doing it ourselves. DVDs were not supposed to have Regions or encryptions originally, you can blame the MPAA for that nonsense.

Actually even if you purchased the dvd's you don't own the copyright.
The Lawyers get everywhere --innocent people are now getting SUED like crazy because they are selling their used IPODS with MP3's still on them.

I don't actually have too much problem with say a REASONABLE commercial package -- WinDVD for Windows works well enough so why can't we get a commercial DVD player for Linux.

As I use Vmware I tend to boot up a Windows Virtual machine and then run Windvd from that machine --works fine.

I didn't have any probs getting DVD's to play on SUSE 10.0 --I didn't even need to re-install kaffeine. I grabbed Libdvdcss, Libxine and Xine from the Brazilian site together with windwos w32 codecs and it all worked --even Kaffeine plays dvd's.

Now as for SUSE 10.1 I can't say --had too many probs with SUSE 10.1 so went back to 10 until other issues sorted out.

I'm running it on a laptop --works great.

Cheers
-K

In my opinion it is a shame that you have to pay twice for the right to watch a DVD: once when you buy the DVD and a second time when you buy the device that is supposed to play it. This is ridiculous! I see the point about copyrights and that you don't own them. No objections! But that you need another licence to decrypt your completely legal DVD's doesn't get into my mind. And this is not a Linux problem only. Even Windows there doesn't seem to have a built-in DVD decryption capability available. So bottom line is: you have to pay twice if you want to keep it legal. Or did I miss the point?

Legal is for a court to decide and I cannot imagine anyone wants to see this challenged in court. I imagine if I go to court and present a case where I have paid for the dvd as well as the hardware to play the dvd then I dont think it will matter where I get the software from or what software I use.

Well it has gone to court, and the MPAA and others are currently winning the cases. Here is a good legal summary from an "anti-DMCA" source.

http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences.php

That just boggles my mind how any court could uphold any of those...of course a lot of those are just threats they list. I have yet to see a actual case where someone using linux was taken to court over a legal dvd being played in the dvd drive they bought and using some software to play that DVD. I mean the purpose of any encryption on a dvd is to be unencrypted so how is unencrypting it circumvention? Well if simple playback is illegal then I guess everyone is gulty? Even someone who uses XP, bought a dvd, and a dvd drive and WinDVD?

To me circumvention would be if I wanted to do something that the maker of the product did not want me to do or allow me to do. A compnay that produces DVDs I assume DOES want me to watch it, no? :)

As I said, love to see them take me to court. I paid $20 for the dvd movie, $60 for my dvd drive that came with software to play on windows but I dont use windows so I had to get some "other" software to play it and I am somehow doing so illegally? I can play it on this OS but not this OS, I can watch it on this TV but not that TV?

I admit it. I am guilty. Come and get me...I am not hard to find. :)

The unfortunate thing is that this situation is not totally logical.

Still, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") is a law, as codified in section 1201 of the Copyright Act. Although people can test the application of this law in court, most people know that its wording essentially revokes users' "fair use" rights. Although it is true that people can legally make backup copies for their own use, they can only do so legally if the material is not copy protected. In this case, it is not the copyright that is being protected by law, but the encryption system. This somewhat bizarre "loophole" has proven very powerful to the MPAA and RIAA.

Currently, the only immediate solution is to play the material you purchase in devices (hardware or software) that have been approved or licensed. As an example, the DVD player available to Linspire owners through the CNR warehouse is licensed. Linspire pays an MPEG fee to someone and in turn their player has been approved. The same is true with some hardware device like a standalone DVD player or a commercial software package like WinDVD. As long as the providers of the content believe they have been properly compensated, and provisions have been made to prevent piracy, they are willing to let people view and listen to what they purchased.

A longer term solution is to write to your Congressmen and Senators. They wrote the laws and have the capability of changing or revoking them. With enough consistent public pressure, it will happen.

Of course the DMCA only applied in the US, so those of us not in the US can get away with it, unless the almighty MPAA and RIAA decide to start harassing other countries again.

Not the least bit logical, that is one reason it is so hard to discuss to any degree and certainly to determine what is legal. That was the reason I said I would leave it up to a court of law. But as stated I wasnt talking about ripping only playing and I with simple playback I personally do not see circumvention occuring. Also, I paid for winDVD so I paid for the RIGHT to decrypt and I will consider that my right wether I use WinDVD or other software. Of course I also havent read where the DMCA makes a provision for the "right" to circumvent. I don't see where it says you can pay a fee and get around the law so once again everyone is illegal in this regard. :) Just because someone sells you a CSS license doesnt somehow excuse you from the DMCA law would it? DMCA is a piece or crap that is twisted into anything and everything that someone with money wants it to be!

I also have never read that a END USER is the one needing the license so once again I dont see how I personally would end up in court for playing my dvd on linux. I still dont see it as circumventing since unencrypting to provide playback is exactly what unencrypting is suppose to accomplish. :) Who has to pay for the CSS license - only the company/organization creating the software or drive etc... So how about every distro donate 10 bucks to legalfreecss.org (fictional organization whose goal is to get a css license) then they get the license, develop the software and every distro make use of the legal software?

Another question? Why have we accepted DVD if this is the mess we get out of it?

Does VLC have a license for css? Seems to work on everything I throw at it...

Actually it would be a CSS fee. And if Linspire paid for the license that means they still need the software to actually do unencrypting so what did they use? Do they own the software or is it GPL. If it is a GPL piece of software and they paid for a license does that cover anyone using that software? Who did they pay? How much? How do you know? :D

Again, things are not the way you would think they should be. Here is a quote on the subject from Michael Robertson.

Source: http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules...ticle&artid=14

Here is another example. TMPG products (recommended if you do video work in Windows and can properly interpret your needs from their bewildering array of similar products and brands) have (or had) trial versions where Dolby Digital Audio (2ch AC-3) support is (or was) disabled. It became enabled when you paid for the application. The reason was a licensing issue. Of course, this may change at any time, since the laws are not standing still.

yea, he is good at quick answers isnt he. Ask yourself what mpeg would have to do with CSS descrmabling? Read what he says not what you think he is saying. This is one of my main complaints about linspire is deception. Like those free security updates and other things. What you hear isn't techinically what they are saying. He says NOTHING about a CSS license. He doesnt even say the mpeg license has anything to do with the fact you can CNR dvd player at all. He doesnt say "yes you can legally play encrypted dvds on linspire using the CNR dvd player" He says two sentences that honestly may have nothing to do with each other and never mentions you can legally do this.

Just makes me think even more that their "legal" dvd player is nothing more than legally licensed to play regular plain DVDS and nothing else, if that. To make software that will play a encrypted disk you need to pay the CSS fee, simple as that. I have seen numerous posts in the linspire forums that ask about who linspire paid and never seen any answer. Even if they paid the fee they would also have to develop descrmabling software and I doubt seriously they did this.

Thanks for that link though I will use it wisely!

Well, I can only report what I read.

Regarding the Linspire DVD player, it will play anything as installed straight from the CNR warehouse. Nothing else is needed. Is it possible that Michael Robertson does not know all the licensing details? Well, yes. I think everyone knows he is an entrepreneur who started several businesses before Linspire and at least one since then. Frankly, I think he would be remiss to "micro manage" his company to the extent that he truly knows all the details regarding its operation and all the products it handles.

I have spent some time at the Linspire forum looking around, since my son runs Linspire on his computer (and I do on my triple-boot machine as well) and I want to stay in touch. Unfortunately, they are hardly more up-to-date or accurate than the Linspire sub-forum here. I do not mean that as a criticism. It is merely my opinion that the forum tends to be non-technical and low volume, so chances are they will not address any of the minutia as we do here.

Anyway, as rabid as the MPAA and RIAA have been lately, and since the Linspire DVD player has been distributed for quite some time now, I suspect that all the necessary fees, licenses and bribes have been offered to the appropriate people to make it legal. :)

I followed the instructions from The Jem Report and it worked like a charm!

Assuming you've installed Libxine, Win32codec, Xine-UI and libdvdcss sometimes the problem is in the configuration parameter. Often instead of source DVD coming from /dev/dvd, /dev/dvdrecorder or whatever try /dev/hdc or whatever your dvd device is connected to.

I didn't have to re-install kaffeine - I just installed the packages mentioned above and after changing /dvd to /dev/hdc it worked fine.

Sometimes the easiest solutions work.

Cheers
-K

It would appear that your link to dvd is missing. Note the following command line to look at my dvd links. In my case I have two DVD drives, a ROM and a RW.

$ cd /dev
$ ls -l|grep dvd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2006-07-03 12:08 dvd -> hdd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 2006-07-03 12:08 dvdrw -> hdc

You do not own the copyright however you can do anything you so desire with the content you PURCHASE (see court precedents! You OWN a copy of the content, not LICENSE it), you just cannot make copies except as provided for under fair use (e.g., timeshifting, backups, and more recently, format shifting).

When you buy a DVD, it's like buying a book, you OWN that copy. It is a commodity good purchased off the shelf.

Any free dvd player for Linspire?
 

Hi. I am new to Linspire. :newbie: I do not know much about coding and such (just haven't the time for the learning curve) and am looking for a free dvd player for Linspire 5.0. I don't think we should have to pay to play dvd's. Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Linspire is Debian based which means you can install .deb packages. However you are playing with fire if you do. Linspire has tweaked many library packages. To install a package prepared for strait Debian you frequently end up having to replace the Linspire tweaked libraries with the standard ones that everyone else uses. Your new application will work but you may find that Linspire provided applications will fail because of dependency problems. If you run Linspire, stick with the CNR installer or you may cause yourself serious issues that can only be fixed with another clean install of Linspire. You can do quite nicely with Linspire but will be dependant on them for security updates. If you're more adventuresome and like to have the latest and greatest I recommend a switch to Ubuntu 6.06 -- 100% free and compatible with .deb packages that would break Linspire.

Here is an article about just that. Don't have any idea how well it works.

In all essents, couldnt one just run their dvd player through their tv card and record from there?

Yes you can run anything that connects to your TV with a TV card. If I hadn't managed to get things working through my DVD player that was my next choice.

Possible, LEGAL(?) solutions
 

Okay, I understand that it has been a while since anyone posted here, but I have an opinion on the subject as well.

Now, certain distributions have legal Linux DVD players that supposedly work out of the box. The thing is that the two I know of are from companies not based in the US.

Mandriva has Intervideo's LinDVD. Mandriva is French, I believe. Turbolinux also plays DVD, and it is based out of Japan.

So, if playing a video game in Linux under Cedega is leagl, and playing a movie under so and so's free, open source DVD player in Windows is legal, why isn't someone coding an extension to Wine that successfully installs WinDVD, Interactual, or some of those other DVD players that come on the movie disc?

Why wouldn't that be a legal, and viable solution? I would be willing to suffer through a Wine/Interactual combination so long as it worked (satisfactorily) and was legal.

Why is this not like the Anti Trust suuits that made Microsoft play a litte more micely? Think about it. Video games not being available for Linux because the programmers don't care to make them compatible is simple short-sightedness. But the DVDs that we purchase, or otherwise legally acquire, we should be able to play them on every Operating System available.

People are going to copy data illegally no matter what legislation and copy protection software is put into practice, but why should the general public be forced to keep Microsoft Windows simply to utilize their legally acquired digital media? This looks an owful lot like Microsoft, whether intentionally or not, has secured a way to keep their OS on every American computer, if not in other countries trying to keep favor with the MPAA or the many other organizations that want to protect their right to charge way too much for a product that makes the filthy rich even filthier and the not so financially fortunate, less fortunate.

I am all for protecting the rights of those who have copyrights. I wouldn't want someone else making money off my work and creativity unless I get a fair cut. I think that the DVD Encryption is stupid though. The whole region code thing is stupid. So is the whole NTSC/PAL incomatability on VHS. Why can't I watch a video cassette from the US on a German VCR?

These people trying to protect copyright should learn a thing or two from books.

I have many books. On most of them, there is no special ink or watermark that fades or disfigures the copies if I try to make a photocopy or try to scan it. There is a simple copyright on the page that states whether or not copies can be made, and by who's authority.

What about if all scanners, cameras, and copiers had the ability to scan a barcode in the watermark that would automaticall notify some agency that a certain piece of literature had been digitally reproduced without the consent of the author or publisher?

What if God zapped everyone that worked on cloning live tissue?

Here's a better one, what if using a recipe out of a cookbook for an unintended purpose meant jail time?

Doctors prescribe medicine that was intended to treat one set of symptoms for an entirely different purpose because it will treat the patient better in that doctors professional medical opinion.

So, why can't I install a Windows intended application onto my Linux machine? I am the doctor for my PC, I see that the symptom is a lack of DVD playback, and I prescribe WinDVD, or an acceptable substitute at a lower cost, to my Linux computer because that will fix the problem. The thing is, my Linux box won't run a .exe natvely because that is the fole format for a WINDOWS application. My patient, my computer, lacks the ability to interface with the .exe pills I want to prescribe it orally, so I have to go with the introveinous supply. I have chosen to administer my medication of choice through the added interface of a well placed needle; Wine...

just install vlc. Go to the suse wiki and search for 'smart' it will talk you thorugh installing the smart package manager. Once you have that setup type 'smart install vlc' and thats it done. All your DVDs and any other filetype wil play (except wmv)

vlc
 

Well, I still don't see where that makes it legal. I use Mandriva 2007 and I used the built in package manager to install VLC. I won't know about DVDs until I get home tomorrow, but I do know that I have no sound now. There must be some conflict between the VLC packages and my ALSA.

I purchase all my DVDs. The pirating of the movies seems to be the real issue. Everyone they go after in the US has been the result of downloading pirated movies.

Wolfton, in my opinion, any licensed application that legally plays DVDs should be OK, regardless of the operating system. The only problem is that most of the licensed DVD playing apps will only run natively in Windows. (An exception, LinDVD, seems to be a port of WinDVD, but only available if you purchase the commercial version of Mandriva.) Still, if you have a copy of PowerDVD (for example) and can use Wine or Cedega to run it in Linux, I think that would be legal as well. The problem is not having a "licensed" operating system, but rather having a "licensed" application. :)

IMHO: The purpose of DRM isn't to protect the content author. It's purpose is to get us to pay over and over for the same thing. This is most obvious with music. I buy a CD to play on my stereo then buy it again to listen to on my iPod. If I decide to replace my iPod with a Zune -- I get to buy it again. If you think this is bad, just wait till you see what changes Microsoft is having hardware vendors make to give Vista the power disable our equipment. Thank God for Linux.

i couldn't care less about protection. For me everythings free open source or not :)

The What if.. DRM Conspiracy Theory
 

I wonder if DRM, DVD CSS, the fact the no Linux has had DVD software for so many years and Vista's power to muck things up a bit aren't just another attempt by Microsoft to secure them as a monopoly in the OS arena.

Microsoft, in order to keep them preferred over Linux by users like us may offer incentive to certain vendors of goods and services to intentionally and deliberately write code to keep anyone not using proprietary Microsoft OSes or applications from accessing services that would ordinarily be accessible, and even free.

I cannot go to any of the Microsoft websites in any broweser other than IE, and of course, there is no Internet Explorer for Linux. I don't even know if there is still a Mac version, but there was.

There are certain other websites that will offer content only to IE users, or offer reduced compatibility.

Is it a mere coincidence that content-rich sites with steaming media and applications are available only to Windows and IE? Or is it because they have been bought out?

If Microsoft were to be investigated for ensure that they are not in any way coaxing ot limiting the rights of Linux users to freely available services unless they use Windows AND Internet Explorer, would that not be in line with the anti-trust suits? Is it merely good business practice? Even if it were not an intentional side effect, would Microsoft not be just as guilty if they didn't provide the code for IE that could be intergated into the other browsers so as to allow access to that content?

I wish a lawyer would look at this and see if there is a valid case. Winning a suit like this could make a career as well as enhance all of the happy computing that Linux users crave without having to reboot and choose Windows.

IMHO Microsoft is evil. I have no doubt they coerce people but power also comes from their monopoly. Without standards a developer is force to pick which proprietary scheme to develop to. Shear numbers almost force that decision to the benefit of Microsoft. Microsoft's latest evil is impacting hardware. Changes are being made to hardware components like video cards so that Vista can cripple their operation when Microsoft determines DRM breaches have occurred. This will add to the cost of hardware and make it more difficult to write drivers. The power to end this garbage lies with the consumer but the consumer doesn't have a good track record when it comes to Microsoft. Lets hope that the user manipulation built in to Vista will drive consumers to the Linux door. The key to that is for us to make sure the average consumer learns how they are being abused by the Evil Empire.