JBScout schrieb:
Andreas Girardet schrieb:
... but it was a real surprise to me as I wanted to play my songs and a DVD - it wouldn't work. and more: on the hompage from Novell I could read that they don't know any legal site where I could donload the stuff i needed. 'why that ?' I asked myself. playing MP3 and watching DVD isn't any illegal thing I thouth. and becuase I didn't know anything about linux, I needed about 4 or 5 days and 3 new setups to get a system that plays the songs and let me watch the films. and that with a system where I have paid for. btw: the same price as for the upgrade to winXP pro as I've bought my PC.
I'm not new to the business of PCs. so I knew that it is nothing illegal to do all that multimedia-stuff. but when someone, who is still "only a PC-user" who has learned that he just need to make a click somewhere and the right player will open get an information from the vendor of his new OS that is based on OSS, that the things he likes to do are illegal, he will be back to his windows as fast as it could. and he will never give the new OS a new chanche in the near future.
on the other hand I understand the situation from Novell. but thats something that could be clared. if not for the openSUSE-side then for the boxed version where costumers pay for it: get the right license and put it into the box ! thats the only way I think. why letting Microsoft with there mediaplayer going a better way then yourself ? even when there player only plays MP3 from out of the box (v9), and only the version10 from it can rip MP3 out of the box, and play DVD when a second decoder is installed ( btw: thats mostly because modern PCs that are to buy have a DVD-ROM with the needed software; but for the user it looks like the MS player could play it by itself) - the way Microsoft is putting there stuff to the costumer is the way the user need it: turn PC on, put the files in, and play.
I read the other replies to this and do only want to contribute by giving a short explanation about the legal implications. MP3 as well als CSS (Content Scrambling System for encrypting commercial films on DVD) are copyrighted and are not open source. If you want to play a song or video that was made using one of these systems, you must have a decoder (I imagine you know that). This decoder must be licensed by the owner of the encoding system. For MP3 nice guys and maybe girls found a way around an developed LAME. But there is no legal workaround for CSS. With MS-Windoze you can use WinDVD, PowerDVD etc, which all include a licensed version of CSS. Once there was also a company trying to develop an equivalent for Linux, called LinDVD, but that project never reached it's goal. I don't know of any other attempt to legally find a way to incorporate CSS into a linux solution. I hope this may help to understand the problem a little bit more. Just a thougt: Nero (formely Ahead) has shortly issued it's Burning ROM CD/DVD burner for Linux. May be someone with contact to Nero may give them the idea to also develop their DVD solution for Linux, which for Windoze includes a licensed CSS codec ;-) Just my 0,02 EUR Detlef