Hello everyone, This question is mainly for the Novell employees watching this list: What do you think about including "PowerDVD for Linux" on the box version? I'm using it now (got it from TurboLinux which I bought some months ago) and I think it's great. It's the first official (legal) DVD player for Linux. I think it will be a great add-on to the retail version. I know it will cost you (licenses) but you can pass that on to the consumer. The same with an mp3 decoder? After all, for those that don't want to pay for these extra closed-source/non-free software, there's always the OSS version available. BTW...I know there's Mplayer and Ogle out there that we can use for DVD playbay (although not legally in some countries)...I'm just curious about the PowerDVD possibility. For the rest: comments are welcome :) Thanks, Jorge
Hi Jorge, Jorge Fábregas <fabregasj@prtc.net> writes:
Hello everyone,
This question is mainly for the Novell employees watching this list:
What do you think about including "PowerDVD for Linux" on the box version? I'm using it now (got it from TurboLinux which I bought some months ago) and I think it's great. It's the first official (legal) DVD player for Linux.
I think it will be a great add-on to the retail version. I know it will cost you (licenses) but you can pass that on to the consumer. The same with an mp3 decoder? After all, for those that don't want to pay for these extra closed-source/non-free software, there's always the OSS version available.
BTW...I know there's Mplayer and Ogle out there that we can use for DVD playbay (although not legally in some countries)...I'm just curious about the PowerDVD possibility.
Thanks, I'll pass these comments on, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@suse.de, http://www.suse.de/~aj SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126
Hi Jorge, this is of course a good idea. We will see what we can do in that regard. But be aware that commercial DVD players cost not only royalties, they cost a lot of royalties (for mpeg2, Dolby and CSS). And it needs to be well considered if we really want to pass all those costs to the customer. In my opinion the Turbolinux 10F is very expensive because of these royalties, you get 3 CDs and no manual at all for 70 bugs. Currently you get a SUSE Linux box for 60 bugs with 1 DVD, 5 CDs, a printed manual and 3 months installation support. But you're right, it's worth to think about that. A few more comments to your e-mail: mp3 decoder is already included in SL 10.0 (retail version). It's used by amarok, banshee and realplay to play mp3 files. PowerDVD is not the first legal DVD player for Linux, there are a few Linux OEM versions in the market that included LinDVD from Intervideo. MPlayer, Ogle and Xine are not illegal principally but using DeCSS with these players is illegal (not in some but in most countries). Martin On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, Jorge Fábregas wrote:
Hello everyone,
This question is mainly for the Novell employees watching this list:
What do you think about including "PowerDVD for Linux" on the box version? I'm using it now (got it from TurboLinux which I bought some months ago) and I think it's great. It's the first official (legal) DVD player for Linux.
I think it will be a great add-on to the retail version. I know it will cost you (licenses) but you can pass that on to the consumer. The same with an mp3 decoder? After all, for those that don't want to pay for these extra closed-source/non-free software, there's always the OSS version available.
BTW...I know there's Mplayer and Ogle out there that we can use for DVD playbay (although not legally in some countries)...I'm just curious about the PowerDVD possibility.
For the rest: comments are welcome :)
Thanks, Jorge
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-- Dr. Martin Sommer Product Manager Consumer Products SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, D-90409 Nürnberg Phone: +49 (0) 911 740 530 Fax: +49 (0) 911 740 53 575 Email: martin.sommer@suse.com ----------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 10:28:16AM +0200, Martin Sommer wrote:
Currently you get a SUSE Linux box for 60 bugs with 1 DVD, 5 CDs, a
Although there are actually more bugs available for SUSE LINUX 10.0, as you can easily see at https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?product=SUSE+LINUX+10.0&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=NEEDINFO&bug_status=REOPENED ;-P Robert -- Robert Schiele Tel.: +49-621-181-2214 Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de
*lol* So I have to pay 60 bugs to get 851 bugs. Sounds like a really good deal. :) On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, Robert Schiele wrote:
On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 10:28:16AM +0200, Martin Sommer wrote:
Currently you get a SUSE Linux box for 60 bugs with 1 DVD, 5 CDs, a
Although there are actually more bugs available for SUSE LINUX 10.0, as you can easily see at https://bugzilla.novell.com/buglist.cgi?product=SUSE+LINUX+10.0&bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=NEEDINFO&bug_status=REOPENED
;-P
Robert
-- Dr. Martin Sommer Product Manager Consumer Products SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, D-90409 Nürnberg Phone: +49 (0) 911 740 530 Fax: +49 (0) 911 740 53 575 Email: martin.sommer@suse.com ----------------------------------------------------------
one important thing : suse is released more or less every 6 months if i buy a commercial dvd player soft, i don't want to pay for it every 6 month, i prefer to buy a rpm once once and install it on my new system when i reinstall it. paul.
Am Mi 21.09.2005 11:50 schrieb IntegraGen <suse-ml@integragen.com>:
one important thing : suse is released more or less every 6 months if i buy a commercial dvd player soft, i don't want to pay for it every 6 month, i prefer to buy a rpm once once and install it on my new system when i reinstall it.
You are right no that one. I think, selling a DVD player seperately would satisfy everyone: - SUSE does not include commercial products (except for free ones: Adobe Reader etc). - The price for the boxed version does not increase. - My license works with the next version of SUSE Linux, too. What Novell would have to do: - Compile a binary RPM from the OEM version of either LinDVD or PowerDVD for every release. - Sell it online The main problem is that I as a costumer can not get LinDVD nor PowerDVD as they only sell their product to OEMs. If they would sell it, Novell would not have to do anything. Dani
On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 02:32:39PM +0200, Daniel Bertolo wrote:
The main problem is that I as a costumer can not get LinDVD nor PowerDVD as they only sell their product to OEMs. If they would sell it, Novell would not have to do anything.
That is indeed the problem. If they would offer a binary for sale (for a reasonable price) that would be great. What would be even better if they just offer it for free. They are in the business of selling DVD's, not software, or so would one think. Instead they try to rip us customers of several times. 1 time for the DVD 1 time for the player 1 time for the fact you are not allowed to make copies 1 time for the extra tax on blank CD's and DVD's (here in Belgium) </rant> houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, houghi wrote:
On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 02:32:39PM +0200, Daniel Bertolo wrote:
The main problem is that I as a costumer can not get LinDVD nor PowerDVD as they only sell their product to OEMs. If they would sell it, Novell would not have to do anything.
That is indeed the problem. If they would offer a binary for sale (for a reasonable price) that would be great.
What would be even better if they just offer it for free. They are in the business of selling DVD's, not software, or so would one think. Instead they try to rip us customers of several times. 1 time for the DVD 1 time for the player 1 time for the fact you are not allowed to make copies 1 time for the extra tax on blank CD's and DVD's (here in Belgium) </rant>
You mix up things that are a little different: "They" are the player vendors, Intervideo and Cyberlink. They can only rip us by charging money for the player software. The others are different companies (Dolby, MPEGLA, DVD CCA (the guys who make CSS), MPAA (Hollywood studios)). With each player copy Cyberlink and Intervideo sell or bundle they also need to pay royalties tho those other organisations/companies. So different companies and organizations together rip us several times. The player manufacturers are not the evil ones. -- Dr. Martin Sommer Product Manager Consumer Products SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, D-90409 Nürnberg Phone: +49 (0) 911 740 530 Fax: +49 (0) 911 740 53 575 Email: martin.sommer@suse.com ----------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, Sep 21, 2005 at 03:00:21PM +0200, Martin Sommer wrote:
So different companies and organizations together rip us several times. The player manufacturers are not the evil ones.
That is what I ment by `they`. It is clear that the extra tax soes not come from the companies, but from governement. houghi -- Quote correct (NL) http://www.briachons.org/art/quote/ Zitiere richtig (DE) http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren Quote correctly (EN) http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
On 21-Sep-05, Daniel Bertolo wrote:
Am Mi 21.09.2005 11:50 schrieb IntegraGen <suse-ml@integragen.com>:
one important thing : suse is released more or less every 6 months if i buy a commercial dvd player soft, i don't want to pay for it every 6 month, i prefer to buy a rpm once once and install it on my new system when i reinstall it.
You are right no that one. I think, selling a DVD player seperately would satisfy everyone:
- SUSE does not include commercial products (except for free ones: Adobe Reader etc). - The price for the boxed version does not increase. - My license works with the next version of SUSE Linux, too.
What Novell would have to do:
- Compile a binary RPM from the OEM version of either LinDVD or PowerDVD for every release. - Sell it online
Sell serial numbers online. And - serial numbers work until next major release (or one more) - older versions will still be compiled and provided for some time on newer boxes This is similar to the VMWare model. But older versions should still be provided for newer Linux releases for some time (maybe a few years). The problems are: - The additional maintenance for the older versions comes at a price (although it should be less than for VMWare, since a DVD player is much less dependend on hard- and software-changes). - As with other software products, the customer cannot choose as freely when he wants to upgrade and pay the price for upgrading the DVD Player software as well. If you need to upgrade your system for some other reason (e.g. you want/need some new software that does not run on your old system, or you need/want a critical bugfix that is not available for your version of Linux), at some point you have to pay the price to upgrade the DVD Player software as well. So this model does not scale to more than one or maybe two widely used software packages. You have to think of it as "added cost for a new computer system". Regards, -- Olaf Dabrunz (od/odabrunz), SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Nürnberg
participants (8)
-
Andreas Jaeger -
Daniel Bertolo -
houghi -
IntegraGen -
Jorge Fábregas -
Martin Sommer -
Olaf Dabrunz -
Robert Schiele