[FFmpeg-user] ffmpeg issue

[Phil Turmel]

On 12/10/2011 10:56 PM, Phil Rhodes wrote:
>> VLC runs fine, and plays a large variety of media, but will only play unencrypted DVDs.
> 
> The version of VLC I can get from videolan, for windows, plays DVDs out of the box, including DVDs not of the region for which the drive is set up. To achieve this it must come with the ability to defeat CSS.
> 
> Why do these thorny legal issues only apply to Linux?
> 
> My assumption is that it only applies to linux because the people who write this stuff are much more interested in making a ridiculous political point than they are in producing software that does useful work.

The last time I did a bare install of Windows, it wouldn't play DVDs either.  With VLC.  I had to install Roxio, or PowerDVD, or one of the other products that pitch DVD playback to get the right system DLLs.  They typically come packaged with new computers, or with retail DVD drives.  Part of the purchase price is pays a royalty to the DVD CSS patent consortium, and to the Fraunhofer institute, or whoever it is that now holds all of those patents.

I think media center versions of Windows include it out-of-the-box.

Given a bare DVD drive in a Linux system, there's no reliable way to know if the end-user has purchased anything that includes that royalty, or to know if the royalty even applies in their locale.

IANAL, of course, but this is my experience.

Phil