[MPlayer-dev-eng] Bluray playback

[Grozdan]

2009/9/7 Jonathan Nell <crtrn13 at gmail.com>:
> I'm working on an mplayer patch to allow for 'native' Bluray playback
> (I found it immensely annoying that there is no way to play Bluray
> discs in linux - well at least no straightforward way). I wanted to
> get your thoughts regarding a few issues:
>
> 1) Firstly, is there any way such a patch could be accepted being that
> it will implement AACS (and eventually BD+) decrypting?
> 2) Even if the decryption algos themselves are not a problem, they
> rely on a bunch of crypto keys (look at the doom9 forum for more
> info). This means that either Processing Keys are taken from a
> 'legitimate' player and included, or a list of Volume Unique Keys are
> included. Would the distribution of these keys be covered under fair
> use?
> 3) Is there any way to apply the patch without the keys and then allow
> the user to provide keys from wherever if the want to watch Bluray
> discs?
>
> I juist don't think it's very fair that Linux users cannot view their
> legal discs (which they paid for) in their legal drives (which they
> paid for)! What are your thoughts?
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>

I'm strongly in support for such a patch. Linux people always seem to
suffer due to a combination of ways content people always making it
hard to watch *legally* purchased stuff and their obsession with "iron
curtain" encryptions, which brings more pain for all parties,
especially for people who have like you said *legally* purchased their
content and play it on *legally* purchased devices.

I think your third option is the better one. Add an option to
mplayer/mencoder (like -bdkey or some such) for the user to provide
the key himself. Adding built-in keys to mplayer could potentially
bring future problems. As for the patch having AACS/future BD+, I
think this is OK. MPlayer already includes libdvdcss, though a
separate lib and not directly built-in into the mplayer codebase. I'm
not entirely sure on this one so someone else who's more familiar with
such things will have to answer the legal questions.