[MPlayer-users] Windows binary availability?

[Brian J. Murrell]

On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 08:19:16PM +0200, Arpi wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> Hi,

Hello,

> It was done by Atmos just for fun. He didn't spent lots of time making it,
> but afaik it was a big mess to get it compile...
> 
> Btw I personally (and some other developers too) really worry about windows:
> Just remember what happened to virtualdub's asf support!

Sorry, I am not familiar with that case but I can imagine...

> And mplayer supports lots of closed and patented stuff. Companies aren't
> interested in it until we leave their windows market alone.
                   ^^^^^
Of course you mean while.

> But as soon as we provide mplayer for windows, m$ and others will force
> us to stop and remove asf support etc.

Can they, if you just support the use of thier own lib?  Are you
really violating any patents?  It's still their own implemenation,
code, algorithms, etc.  You are just giving the user an alternate
framework to use the patent approved implementation.

Although I don't really want to get into a patent discussion here.
:-)

Heck, I don't even really care to run asf and other MS proprietary
files on MS anyway.  MPEG 1,2,4(in it's DIVX forms even) work fine for
me.

> For example, m$ provides media
> encoder and other tools. they can be simply replaced by mencoder and
> mplayer.

Yeah!!  Far superior implementations IMHO.

> Do you really think they will allow it???

Well if you definately steered clear of their patent covered
proprietary crap they can't stop you.

> And yet another thing, it's more technical:
> mplayer has lots of gcc asm stuff. it isn't compilable under windows.
> and what about unix-specific things, like tty i/o, fork() and such things.
> They were all disabled in win version, making it very useless.

This is a fair enough reason then.  I assumed the port was more
complete that I guess it is.

> And who do need mplayer in the "userfriendly" windows world?

Sure.

> Who want to start a command prompt to type long command line to get their
> avi played, instead of double click on it?

Someone who thought that Mpalyer was a far superior way of watching
video than WMP.  You would not necessarily have to start a cmdline
window either.  I frequently launch Mplayer from the Nautilus file
browser by double-clicking on media files.  A Windows port of Mplayer
can be as guiless as it was historically on Linux.

b.

-- 
Brian J. Murrell