[MPlayer-users] Legality of binary codecs

[Reimar Döffinger]

Hi,
On Thu, May 26, 2005 at 02:29:21PM -0700, Gregor Richards wrote:
> What is the legality status on the array of binary codecs provided at 
> MPlayerHQ.hu?  I am particularly interested in Windows Media codecs in a 
> business environment (that is, with intranet distribution), in the 
> United States prmarily but also worldwide if possible.  Are the codecs 

Well, for what it's worth, linspire licensed the code and they have made
working linux libs. Unfortunately those versions I came across were
compiled without optimization and are thus much too slow to be useful at
all. Also you would have to patch MPlayer in order to be able to use
them and thus would have to either maintain the patches yourself or find
somebody to do it...
I also don't know if they are allowed to provide them outside of their
linux distribution, but it might be worth a try.
But the better solution is of course not to use wmv, the quality is not
that good, and speed of the windows decoders is quite lacking, too...

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger