don't give up yet

[Samuel Hocevar]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2000, Steven Rodenburg wrote:

> Ok, got vlc running now without the startup errors i mailed in before.
> But now vlc just freezes without any messages when i run vlc (or gvlc,
> doesn't matter).

   This is still a bit strange. Did you by chance try with a stream that
you were sure wasn't encrypted ?

   We have some here : ftp://ftp.videolan.org/pub/videolan/streams/

> This leads me to assume that all my DVD's are encrypted

   It's highly possible. A huge majority of DVDs are encrypted.

> Why the hell is there not a company that will make a good full-featured
> Linux-DVD player like PowerDVD or WinDVD on Windows. I don't mind paying
> for one.

   I mind paying for one. VideoLAN is OpenSource, it's the most
important for me, and it probably wouldn't be of any interest if it
wasn't. I prefer something far from perfect like VideoLAN that I can
still hack on, rather than a closed-source application I won't be able
to modify. Note that I do not speak on behalf of other members of the
project, but I do believe most of them agree with me.

> I really do admire the guys and dolls working on Linux DVD players and
> stuff but until now i found not a single player that will just install
> and run. Just run and decode and show the damn movies aaaaarrrggh.
> Damn it. Linux always lags behind these sort of things (and i've been
> around for quite a while mind you).

   Try this version of DeCSS : http://zoy.org/~sam/css-auth.tar.gz

   I compiled it, so you just have to run it this way (supposing
/dev/hdc is your DVD drive) - you'll probably have to be root:

     ./tstdvd /dev/hdc
     mount /dev/hdc /mnt/dvd -t udf
     ./tstdvd /dev/hdc /mnt/dvd/VIDEO_TS_VTS_01_0.VOB
     ./css-cat -a /mnt/dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_[1-9].VOB | vlc -

   You will need UDF (filesystem) support in your kernel, and a rather
recent version of it (the 2.4.0pre series aren't bad).

> And now that 2600.com lost their lawsuit and they removed all links to
> DeCSS the Linux community is really screwed. Search engines don't reveal
> working links to linux-DeCSS packages either.

   I don't give a fuck to the current issue of this lawsuit. Kaplan had
been a consultant for the MPAA, so he wasn't probably the best person to
rule against them. Anyone interested in working links to DeCSS may try:

   http://www.zpok.demon.co.uk/decss/mirrors.html

Regards,
Sam.
-- 
Samuel Hocevar <sam at via.ecp.fr> - http://www.via.ecp.fr/~sam/
     Do not try and fight the Cabal. That's impossible.
  Instead only try to realize the truth. There is no Cabal.