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Prototype Hardware DVD Decodoer for Linux-needs help 149

Posted by Hemos from the slashdot-effect-please dept.
Yohahn wrote in with some news on the DVD for Linux effort. A company has developed a prototype DVD decoder board that does the decryption in hardware, versus software, meaning the that the drivers could be released under the GPL. However, because the board is only a prototype, investors need to be convinced - head over to LinuxTv.org and vote in the poll to show support for this. Please-I'd like to fully use my laptop, and this is one of those areas Linux needs assistance in.
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Prototype Hardware DVD Decodoer for Linux-needs help

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  • This is much less likely to happen under the way they actually license. They do not license to the company persay. They actually license the CSS specs to individuals. For instance there are two people at Sigma Designs that actually know what the CSS specs are, same at IBM, and every other company involved. These two people are most directly responsible (the company that they work for is also held responsible on a financial basis). So these two people have a great incentive to keep those specs either on their persons at all times or in a very secure place. :)
  • Yah but can you get 5.1-channel surround or are you stuck with the inferior (though still better than 2-channel stereo) Dolby ProLogic (or worse)?

  • This is the status last time I checkes: Linux supports reading CD's through DVD drives. There is an alpha stage driver to read DVD's through DVD drives. There is no support for decoding DVD movies.

  • Current generation hardware DVD decoding products and their related software do not have industry support in linux for at least one major reason. Most products out today perform the AC-3 decoding in software. This means that there is an associated CSS decryption happening in software. Because of this, companies are not jumping at the chance to do linux support. It would require software CSS handling routines and in the linux OS these routines are not as "protected" as they are in the windows or other supported OSes, from reverse engineering and hacking.

    There will be linux support in the next generation of hardware decoding devices (expect something out of Sigma Designs in the next 6 months if not sooner) since this issue will be overcome. New decoding chipsets will do all decoding and decryption on chip, meaning there will be little in the way of software driver requirements and writing applications to support the newer hardware will be much easier than in the current generation of products.

    For those companies that put out products now that don't do any CSS or ac-3 stuff in software, then their only reason for nopt supporting linux is that they don't have the manpower to do it themselves or they don't see the market yet.
  • I seem to remember a slashdot story a while ago about ATI releasing Linux drivers for the ATI
    All-in-wonder 128, which has Mpeg encrypt as well
    as decrypt capabilities. Does anyone know what
    came of it?
  • I think the chances of them addressing your specific issues are very, very slim. They don't even have the funding to manufacture this thing as a standalone PCI card, let alone slap a SCSI port on the thing, or make it an add-on for a Banshee...

    Your comment about the bias built into their poll is very valid, though. I noticed it, too. There should have simply been a "I'm not interested in DVD" box instead of the Windows remark.

  • Re:Good idea but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What would be more useful (and I submitted an Ask Slashdot question two weeks ago that never showed up...) would be an MPEG2 encoder and decoder card, letting Linux be able to function like those new digital "VCR"'s, either in an embedded setting or on, for example, my server that handles my voicemail and e-mail. It'd be nice to bring up one page that listed all my new e-mails, voicemails, and recorded TV shows. :)

    Not really feasible at the moment. Much like MP3, MPEG-2 video and AC-3 audio were designed to be computationally cheap to decode. Encoding is a far more expensive process. I seem to remember reading that encoding MPEG-2 video in anything close to realtime requires specialized hardware currently priced in the stratosphere (>$20,000).

  • I believe I indirectly mentioned this already.
  • Also remember they're now using a version of the Hollywood+, and CSS would have to be done in software. If Sigma won't support the H+ we'll _never_ see a Linux driver for the "DXR3"
  • A little off-topic,but I heard about another driver for linux that had been developed using some dos drivers under dosemu being monitored. How legal is this kind of reverse engineering? If someone managed to wrestle wine with a few modifications to the source to load and run a dvdplayer program (like creative encore player) would a driver for the hardware based on that be illegal?
  • Protect wasn't necessarily the best word I could have used there. Unfortunately a better one isn't coming to mind. I've spoken to Sigma Designs on this at great length and the reasons I was given that there wasn't linux support for their current products were:

    1) They didn't have anyone inhouse that had done linux driver development previously. They were rectifying that problem, however.

    2) Their CSS license would not allow for a linux OS software release. While they didn't go into detail on their licensing terms, it does make some sense that it would be much more likely to be hacked or reverse engineered by the linux community than the Windows community. Not necessarily out of malicious pretenses, but higher "knowledge bar" in the linux OS and the people that use it than the windows community.

    3) They were developing a new chipset that would handle all this in hardware, and it's expected to be out in the second quarter of 1999. This being the case it made little sense from a business standpoint to go back and write drivers and application software for the older products (hollywood+ and related chipsets) when they had something new coming out that would be much easier to work with (from both a legal/licensing standpoint and a development standpoint).

  • Actually no matter how much effort they put into copy protecting they will fail in the end. Even if you had hardware only decoders, you could still attach a device to the VGA out of the mpeg card that could grab the signal and save it to disk (i dunno if such a device exists). Sure it would go through a D/A conversion but the signal loss would be almost non-existant. Also, serious bootleggers will be able to get hacked drives that will allow you to read the raw sectors from the DVDs. No copy protection scheme is ever absolute.
  • >Most products out today perform the AC-3 decoding >in software.

    You are completely wrong. All the products out
    today can not decode AC3. The decode the "standard" stereo track - in hardware - and
    provide the AC3 digital signal on a connector,
    so you can connect it to a external decoder.

    With the creative kit just as with the others
    nothing is done in software, except for feeding
    the -css encrypted- data from the cddrive to the card. all css decoding is done in hardware, for example at the creative board by the C-Cube ZivaDS
    MPEG/DVD Decoder Chip.

    The decoded stereo sound is fed into your soundcard analog over the CD-Audio leed.

    But - to add for being complete - there is today many software decoding DVD software, which does CSS completely in software and should be vulnerable to reverse engineering, so i think it will only be a matter of time when CSS will be rendered unusable. CSS is now the only reason, why DVDs cant be copied, but btw. not all DVDs are protected by CSS.
  • Working for a company that builds an Inflight Entertainment system I can say that the lack of support for these kind of devices is the main reason for embedded systems like ours to NOT use Linux.

    We have tried it, but every time we end up having to fight with vendors to get specs. I have written two MPEG decoder drivers for Linux that could never be released because of suck-ass NDA's.

    btw. for your information: DVD CPU decode consumes about 10 Watts against about 1 Watt for a hardware decoder.

    Breace.
  • But again, I'm biased, having grown up where the computer was more of an entertainment center than the TV. All the TV was good for was evening news, afternoon cartoons, and hooking up the SNES/PSX to.

    Watching DVDs on my 17" monitor is a little cramped, but quality is so much better than any of our TVs. I'd think that with a generation growing up on computers, it may actually be second nature to watch DVDs on a computer, especially as monitor prices are dropping.

    I dunno how the market will shape, but TV viewership *seems* to be going down as more content and capability is added to computers, such as news, streaming audio and video, games, chat, etc. Either that, or TVs and computers will merge...


    -AS
  • That's fine for embedded systems. I was discussing home systems. A home system is going to have a CPU anyway, so having software decoding as an option will give Windows an advantage, unless somebody gets with it and implements it for Linux.
  • I don't see this as being very useful. Since the vast majority of Linux users dual-boot Windows anyway, who is going to buy this card? I most certainly am not going to waste one of my PCI slots when I can view DVDs in software, and I certainly am not going to spend a bunch of money on a (probably overpriced) card.

    Either develop software DVD decoding for Linux, or I'll stick with Windows for DVD viewing. Making me buy a piece of hardware to overcome a deficiency is an OS is not acceptable.
  • You won't get the specs to write Linux drivers for that board. People have tried and failed.
  • I believed that current DVD packages such as the Creative Labs DVD encore 6x did the decoding in hardware anyway?

    Yah the DXR3 is Hardware as is my DXR2. I end up using a software decoder most of the time anyway since I have a Celeron 400MHz, and the combination of TNT->DXR2->Voodoo yields fuzzy video at my selected resolution (1280x1024). All those passthrough cables are murder.

    I'd rather be able to use my existing hardware than buy yet-another-mpeg-decoder card.
  • Even if we ignore the encryption problem, the development of an optimized software MPEG-2, Dolby Digital decoders, integration, synchronizaion, testing with the many strangely encoded streams out there, etc is an effort which should take several man-years. I would say it is outside the capabilities of the open-source community.

    The encryption is available only in hardware form and a reverse-engineering resistant software module for Windows. As far as I know it has not been reverse-engineered yet, although the availability of a software implementation should make it possible, regardless of how well it is protected.
  • An ill-timed Slashdot effect on their tech support team might annoy them rather than help... As the email said, they have no further information now, so bugging them would most likely be unproductive.

    Of course, you can look at the "Company info" page and /. their snailmail address. I know snailmail is more effective at swaying politicians, it would probably also be effective at swaying PHBs. (They are after all a politician variant.)
  • Hewlett-Packard will be releasing a DVD ReWriter (DVD-RW) in September. It will write DVD-RWs at 1.5MB/s (maybe 1.25x DVD speed), and CD-RWs at around 8 or 12 speed. The DVD-RW discs will be 3.0GB single side, single layer, but they may only work in DVD-ROMs... I don't think they will work in DVD players. The street price should be $699, with media being $30 / blank, and the drive will be SCSI only.
  • YES. I do this with my Creative Labs DVD 5.2(?) with the dxr2 board. The files, obviously, are huge. The Windows software lets you play back many types of MPEG streams. They always work on screen (via the passthrough) and NTSC-size files play back perfectly on my TV via the s-video output. Non-NTSC (pal, 320x240, etc) streams just freak out the TV, though.

  • $8000?!? Um, are we talking about thes same thing? You've got an extra digit in there, I think.

    Over at http://store.apple.com [apple.com] if you buy one of the new G3 minitowers, there's a menu where you pick what kind of CD-like drive you want. The choices are

    • CD-ROM (included in base price)
    • DVD-ROM ($100 extra)
    • DVD-RAM ($550 extra)

    So, at least, if you buy it from Apple, DVD-RAM drives are $550 more than a CD-ROM drive. (And if Apple is selling them for that much, then they've gotta be cheaper somewhere else.)

    BTW, speaking of watching movies on computer... I bought my brother one of those G3s a few months ago, with DVD-ROM and a 19" monitor. (It's good to be my brother.) We've grown quite accustomed to watching DVD movies on it. Heck, none of the the TVs in the house are bigger than 19" anyway, so it's just as big as what was around, and a hell of a lot clearer.

  • VA's prices are severly out of whack. If it costs that much to "certify" a box as linux friendly then I should definetly get in on this linux hardware business. If you are interested in very high quality servers at a decent price I suggest checking out dcginc.com... we've been more than happy with what we have recieved from them.
    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • Personally I have a PIII-450 with a 6x DVD-ROM drive in it. It works fine under linux, and if I'm willing to boot that evil OS win98, I can play DVD's on it. It plays DVD's through software perfectly fine, and I have noticed very little corruption at most. So I would like to see someone develop Software DVD support for linux. Even if it's a binary only release, makes no difference to me. It just prevents me from having to boot windows to watch a DVD.
  • Could you please provide some references? If you are refering to the dvd page creative had linked from their linux page it isn't creative doing the porting. It's actually weird, creative WAS helping this guy out, and did give him some info and what-not, but then just stopped and pretended he didn't exist anymore. I did my part by sending a polite email to creative explaining that if they will not support linux I will not be able to buy their products in the future. I go into windows almost never, only to watch dvds pretty much. A guy from creative replied saying that creative was not able to release enough info for a driver because of their contracts with the dvd people and with whatever company made the mpeg decoder chip, can't think of their name off of the top of my head. If creative is going to do anything about dvd support or not, I don't know. At this point I don't give a damn if they do provide binary only libraries (i hate binary kernel mods cuz they just create too many problems). I just want to watch dvds in linux.

  • Sure, but you just spool the video or audio to disk, and then run it through the hardware decoder.

    It's not realtime and you'd need a lot of space, but it would be worth it.


    --
    make clean; make love --without-war

  • I fail to see how a hardware decoder is an
    improvement over a binary-only decoder.
    It's even harder to fix (at least with a
    binary, you have the shadow of a chance),
    you can't tune it, you can't improve it...

    having the rest of the driver under a free
    license is good, but they could do that
    and have a binary module for the dvd decoder.
  • This device has nothing to do with reading DVD's, its about playing back the MPEG2 data stored on them.

    That's two very differnet beasts. Supporting UFS under Linux is a matter of time -- UFS isn't propriatary, its just a matter of someone doing it.

    This device takes a data stream read from the video file on that UFS filesystem and decodes it into video frames.

    I don't see that being useful for anything but multimedia games/applications and watching movies.

    Believe me, support for DVD-R or DVD-RW is something I'd be wholeheartedly in support of. But that's not DVD-Video.

    Also, MPEG2 encoding is considerably more complex than the decoding.
  • DVD drives are basically ATAPI-compatible, so Linux can handle them just fine. Normal Linux-Kernel can only read ISO9660-formatted DVDs, but all DVDs i own are both in ISO9660 and UDF-format. There is a experimental UDF-Driver available which would allow to read UDF-only DVDs too.

    If you try to read out DVDs under Linux you may get error messages, but this is because of the Content-Scrambling-System (CSS) which encodes the data on the way between the Drive and the Decoder.

    I have already copied the Data-Files of unencrypted DVDs to my hard disk, and was able to play them from the disk - but the decoder software recognized the data not as DVD but as MPEG2, and so i couldnt change subtitling, language etc.

    The big problem is, that there is no decoder software for linux, neither for the existing hardware decoders (i own the Creative Encore, but because of Creatives Ignorance can not use it under Linux), nor any software decoder.

    It should be possible to write a software-decoder, there are some MPEG2-Decoders in Source in the net and todays hardware should be fast enough (you will need approx. Pentium 350+), but noone has done it right now. Ive played a bit with mpeg2play (dated 1994 !!), but couldnt get it to display anything.
  • Well that seems to be where you the miss the point. There are MULTIPLE Software Only decoders available for Win98 today. And I don't for one minute believe that these are IMPOSSIBLE to port. Actually it probably wouldn't be that hard to port these, it's just a matter of getting one of these companies to port it. That is what I am talking about. We don't have to re-invent the wheel here and start over. We just need to also push on the developers of software only decoders to create a linux version.
  • Yes, there is CSS implemented on the hardware. But from my understanding it only takes care of the MPEG/Video stream and Sub-Picture Streams. It does not (in most products) take care of the AC-3/Audio streams. This is the case on the Hollywood+ and (since the same chipsets are used as far as I know) the Dxr3. Also, AC-3 to PCM/Stereo downmixing does not happen in hardware. I was told by Sigma Designs representatives that this was handled in software since their chipset didn't deal with the AC-3 streams.

    This all makes sense with the "rules" that once a CSS encrypted data stream is decrypted, it can not be passed to anything but an output source. So, a hardware implementation of CSS couldn't pass unencrypted data back out the card to the computer or the card's data bus. The fact that I have yet to see a decoder board without a VGA and s-Video/RCAvideo connector for output supports this. This also means that if the aC-3 is indeed not handled in the hardware on the boards I mentioned (and I suspect at least a few others) that there would need to be a CSS implementation in software.

    I'm willing to admit I may have the wrong idea of how things work. But I got a good portion of my information straight from Sigma Designs and my reading of the DVD-Video Specs.

    As for why they arent' releasing information on the decoder boards. It is mostly a legal issue. They have to protect their agreements to keep CSS implementation tightly gaurded. This seems to agree with a statement made in a previous posting regarding Creative or C-Cube not releasing info until you have a DVD-Video consortium license and a CSS license. Everyone is tryign to cover their ass and not get sued.

    As I said previously the next geenration chipset coming out of Sigma Designs will take care of this Ac-3/CSS software decoding/downmixing issue and allow for a binary linux driver release. You will not see a open source release until restrictions on CSS are loosened or the algorithm and handshaking is publiic knowledge.
  • Posted by My_Favorite_Anonymous_Coward:

    Umm... I never understand this. Are you putting the sofa in front of the 21" monitor? How can you call it "watching" movie if you can't do it with pop corn and soda in front of you? Isn't the monitor supposed to be your working tool, on your desk? Optimized for the fast keybroad and the other home office environment?

    I assume you have bought the PC-remote thing already. After using my uncle's super ergonormic 4-in-1 remote, I feel sick wheneven I use my remote to change cable\tv\vcr channles. That one alone is one strike against any win+dvd.

    CY
  • Interesting. Your saying that the linux community as a whole will not embrace ANY non-opensource software? YIKES. I hope all of these commerical companies who are porting their products to linux don't get wind of this. Because we'll have no hopes of ever getting much commercial support. I guess I need to go delete staroffice, wordperfect, and a few other BINARY only releases off my hard drive. And join the revolution! OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE, OPEN SOURCE!
  • Nice of you to defend your work, but I am not comparing appleas and oranges here. Go check.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • I understand the difficulties in doing software-only DVD, but the problems with a hardware DVD method remain. If Linux can only offer hardware DVD, and Windows can offer both software and hardware DVD, then Windows will obviously have an advantage.
  • Last time I tried this program (and it seems to be the same version) it was only video (no sound) and it was dog slow on my pII-300. The quality was amazing, even though i had to wait about 30 minutes to get 4 minutes into "The Usual Suspends" and if i moved the window the decoder froze. Could be good if someone implimented sound and made it faster.

  • I guess one could make the argument that the whole point of entertainment appliances is that you slouch in a comfy chair or lay back on a couch, pop open a beer, and stare at a low-resolution display 10 feet away, and while your right hand brings the beer can up to your face, the left falls down beside the couch where it starts petting the dog. Then the cat jumps down from the back of the couch on to your stomach, and curls up. The dog gets excited, starts licking the cat, who gets very annoyed, and you end up spilling beer all over yourself and the wife shouts "What's going on in there?" as you hit the DVD pause button on your remote, and you head off to get a towel.

    And at the desk, your computer is there, a high res monitor 2 or 3 feet from your face, and you gotta sit up straight. The computer is for Serious Work. No relaxing there. And if the cat jumps up on the keyboard, you throw it off. (Really, I know what I'm talking about here, since I pull about a whole cat's worth of hair out of my keyboard every year.)

    But the roles are supposed to be separate, so we don't think much of it.

    I dunno about all this, it sounds fishy somehow, like a weak excuse to get consumers to buy two DVD drives. Besides, computers are entertainment appliances too (proof: Id Software). I kinda like how MP3s have made it feasible to point and click to start some music, instead of spinning the CD towers to the right section, getting a plastic box, taking the CD out and putting it into the drive, and pushing a play button. Ew, the old way was so ... physical and untidy! ;-)

    What I'm getting at is that this whole seperation thing is artificial. I thought human ergonomics were mostly constant. If people's computers are so clumsy that watching a movie on 'em is considered not sufficiently relaxing ("fiddling with your PC") then maybe it's the computer's fault. Have you tried putting a couch in front of your computer? Hook up an IR interface so you can use remote control? I wonder if this sheds more light on this "digital convergence" market I keep hearing about, yet didn't really understand. Maybe it's time we asked ourselves if desktop computers still deserve to exist.

  • I believe the DVD encryption is only a "security through obscurity" scheme. It allows for regionalization of DVDs. (i.e. a player marketed in a given region will only play DVDs for that region.) The "key" is essentially a 1,2,3,4, or 5. (I think there are 5 defined regions.)

    I'm sure it's a basic algorithm similar to Cable TV scrambling.
  • Semi-on/off-topic here, but all the speak concerning super-proprietary DVD encoding specs got me wondering . . . .

    Suppose Company X licenses the spec from the consortium, after signing the fifty or so NDA's necessary, to begin work on a decoder. Then, enter Bob, a Disgruntled Employee(tm) of Company X. Bob secretly makes a photocopy of the entire spec, packages it, and FedEx's it off to some country where no one really gives a damn about patents or copyrights. (Malaysia would probably be a candidate-- at least copyrights don't seem to matter much there).

    The package somehow falls into the hands of MLUG [my-linux.org], and they use it to write gdvd, a GPL'ed software DVD decoder. They put it online, and gdvd-0.8.tar.gz starts showing up on FTP servers all over the world.

    Now, isn't this always a danger, for the DVD Consortium? They could nuke Company X, and do even worse things to Bob (*shudder*) but the proverbial genie would be out of the proverbial bottle. Would they be able to change the spec slightly, to make gdvd useless, while somehow retaining backward compatibility with other (legal) decoders? Would they be able to send a SWAT team into your house if they found out you'd downloaded it? Would they finally realize proprietary specs suck? What would happen?
  • I'm maxed out on pci slots. I want to get a tnt2 or some other video card with dvd support on it, and get drivers for that. I wouldn't mind paying for a linux-supported solution, but it's not really a solution at all if I have to put another card in.
  • Only if someone adds a hack to the X server that supports overlay video over the VESA feature connector.
  • It's just the hardware included. the thing acts like a cdrom-drive.
    As for penguin computing... I have ill feelings about them, anyone that would steal TUX as their company logo is sinking really low. TUX is linux's logo, not the logo of Penguin computing yet they put it there as if they own it!

    I'd buy from VA research anyways... better support, and nicer equipment... they wont sell you anything that isnt 100% linux compatable.
  • Often I find people who say this are comparing apples and oranges. If all you look at is cpu, memory, and hard disk size there is a big $$ difference.

    There is a great deal more to performance than cpu speed and memory. ide vs scsi comes to mind. As well as rpms and seek time on the hard drive.

    Under X you'd be hard pressed to find a card that beats the G200. (Well yes the G400, or maybe a TNT2 card, maybe.)
  • That DVD site is back up now.. i dont know if it is just temporary so i decided to mirror it at the linuxDVD site i have been running for close to a year now. I just added a mailing list so that people can share some constructive ideas on how to solve this lack of a DVD under linux.
    http://linuxdvd.corepower.com/

    I think this reference design is definately a step in the good direction. I would personally rather see the specs for creative labs dxr2/3 but the biggest problem seems to be that we need specs on the c-cube chip and noone i know has ever been able to contact them. If anyone knows of a contact at C-cube, please forward their information to me.
  • Of course their Windows drivers suck (resource contention race conditions anyone) so I'm really not hopeful about Linux support even if they wrote drivers.

    A few months back I got the same response from Sigma.
  • Yeah, you're right, when I looked back on that post it did come up sounding like nonsense. Chalk it up to 2 hours of sleep over a 27 hour period. Unfortunately sobody so far has shown an interest in writing software DVD decoders for Linux. I guess the point I should have made is that it won't show up as an open source project, we're relying on a commercial company somewhere to pick up the idea.

    Sorry 'bout the stupidity there.
  • I believe this was stated more than once above, but... The reason there is no software decoding solution for linux is not that somebody hasn't "got with it". To be able to write a decoder, one needs access to the propritery encription methods used for DVD movies. Not only does getting a licence cost a good amount of money, but I believe there are also restrictions on who can get a licence. This leaves finding a company to develope and release a binaray only decoder, or develop a hardware decoder w/ open source drivers as the only reasonable solutions.

  • Wow! (Score:1)

    by Draco ( 1804 )
    I would definately pay upwards of $250 for this.

    I've been interested in DVD for quite some time, but I refuse to rely on Windows to do it.

    I'm happy to see that someone is working on it, and I hope that there is enough interest generated to push this through, as this would be yet another reason to switch for people who say, "yeah, but I can't play games/watch DVDs/have decent hardware support"
  • Unlike copying VHS to VHS, which degrades things, copying DVD to DVD should result in a perfect copy. It's all digital, so bit-for-bit copies should be just as perfect as the original, which would make for some nasty piracy.

    this is not quite correct, open dvd comes with some rather potent copy protection. http://www.macrovision.com/

    later,
    ian
  • Check out http://mpeg.openprojects.net/

    Supposedly it already allows you to play decrypted DVDs. All that needs to be done is for someone to reverse-engineer the encryption algorithm.
  • With the preface that I'm not up to date on DVD, there are a couple of things I'd like to add to the /. comment mix related to the above post.

    First and foremost, DVD isn't just about movies and games anymore, just like Compact Disks aren't just about audio. It's about being able to store massive quantities of data as well. That said, even early CD-ROM drives could play audio CD's, so the ability to decode the formats mentioned on the card maker's site (MP3, MPEG, etc.) is fundamental if you want to be in the market.

    The question of whether there is enough market to support the prototyping and production runs for the card is more significant. Quoting the previous post:"I think the switch to software decoding under Windows was largely because most people don't want to spend even fifty or a hundred extra bucks for a decoder card they're not going to get much use out of." This is just an opinion, mind you, but the extra money probably wasn't the issue, or SCSI would have died a horrible death a long time ago. The issue is getting the biggest "bang for the buck" and availability.

    How about we do a little price shopping to compare... let's see, I can pay for

    • a crappy OS from M$,
    • the upgraded QT codec from Apple or an MPEG decoder board,
    • a RIO or something similar for MP-3's (yes, I know there's freeware out there as well)
    or... Linux + a relatively inexpensive card with Open Source drivers.... Hmmm. Proprietary vs. open. What should I do...what's that, the open option is less expensive? You get my drift.

    My final point is that the card mentioned is a prototype, and that once you have a successful decoder, creating the encoder is usually no big deal in comparison. So if this company succeeds, you'll have all you'd need except the DVD-burner.

    A set of questions here...is there such a thing as DVD-R or DVD-RW yet? If not, is it technically possible? on the drawing boards?

    I'll sit back and listen now...

  • I was disapointed that when I hit submit and it didn't give you the breakdown of what percent answered what, like slashdot does. I mean, we're giving them the information, the least they could do is have a screen with the breakdown. Sometimes little things annoy me I guess.
  • If I recall DIVX is triple-DES encrypted... which could force export restrictions on the DIVX players, and DIVX discs are somewhat useless w/o a player to attach them to.
  • Posted by Pepi:

    To my knowledge, at least. And they have shown an interest in adding the necessary kernel bindings to support an Encore port.
  • Does linux partially support DVD, perhaps only supporting reading the disks and not the video decoding stuff?

    Bingo. My Panasonic SR-8583 DVD-ROM is detected as an ATAPI CD-ROM drive and I can read files from it just fine. I just wish we could get some kind of software player off the ground, since my PII-400 with ATI Rage Pro (which has partial DVD acceleration) is MORE than enough horsepower for full software only decoding, even under slow ol' Winbloat.

  • This seems like a good idea, but how many people really watch movies on their PC? Or have their PC close enough to their TV to be able to play the movies out to the TV? It seems more of a novelty to me for anyone but space-constrained college students with expensive new computers.

    I doubt there'd be a big enough market to justify it. I think the switch to software decoding under Windows was largely because most people don't want to spend even fifty or a hundred extra bucks for a decoder card they're not going to get much use out of. Sure, someday DVD games or other applictations might use DVD-Video, but I doubt the game or application maker will assume hardware decoding, they'll license and bundle the software with it.

    What would be more useful (and I submitted an Ask Slashdot question two weeks ago that never showed up...) would be an MPEG2 encoder and decoder card, letting Linux be able to function like those new digital "VCR"'s, either in an embedded setting or on, for example, my server that handles my voicemail and e-mail. It'd be nice to bring up one page that listed all my new e-mails, voicemails, and recorded TV shows. :)

    The number of people who'd want one of those might not be that much higher than a decoder card by itself, but you never know.
  • I've been using a DVDrom drive for quite some. I just can't seem to find any udf formated data DVDs to play with. You can read 700 meg iso dvd if you have a new enough kernel. Of course I don't know anyone producting such cdroms outside a few developers, and some astromers.


    Multimedia DVD-roms don't function at all currently. The main problem is that most of these are majorly encrypted. Don't plan on watching DVD moives under linux ant time soon.

    In essence right now DVD-rom drives are just costly cdrom drives. Unless you are on the bleeding edge, or are dual booting don't bother. They'll get as cheap as cdrom drives pretty soon.
  • Posted by Pepi:

    I don't have any other references other than a guy from Creative contacted me with patches for the kernel ide-cd, which were needed for the Encore player to be ported.

    Make of that what you want, but at least someone inside Creative is working on a port - and that seems like good news to me.
  • I sent them the following email:
    Dear sirs:

    I am (at least slightly) interested in DVD support under Linux. I am not fully in support of DVD's imposing copy-protection methods, but that is a completely different issue. I am writing because it is my experience that many Linux users push their hardware to limits other than those imposed by their wallets. I, specifically, would like many new peripherals for my machine, but my limiting factors are space (for internal drives) and and available slots. While you are going to the trouble of collecting these statistics, I would think you may also wish to gather information on your customers' other constraints. For instance, I would love a DVD player for my system, but as I am short of slots and drive bays, I would need a DVD decoder board integrated on to my 2D/3D accelerated AGP video card (currently a 3dfx Voodoo Banshee) or be able to replace one of my other cards (such as having a SCSI controller integrated onto the same card). I would also need either an external SCSI DVD drive, or (preferably) a 1/4 height DVD drive (I currently only have one half of 1 half-height 5.25" drive bay free) and would prefer a SCSI drive. These may not be things that are within your control, but they are probably things your investors/manufacturers should take into consideration.

    The other issue is that your question is slightly biased. (or, more accurately, the answers are.) Asking someone how much they would pay is fine, but assuming that anyone who isn't willing to pay for a DVD decoder is satisfied with MS Windows (or, for that matter, would even *USE* windows) is probably biasing people who may not otherwise purchase a DVD decoder into giving you a dollar figure.

    With best wishes for your success,

    Loren Osborn
    (A concerned consumer)

    Any comments?
  • I beg to differ on this one. While yes, it's true that a "good" 5.1 system will sound better than an equal 2 channel system, almost nobody on the planet owns a 5.1 system which could be qualified as "good". I own a good two channel + sub system (Kef Model 4 speakers, and a Velodyne HGS 12 sub, powered by a B&K ST3030 amp) which I will gladly compare to almost anybody's 5.1 system.

    The "lots of speakers everywhere" theory is overrated, most people would be better served investing their money in 2 good channels than spreading it out and ending up with 5 mediocre ones.

    As for how to get decent sound out of your computer? simple, a soundcard with a digital output, in my case running in a very strange manner into the digital inputs of my wadia 850 which I use as an external DAC.
  • Actually, not necessarily... In my case, the regional coding is done in player, that is why I can disable region coding, or change my region coding at will if I so desired, same with the Macrovision copy protection, in the newer drives the drives do it, but at first, about when 2x drives were dominating, the dvd 'enhancements' were left in the software, insecure.
  • I've got a PII 450 with DVD2 which uses hardware decoding instead of software decoding like DVD3. Currently running Win 98 which by the way sucks. Easiest OS to crash I have ever encountered. Havent tried it on Linux yet.
  • I agree -- Most people don't notice any difference at all on their PC with harder vs software MPEG decoding. In 95% of the cases, when DVD video is playing, it's the only thing the PC is doing, so the freed-up-CPU really isn't able to do much.

    I started out in the DVD world with a DVD-ROM drive but at the time the drivers and software were EXTREMELY unstable and lacking in features. Things have improved quite a lot since then, but it's still very cumbersome to actually watch DVD movies on your PC and get the full benefits of DVD.

    Firstly, you don't typically get the video quality. Unless you have a really decent monitor (and a big one), video on a 17" monitor really isn't all that thrilling compared to a modestly larger television screen. Plus, since monitors tend to be so precise when rendering video images, you really experience a lot of interlacing flicker and the MPEG artifacts really show up. On television, these artifacts are typically very well subdued.

    Secondly, you don't get the AUDIO quality. I'm sorry but the latest and greatest stereo/subwoofer setup just doesn't REMOTELY compare to a real 5.1 home theater setup. In addition, unless you've got a DVD player/MPEG decoder card with "real" audio outputs, you can't even TRY to take advantage of real sound. You're stuck with crappy stereo, or, if you're lucky, Dolby Prologic. No comparison.

    When I want to sit down and watch a movie, I want to watch it on my television while I'm sitting on my couch. These decoder cards tend to have composite video output as well, so this tends to work nicely, but it's still quite cumbersome (and typically slow under Windows) to load and start a movie. Plus you're still limited by the audio capabilities of your PC and card. Most people don't have a remote control that works with their PC either.

    I still have my DVD-ROM but I only intend to really use it with DVD data. Last year I bought a high-end DVD player with a built-in DTS decoder and 5.1 and fibre audio outputs. I find this much more convenient to use.

    When I want to watch a movie, I want to relax, not fiddle with my PC.

    I think an MPEG encoder/decoder would be pretty slick though, still.
  • This all makes sense with the "rules" that once a CSS encrypted data stream is decrypted, it can not be passed to anything but an output source. So, a hardware implementation of CSS couldn't pass unencrypted data back out the card to the computer or the card's data bus.
    Nice theory, but it isn't true in practice. There are at least three ways to get the decrypted data out of the Ziva-DS on the Dxr2 card; one of them is even documented in the Ziva-DS manual: the DumpData_DVD command (0x0122). Another is to simply use the Ziva-DS' memory access feature to directly read the buffer that the decoded data is stored in; you just have to find the right address. The address isn't documented, and it changes with different microcode revisions, but it's pretty easy to find.
    As for why they arent' releasing information on the decoder boards. It is mostly a legal issue. They have to protect their agreements to keep CSS implementation tightly gaurded.
    Nice excuse, but it doesn't wash. They don't have to release any info on CSS to make it work, because the decryption is in hardware. OK, so you can't decode AC3 5.1 in software if you do that, but who cares? The built-in AC3 to Dolby Surround downmix in the Ziva-DS still works fine.

    AFAIK, the Dxr2 software doesn't offer AC3 decoding anyhow.

    No, they're being secretive because they (wrongly) believe that releasing the info would hurt their competitive position.

  • Well, some good points were certainly made here but I think something has been missed... Many people have (or will have) DVD drives in their computer /anyway/ for games and so on, where as they may not have a seperate DVD movie player. Why buy two when you can do it all with one? Obviously for those on an unlimited budget it's better to buy a seperate unit for television and so on... but, being in the student category, that's not me. :) I'd be far more likely to buy a DVD drive for my computer for data discs than I would buying a DVD player for just watching movies. I'd run it through the hardware decoder then use the analog NTSC out to my television, or I assume I could watch it in a window on my monitor. Since my stereo is also plugged into my computer... Well, I'd need to get a new one that could do Dolby Digital, but still. You can do software decoding of course. I don't have first hand experience running this. I would /assume/ it's pretty CPU intensive decoding MPEG audio and video streams. So if you don't have SMP and you want to do something useful with your computer while watching the movie... Of course, this is dependant on having computer and television in reasonably close proximity... but conveniently enough, my TV room is also my server room. Still, I'd have to agree this falls under the category of 'geek toy'. I can't really see hardware mpeg becoming something the average user will have in their PC's anytime soon, unless the chips somehow become inexpensive enough graphic card manufacturers start throwing them on for nothing. Cheers, Obasan

  • Re:DVD under linux (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the filesystem is called udf. just netsurf on google.com for it..it's like the top hit on the list. requires a 2.1.70+ kernel though.
  • The difficulty of the encoding methods and syncronization and whatnot are not the tough issues with this, which is precluding any open source development regarding DVD on Linux. It is the legal and licensing issues.

    The DVD specs cost $5000 and an NDA signing to get a hold of. This is for one copy of the library (a few books totalling maybe 1500-2000 pages). This information could not be shared with anyone for development purposes. Point 1 against open source DVD products.

    CSS encryption is very tightly controlled (the knowledge of what the algorithms involved are, that is). In order to get them one must sign very stringent NDAs and contracts with Matsushita. This licensing is free, however. Contrary to some statements made previously in other replies. But gaining access to these routines would be possible for an individual, not a whole group of people. Point 2 against open source dvd products.

    Point three is that even though the AC-3 and Mpeg-2 specs are freely available (and we'll assume you have access to the required DVD specs to know how the mpeg and ac-3 data is stored) each has royalties and licensing associated with it. Well, I know Ac-3 does, I'm not sure about Mpeg2. This being the case, even if the products was developed open source (which points 1 and 2 preclude) there would be a per distributed copy charge for the ac-3 handling code. Not free software. While this doesn't mean open source development has a point against it in this case, it is a big deterrent.
  • Anybody know's what chip(set) is used?

    Also the page says:
    Interface to the graphics display subsystem (VGA)

    What sort of interface? There are at least three ways to get decoded video to your VGA:
    1) VGA loopback
    2) ZV (Zoomed Video) or VMI or VPI or AMC
    3) PCI

    I suspect this to be the ZivaPC ref design. I hope it is, because it's a good chip.

    Breace.
  • To my knowledge, they're both encrypted. But it's not exporting the algorithms--it's the data, which there aren't any export restrictions on (well, there might be, but not because of that). And it's not that export is illegal; you just have to get a license. I would imagine Circuit City could get a license to export DIVX to Europe. They probably haven't applied because they're waiting till they get a foothold in the states (fat chance!)
  • Posted by _DogShu_:


    > ...and then you watch the movie on the > TV you connected to the analog output.

    Does this mean I can't watch it on my computer screen?

  • But software is just plain ol slower.. You could say the same thing about graphics cards, everything should be software, 3d graphics, even 2d drawing... And by that reasoning, winModems that rely on the cpu for performance is a step in the right direction. I personally Love getting hardware specialized for given tasks, video, 3d, and 3d-accelration each have seperate boards in my computer... As long as the hardware is produced so it works as advertised, any OS problems are resolved in drivers...
  • the thing sez that it also decodes mpeg audio... hmm... will it do layer 3? that would be nice to throw in some 3/486 and have a player....
  • I believed that current DVD packages such as the Creative Labs DVD encore 6x did the decoding in hardware anyway?

    I know that kit for example comes with the fancy dxr3 decoder board. So why is this story being billed as something new? Am I somehow unclear on how current DVD decoding works?

    Josh
  • I'm curious. Just how does Windows "protect" software from being reverse engineered or hacked? Last I checked x86 assembly language is the same on both. Am I missing something here? Or are you saying the availability of a kernel level debugger isn't as necessarily easily available on Windows? SoftIce is very nice for things like this, and it's a Windows product.
  • Due to popular demand, results will be available soon.
  • Eric^2 wrote:
    I've had a Creative Encore 5x DVD package with the DXR-2 decoder board for a while and it works great. Why couldn't Creative just release Linux drivers for that board? It's already in production and it's not too expensive...

    Sontas wrote:

    Current generation hardware DVD decoding products and their related software do not have industry support in linux for at least one major reason. Most products out today perform the AC-3 decoding in software. This means that there is an associated CSS decryption happening in software.
    Actually, most (if not all) of the hardware decoders products, like the aforementioned Creative Labs Dxr2, implement the CSS in hardware.

    Early Dxr2 board had a Toshiba TC6807AF chip for CSS; newer boards omit that chip and perform the CSS function in microcode on the C-Cube ZiVA-DS chip (the actual MPEG decoder).

    The main reason no one has released a Linux driver for the Dxr2 is not CSS, but because the available docs for the ZiVA-DS do not really contain sufficient detail on certain aspects of their operation, such as loading the microcode.

    The vendors of MPEG-2/DVD decoder chips are being extremely secretive with their specs, for no good reason. An MPEG decoder is a very complex piece of hardware, but it has a relatively simple interface to the system. Just having the specs for the interface would not make it easy to clone the chip, but the marketing people don't seem to understand that.

    I tried to convince LSI Logic to provide me with the necessary information to write a Linux driver for their L64021 decoder, and they were willing to discuss it, but they ultimately didn't do it. Sigh. (I wanted to use that chip because it can be interfaced to the VIP connector on many video cards, such as the Asus 3400 and 3800 Nvidia Riva TNT and TNT2 cards, and thus avoid the need for an analog VGA passthrough that degrades video quality.)

  • Re:Software DVD - a little difficult (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Windows plays all your DVDs because N different companies wrote N different programs to do so. Like an earlier post said, convince just *one* of these companies to port their software to Linux. Perhaps we could start a petition to all N different companies, pledging unceasing loyalty to the company that can produce the best (or just the first) Linux software decoder.

    Personally I would rather have hardware decoder support, but then, I only have a pentium-200.

    As for binding two (or more) ethernet cards together, search the Beowulf pages for channel bonding ethernet drivers, its been possible for a while now.
  • ACK what are you doing at my house? :)

    desk
    2 computers
    sofa
    chairs
    window
    2 cats

  • Re:Software DVD - a little difficult (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Lack of DvD support under Linux is yet another reason why OpenSource/Linux is just not that cool to use.
    I mean common, Linux can't even bind 2 eathernet cards together to make one fat pipe.
    I have a huge DvD library and windows plays all my DvDs. I have about 5 different software packages in windows to play DvDs. Five mind you and they were all free.
  • A sample, for the lazy:

    the stories
    you are owned by
    CmdrTaco on Thursday June 03, @09:
    08AM EDT from the UK ISP
    are owned
    by CmdrTaco on
    Thursday
    June 03, @10:
    on Moon near the DVD for H2O on
    Moon Posted

    I especially liked the "you are owned by CmdrTaco" bit. In a sense, I suppose its true. p.

  • You're right, hardware decoding itself isn't a new concept, but LINUX support for the hardware sure is! All the boards released so far have been Win or Mac only.
  • Actually I do have a sofa in my computer room. I have 2 computers on an 8 foot desk. And directly behind the desk and behind the chairs I have a love seat (with recliners on both sides). So yeah I can watch it. As for watching TV. I said I have a DSS receiver, and I use it's remote to change the channels. So yeah watching TV is very doable in my house. I'm just an ultra-geek I guess.
  • well, I don't know about that, I for one do not have windows on my PC, been free from that for a year, also most of the linux boxes I have seen are single boot. On top of it all, it seems that every day I hear of somebody deleting their windows partition.

    All I have to say is this,
    the number of single boot linux users is growing, and it is growing fast.
  • Secondly, you don't get the AUDIO quality. I'm sorry but the latest and greatest stereo/subwoofer setup just doesn't REMOTELY compare to a real 5.1 home theater setup. In addition, unless you've got a DVD player/MPEG decoder card with "real" audio outputs, you can't even TRY to take advantage of real sound. You're stuck with crappy stereo, or, if you're lucky, Dolby Prologic. No comparison.

    And what do you think I have attached to my computer? After attaching my "real" stereo to my computer one day I have never looked back.
  • They've now shot down in price. I can buy a Panasonic DVD-RAM for £400 ($640) at Dabs [dabs.com].
  • although I dont think It will ever succeed, investors are picky, and when they look at linux they usually dont see enough gree in the picture yet.

  • Re:Clarification of current DVD hardware requested (Score:3)

    by Fizgig ( 16368 ) on Thursday June 03, 1999 @06:53AM (#1868574)
    There are two things going on, decoding and decryption. Looking at the linux dvd page (which has been down for about a week, from what I can tell), it seems they have support for reading the DVD file format. So you can put your 17GB DVD in there and read the data to your heart's content. They also have alpha support for decoding the data and playing a movie from it, even in hardware (which is more efficient, of course). But that doesn't mean you can play a movie. The DVD forum also put a lot of time into cryptography. Unlike copying VHS to VHS, which degrades things, copying DVD to DVD should result in a perfect copy. It's all digital, so bit-for-bit copies should be just as perfect as the original, which would make for some nasty piracy. So the DVD Forum put cryptography measures in ther. I have no idea how this works! But in order to build a DVD player, software or hardware, you have to sign an NDA with the DVD Forum saying they get your firstborn if you tell anyone about the decryption process (obviously it's not that good if they have to keep it secret; maybe they're just paranoid). Every other computer DVD solution does the decryption in software--it's just easier that way. But you can't release the source to any of this, because that would be a violation of the NDA. So these people are putting the cryptography stuff in hardware so they can still release the source to the player. So it's this or a closed-source solution for Linux DVD.
  • >is there such a thing as DVD-R or DVD-RW yet? If not, is it technically possible? on the drawing boards?

    Yes, as the previous reply stated and they are Expensive. I looked at them at Comdex over the last 2 years. $15,000 two years ago. ~$8000 this year.

  • Creative's "DXR3" board is just a Hollywood + card with a mutilated SROM to prevent it's use with reference drivers. Too bad Creative isn't, well, being creative anymore. And since they switched from Panasonic to A/Open drives, too, I'd recommend even a HiVal kit (Toshiba+unmutilated Hollywood+) over the DXR3 kit. (Or better yet, Toshiba's brown box kit with the H+ sells for $150 at NECX)

    I suspect the discontinuation of the DXR2 has something to do with why they stopped talking to the person working on the drivers... sigh.

    Now, I'm lookin' forward to the new Sigma card with Linux drivers :)

  • AFAIK, at least nVidia and ATI video cards have some DVD stuff. What can the video chip do regarding DVD?
  • My PC *is* my TV. It is also my VCR, my CD Player, my Video Game Console (thanks to UHLE and Bleem!), my Movie Theater - yes, I *do* do all these things on my computer.

    It's a hell of a lot cheaper to get a big monitor, a good bit of hardware, and smash it all together with an amplifier and good speakers than it is to get a home theater system put together.

    I watch everything from Anime to live action on my PC and I love it.
  • Ouch!!! I think my checkbook just fainted.
  • ..then run it through the hardware decoder.

    Oops, make that encoder.


    --
    make clean; make love --without-war
  • The region code stuff is in the drive, not in the decoder. So you would have that problem even with a software decoder.
  • It shouldn't be that hard to write Windows drivers. That should at least get a bootstrap of money coming in.

    The point being that while investors don't see much $$ in free software, it's the hardware that's going to sell and make money. Unlike RedHat, linuxtv.org is trying to make a physical hardware product that could work with any OS.

    Might even prompt me to get a DVD-ROM.
  • No. They are encrypted on the DVD disc hence the need for the decoder.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • You call macrovision "rather potent"?! For one thing, Macrovision deals with copying analog. It relies on the macrovision protection in VCRs. There's an invisible (to you), varying signal that comes from any output that has macrovision (basically any pre-recorded media has this) that tells your VCR (or MPEG encoder; these also have to have Macrovision protection) that what it's seeing is just noise. So it records noise, despite the fact that you're seeing a clean picture. This, however, has been disabled on so many systems that it only stops really lazy people (what it was meant to do, I guess).

    Macrovision does have some different stuff for CD-ROMs that may actually be on DVDs for all I know (if you do, please correct me; that would overshadow the ineffectiveness of the previous paragraph's system). There's more to the CD-ROM than can be copied (how, I don't know). So when you make a copy, you're really not getting everything. If they did that with DVDs, it might do something.
  • I've had a Creative Encore 5x DVD package with the DXR-2 decoder board for a while and it works great. Why couldn't Creative just release Linux drivers for that board? It's already in production and it's not too expensive...

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