On 24 May 2008, at 18:37, Florian Philipp wrote:
On Sat, 24 May 2008 17:15:34 +0100
Stroller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hmm, on which features depends the encryption? Would a Windows Media
Player in Wine be able to play it or do I need an operating system
supporting it, maybe in a virtual machine? Has anyone tried?
Neither of these methods would work at all.
Read up on the Protected Video Path (PVP) at:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?
command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9005047
Basically you won't be able to use a "legitimate" player under
Linux. You either rip it, use a DeCSS equivalent, or not at all.
...
Well, then it's a no-go. The display is a pre-"HD-ready" TV-set with a
standard DVI-D-port and a fairly high but non-standard resolution so I
don't expect it to work with a hardware player or PVP.
Well, it seems like the only thing someone like me can do is to use
alternative ways to obtain a copy.
I wouldn't rule it out completely. I should mention that not all
disks require Protected Path at present, but more new releases may do
in the future. But I really wouldn't expect Nero HD-DVD player (or
whatever) to run under WINE.
I believe instead that you can rip the movie files off the bluray to
hard-drive and either play them from there or transcode them.
Blurays are about 25gig, IIRC, so it's a bit much to keep your whole
collection on your PC's desktop, but I think I read they can be
transcoded to half their size (or is it 5gig? I can't recall) without
quality loss. And I'd think they'd still be better-than-DVD quality
at 2 or 3 gigs.
So - 500gig harddrives coming in at under 10p per gig these days -
it's feasible to rip 100 or 200 blurays (which'd cost you a packet at
today's prices, anyway!) to the NAS, just until you upgrade your TV
in 5 years time.
If you Google "bluray Linux" an Ubuntu forums post comes up
explaining the hows & whys. All the bluray's VOB files are a standard
container/codec, so it's just the encryption you have to worry about.
What teh haXorz are doing is running a debugger under the Windows
players and reading the decryption keys out of memory; you download
the list of cracked keys and put it in ~./keyz or whereever and your
Linux ripper does the job. I think you can playback in mplayer.
Finally I should mention that hi-def isn't IMO worth getting excited
about, and I don't think it's that much better than regular old DVD.
I happen to have a bluray player because I bought a PS3 for
videogames and I have been tempted to buy a couple of movies for it.
I'm sure the clarity & crispness is much clearer on releases of the
latest movies (Transformers or whatever) but when watching classics
like Terminator the source material (grainy film) is the limitation.
I've got high-bitrate DVDs on which the failings of the source
material is clearly visible, FFS! On "28 Days Later" (bluray) you can
VERY clearly see the haze of the greenscreen behind the actor's head
as he walks across Westminster Bridge - they filmed that scene using
a small handycam (lower def than 1080p?), then used software to put
the background in afterwards, and it's quite obvious that they did
so. Any of these movies I'd enjoy just as much on regular DVD, so
just remember that hi-def isn't necessarily better - I might spend
the odd tenner here or there indulging myself on BluRays, but new or
second-hand I'm only paying £3 - £5 for DVDs, and it's hard to argue
that hi-def is 3x to 6x better.
Stroller.
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