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Hardware

Linux DVD hardware support From SiS 75

Posted by CmdrTaco from the finally-a-use-for-widescreen-monitors dept.
An anonymous reader pointed us to a press release from SIS that proclaims that they will support Linux DVD soon as well as 3D stuff. It's a little sketchy, but looks positive on the 3D stuff, and aims to support LiViD. Here's hopin'
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Linux DVD hardware support from SiS More

Linux DVD hardware support from SiS

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  • The article's section on "About Linux" is almost as long as the part about SiS's support of their chipset. I would think by now people could have a smaller blurb about Linux with a link to some site (linux.com maybe) for more info.
  • I've had so much crap using a special application for watching dvd movies. The worst part is that the creative labs program only supports overlay. But we can't use the decoder card's overlay because it makes the passthrough image crappy when you're not watching a movie. The tv output is excellent, but it's damn near impossible to click on the bonus goodies sometimes. I'd love to have the opportunity to choose from several programs that utilize the card from a universal driver.

  • Coming Soon! (Score:4)

    by AntiPasto ( 168263 ) on Thursday June 01, 2000 @11:35AM (#1031822) Journal
    "The Linux" starring Keanu Reeves....

    "Woah... I know Chmod"

  • Huh? They just make IC's... how can that have anything to do with the RIAA?
  • I can't help but notice that it says "proclaims" and not a definte yes or no answer...

    -PovRayMan

  • Don't Expect an Open Driver (Score:3)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Thursday June 01, 2000 @11:37AM (#1031825) Homepage Journal

    Unless SiS has some kind of leverage against the MPAA, expect a binary-only driver with an undocumented API/ioctl() set that basically only lets you play DVDs in a window. Exposing a general API would allow (gasp!) copying or other "unauthorized" digital manipulation of the MPEG stream.

    Personally, I'd like to be able to drive the decompression process myself, so I can use the movie as an OpenGL texture to map on to a sphere and bounce it around. The Cthugha [afn.org]-like possibilities are endless, but only if programmers can get at the data in a meaningful way.

    Schwab

  • This is a hardware DVD/Audio decoder. It might be one of the first with explicit support for Linux, but it's hardly the first one. Why would the Recording Industry and Artists Association care about a DVD/CSS matter? If anybody would, it'd be the MPAA, and SiS doesn't seem to be doing anything that would annoy them. One would thing the MPAA would appreciate a non-DeCSS method of playing DVD's on Linux.

  • What if we do get a legit player? (Score:4)

    by fugue ( 4373 ) on Thursday June 01, 2000 @11:39AM (#1031827) Homepage
    Will most of the people fighting the RIAA give up and go watch their movies? How much of the rebellion is about freedom, and how much is about playing DVDs under Linux?

  • What will this mean? (Score:3)

    by Captn Pepe ( 139650 ) on Thursday June 01, 2000 @11:40AM (#1031828)
    and API compatibility with free LiViD DVD player.

    I suppose this could be taken to mean that they're going to open up the specs to this chipset. However, since they refer specifically to the LiViD projet, I am more inclined to suspect that this actually means that they're preparing (closed source?) codecs that interface with Lamp's plugin API. Which isn't terrible, but isn't an optimal solution, either.

    But since we don't actually know anything, I'd say do one of two things: 1) Find an e-mail address for their marketing department (or, preferably, someone more informed) and politely ask for clarification, and 2) don't flame them in the meantime for not telling us more, not promising to open-source the spec, etc.

  • Only if you use their motherboard... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The hardware accelerated DVD they're claiming to offer Linux support for requires the use of their motherboard chipset(s), which have integrated video support. Unfortunately, this won't help me watch DVDs on my SGI 1600SW or anyone who doesn't use a motherboard that has their chipset on it and uses its integrated graphics support. OTOH, it would be great for someone who wants an inexpensive Linux-based computer to watch DVDs.
  • I admit there is some coolness factor in having a dvd play while you're on irc or something, but having seen pc based decoding and a standalone machine, you get a more immersive feeling when you dont have to be distracted by the occasional mouse pointer, or the chuntering of hard drives. Not to mention the eternal humming noise of your average PC's overloaded fans.

    Even worse, when the damn screensaver kicks in just as the hero is about to do something dangerous/sensuous.

    So, what are people's preferences, and reasons for them?
  • DVD !!! Whoa !!!

    I'm still looking forward to a 2X CR-ROM.

    Luckily for me the way I lag in the hardware department, this thing will all be sorted out my the time I'm in the market for on of these jobbies.
  • A binary-only module is exactly what they intend to deliver, as it was mentioned today on the livid-dev mailing list.
  • I had the misfortune of buying a PcChips motherboard, with onboard everything, including the oh-so-wonderful SiS chipset. It worked just great in windows, but after searching high and low, and finding Linux drivers for it, I stiil couldn't get XFree to work with it.

    The moral of the story is, avoid PcChips motherbaords(with integrated everything) at all costs. Already the sound has died, and gives me some weird error each time I start it up. Right now it's sitting in the closet.

  • Show me the source, not the PR (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A lot of companies have issued press releases saying "we are going to support Linux" and never delivered the goods. Where's the Sigma Designs driver that was supposed to be available months ago?

    Press releases are marketing, and border on being lies. This is no big secret. Always wait until the actual goods are delivered, and then make your judgements based on the goods.

    Too bad Wall Street doesn't judge this way.

  • Please forgiv all the typos.

    Thes punch-cards are a bitch to work with.
  • It will NOT be opensource.

    Get on the livid-dev mailinglist, one of the SiS guys is on there.

    Commercial efforts can NOT open source DVD programs. The legal risk is worse for them than for people like LIVID, who have no financial stake in a DVD player.

    --ryan.

  • Exactly; they intend to provide a binary module taht could be used by Livid (at best, if they won't make the APIs available only to commercial products such as LinDVD from Intervideo). The discussion is going on the livid-dev mailing list, with someone from SiS.
  • JON KATZ: PORTRAIT OF A PSYCHOPATH

    "mickey and mallory know the difference between right and wrong. they just don't give a damn." - steven wright, natural born killers.

    jon katz. champion of the outcast teen. what has made him so sympathetic to the cause of the columbine killers? why has this event seemingly resonated so deeply within him? is jon just sympathetic to the life of the modern teen? or is there something more? something insidious?

    these are the questions i've been asking myself as i've read katz's obsessive columbine writings. these were the questions i was asking myself as i sat mesmerized by my natalie portman poster. like a torrent of sudden rain, my spirit guides bombarded me with the heinous images of jon's life. i was so disturbed i could barely bring myself to write this.

    jon was born and raised in a small, southwestern town. his father, carlito, was a mexican immigrant who worked for the department of transportation, building highways. his mother, juno, was a gypsy who earned money by performing card readings. the family made a comfortable living and jon was a happy, outgoing child, who even contributed to the family income by cleaning dog excrement from the neighborhood sidewalks.

    carlito was a hard-worker. in fact, he worked too hard. one particularly hot, sunny day, he was overcome with heat exhaustion. the incident had changed carlito forever. the charming, jovial, caring carlito became a vile, egomaniacal, misogynist. carlito soon lost his job and spent the rest of his days lounging around the house.

    the first incident of abuse happened when jon was but 6 years old. juno had lured a siamese cat into the house. she let the cat roam around until it was time for her to prepare it for the family's dinner. jon had just come home from a long day of sidewalk cleaning. carlito was laying on the couch with a 40 ounce schlitz. the putrid stench of dog manure flooded the house as jon closed the door. carlito was roused from his wrestling match. infuriated, he jumped off the couch, grabbing juno's cat by the tail. carlito stormed over to jon, who had backed himself into a corner. jon could do nothing but cry as carlito severely beat him with the screeching cat.

    the more jon cried, the more carlito beat him. after fifteen minutes of abuse, carlito plunged his hand into the stomach of the dead animal and gutted it right there in front of jon. he ate the entrails and forced his stunned son to wear the pelt as a hat for the rest of the week.

    the beatings continued for a few more years, at a lesser severity. until just after jon's 10th birthday. jon invited his friend ron over to spend the night. carlito would usually hide in the bedroom whenever anyone visited, so it was always a good way for jon to escape the beatings. the boys had had fun roaming the neighborhood that evening, making castles with the dog excrement they found and then pretending to be giant monsters, from a japanese science fiction movie, going on a rampage and smashing the castles. the boys played hard that night and went to bed early.

    but the boys could not sleep. instead, they decided to play doctor and various other games. the laughter awakened carlito. he stormed into the bedroom and flipped on the light. there, he beheld his son on all fours with his little friend mounting him from behind. the boys were playing "dog." carlito lost control. he threw ron out of the house, sending him walking home and picked jon up by the feet.

    carlito stormed outside, carrying his naked son by the feet. he rampaged throughout the neighborhood stopping any time he ran across a dog. carlito would beat hapless animal to death, using his son as a club. once again, he would plunge his hand into the dead animal, remove its organs and devour them. he then collected the pelt.

    after carlito had slaughtered twenty dogs, he tied together all of the pelts into a make-shift body-suit for jon. exhausted, and with jon bruised, bloodied and crying, carlito stumbled home. carlito wrapped jon in the gruesome clothing he had made and threw him into bed. he left the room momentarily, only to return with an empty 40-ounce. he stuck the open end into jon's rectum. jon cried himself to sleep.

    jon grew sullen and withdrew from his classmates. his grades slipped into oblivion. the teachers knew what the problem was, but dared not speak up. jon would sit in class, staring blankly out the window. nothing seemed to interest him. he never did his assignments. he began to arrive at school wearing ozzy osbourne and motley crue t-shirts. the faculty continued to ignore him. jon had become lost in a nether-world and none could pull him out.

    none but timmy. timmy's family had recently moved into town from california. jon felt him come in the room and turned from the window to behold his first real crush. timmy was tall, muscular, tanned and blonde. it was instant love for jon. but he dared not express his true feelings. he became best friends with timmy. they did everything together. jon's emotions were tearing him apart.

    jon couldn't stand it and his father had taught him well. jon invited timmy to go searching for peyote. the two wandered deep into the desert, the hot sun beating down on them. the intense heat slowly began to affect jon. he turned pale. he began to shake uncontrollably. then timmy made a fatal mistake.

    timmy put his hand on jon's shoulder and asked him if he was ok. jon became enraged. he picked up a rock and hit timmy in the head with it, knocking him unconscious. jon plunged his shaking fist into timmy's stomach and removed his organs, eating them on the spot. jon then removed the skin from the withered corpse and carried back to his car.

    jon kept the skin in his room, making passionate love with it at night. snuggling with it in the morning. he would whisper sweet nothings into its ear and run his fingers through its golden head of hair. jon was in a state of bliss. until carlito detected the scent of rotting flesh. jon was given another gruesome beating.

    jon fell in and out of love several times throughout highschool. each of the unfortunate objects of his affections would suffer the same fate and, once they mysteriously vanished from school, jon would return to his withdrawn state. only one teacher had the courage to try to help jon his senior year of highschool.

    jon had signed up for a computer class that year. his computer teacher recognized jon was troubled and took special care with him. jon soon developed a deep love for his teacher. but jon was ashamed. he couldn't quite grasp the complicated concepts that were part of the course: basic wordstar usage, lotus 123 and flipping the power switch. jon felt like a fool in front of his new love. he could not deal with his feelings.

    jon began to amass a deadly arsenal in his bedroom. he collected all manner of guns, rifles and bombs. he drew a detailed map of the school and devised a plan for decimating the entire building and everyone in it. jon dreamt of becoming a notorious mass-murderer, no longer ignored. no longer a powerless worm in the eyes of his beloved mr. donacelli.

    the night before "senior day." jon decided to celebrate by getting drunk. tomorrow his glorious plan would come to fruition. jon got drunk off of a gallon of cheap vodka. utterly incoherent, he climbed onto the roof of his house with the remains of his bottle and a fat cigar. he danced, naked, on the rooftop and yelled at the top of his lungs, "i'm gay, touch my balls!"

    jon's father woke from his alcoholic coma, not knowing that the neighbors had called the police. he ran outside and found jon on the roof. carlito climbed the side of the house and grabbed his son by the hair, throwing him onto the ground below. carlito spotted a lizard in the grass near jon. he jumped down, caught the lizard and began to severely beat jon. the police arrived within minutes.

    the police immediately took carlito into custody. they searched the house and found jon's arsenal, which they confiscated, thinking it belonged to carlito. carlito was subsequently convicted of assault and conspiracy. jon would never be beaten again.

    april 20, 1999. jon sat in front of his television watching with fascination as the columbine tragedy unfolded before his eyes. wistfully, jon thought back to his days in highschool. he knew these two young men were heros. they pulled it off. an accomplishment he had only dreamt of. jon took out his pen and paper and began work on his next slashdot article.

    thank you.

  • Maybe I'm on crack, 'cause I'm not working on this myself, but:

    LIVID has a Sigma Designs driver. It's really early in the devel, but the code is there. If I'm correct, we got the code from Sigma in some form or another.

    --ryan.

  • The MPAA are the evil bastards concerned with Linux DVD. The RIAA is the other bunch of evil bastards. (the ones trying to sue Napster into the ground.) I know they're both evil, and bastards, and suing the shit out of everyone in sight, but try to keep them straight.

    [flamebait]
    While I'm on the subject; Hey! Jacko! Yeah, you Valenti! How 'bout getting that head of yours out of you ass?
    [/flamebait]
  • No, it was completely reverse-engineered:

    http://hem.fyristorg.com/henrikj/em8300/

  • .mov (Score:1)

    by rbreve ( 94225 )
    Thats good, but when will apple release a mov player for linux...we need that damm it
  • Yes, had about the same experience with my Alton/PCWare motherboard. I didn't pick out this board outright to build a machine, I kind of ended up with it (long story short - friend bought barebones and decided to abandon project).

    It has a SiS 6326 on-board video (alleged to be AGP) and when I first installed Linux (forgot which distro, maybe RH5.2) with a XF86 3.2 version, no XSVGA. Lucked out that SuSE had a patched XSVGA that supported this chip and ran on my installation. But then, got lots of lines and disappearing pointers and crap until I fiddled with the XF86Config to turn some features off. It's dog slow but I use this box as a server so it's not too critical.

    But to second the previous post, SiS seems to produce some crappy on-board hardware and I would be leery of any DVD hardware.
  • Hi Yarn :)

    In my case - being a student with a smallish room, a decent 17" monitor, a broken TV with no SCART, and a DVD-ROM drive.

    I boot back to win98 for watching DVDs, don't have anything else running so no HD activity - I just stick a couple of bits of Blu-Tak over the annoying LEDs. The fan noise isn't too bad, and I either watch them loud (with friends) or with headphones, which drowns a lot of it out.

    But you're right - standalone players are the way to go for anyone with a real TV. My parents bought one a while ago to go with their 32" widescreen TV and the quality is fantastic. Buying a DVD-ROM and decoder card made sense a year or so ago when standalone players cost £350+, but now you can pick one up for less than £160 it just doesn't add up when a PC solution loses the nice stuff like remote control. Especially when 2/3 of all the ones sold in the UK are multiregion-capable (Yanks don't have quite as much of a problem in that area).

    Inviting some mates round to watch a movie cramped in front of your monitor ain't cool..

    --
    qube / Simon
    http://www.quake3arena.co.uk/

  • Re:Show me the source, not the PR (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's a link [fyristorg.com] to the page of the guy who reverse-engineered the dxr3 card (same as hollywood+ from Sigma Designs, using Sigma's em8300 chipset).

    SD has numerous times declared that there will never be any support from them for the em8300. Instead, they want everyone to buy their new overpriced card, the ns2000, for which they will provide binary-only drivers (still vaporware, however, since noone has seen them yet).
  • >So, what are people's preferences, and reasons for them?

    Dunno, mostly because I never seem to find the time to sit down in front of my TV with the DVD player and actually watch a movie. Wife and kids pretty much monopolize it anyway (damn the guy who decided to make Barney and Pokemon available on DVD!). Plus, with young kids around, not much chance of watching that R-rated movie (got Blade Runner for my B-day).

    So, off I go to my 'lab' where I have my Matrox G400 with DVD. I have multi-monitor setup so I can play the movie on the secondary screen while I work or surf. I don't usually watch a whole movie in one sitting, usually watch a while and bookmark for next time if I haven't watched the whole thing before, or just chapter-skip if I've seen it before (Terminator 2, Matrix, Alien3 are all good for this)

    Ideally, I'd like to sit on my couch in front of my TV and stereo and watch a movie with a beer and pretzels, but since this doesn't happen much, I'm glad to have the option of sneaking off to my computer and
  • About Linux

    Linux is a free, Unix-like operating system (fundamental software) that has been developed by a loose-knit team of talented programmers working all over the world. Linux works on almost every kind of computer in existence, and provides a robust platform for a wide variety of applications.

    Linux has blossomed to an estimated user base of 10-15 million since being created by Linus Torvalds in 1991.

    IT analysts International Data Corporation (IDC) have predicted that Linux commercial shipments will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 25% until 2003 which is more than double the combined rate for all other server operating environments. For more information about Linux, please refer to: http://www.linux.com [linux.com] and http://www.xfree86.org [xfree86.org]


    What exactly is loose-knit? I think that he's trying to call us stupid! j.k.
    Notice that just the commercial shipments will increase at that rate. Does this include downloaded free versions? The chip that is the point of the article will help ensure that non-commercial shipments will continue to increase, too

    --
  • It's about freedom.

    For me at least. I don't even own a DVD player, but I still have an anti-DVDCAA shirt. I'm against having a closed standard on DVDs. Partially because independent film makers have a hard time putting their works on dvd, partially because of the stupid 'regions', and because I think the DVD CAA will have unfair control over the market when DVDs become the popular medium.

  • Haiku (Score:2)

    by 575 ( 195442 )
    Linux DVD
    Promised but not delivered
    Blame MPAA
  • It's the OS (and drivers) that have to have support for the hardware, not the other way around. Any vendor makes hardware which "technically" has Linux support, i.e. it runs on the i386 platform, is PCI compatible, etc. etc. etc.

    For them to claim to support Linux is just marketing babble - until someone writes a driver for this beast, its useless.

  • Great 3D support for a crappy chipset. (Score:5)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Thursday June 01, 2000 @12:28PM (#1031852)
    This is awesome, except not really. It's great that a company is offering Linux support, but an announcement like this in the Windows world would be met with laughs. SIS has never made even a mediocre graphics chip. All their chips have rated from Man this sucks to Man this sucks as much as Windows 2000! It really shows how easily exited the alternate OS community is about any support whatsoever.

  • The benefits of this depend on your point of view. Can you accept an non-OpenSource product? If you can good, if you can't there will be problems. This is going to happen more and more. As companies that have a history in proprietary technologies move towards Linux they are going to bring their business practices with them. What is more important to us? Access to technologies or Open Source technologies. Both have their benefits. However, I think now is the time to make a decision. Linux is realy starting to draw comercial attention and the signal the Linux community sends now could set the tone for a long time. If we want OpenSource then lets stand up to these companies and say so. If we don't care then lets just sit back and take what we are given. It would be great to have DVDs running nicely on Linux but is it woth it?

  • Re:Just what every thread needs: a haiku! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Crap. here:

    Linux DVD
    Chafes the MPAA so.
    Drown them in spring rain.
  • Hmmm... Would running this under virtual linux (a la S/390, User-mode Linux) make it possible to reverse engineer these binary-only drivers?
  • The administrators of this site need to get their act together. This is probably the 20th time I've submitted a story and a week later it gets posted to slashdot under someone else's name. It's hard to believe that someone actually sent this in before me, since I submitted it the night of the press release...

    It pisses me off, they should bother to actually read the submissions rather than postign randomly.
  • Partially because independent film makers have a hard time putting their works on dvd, partially because of the stupid 'regions'

    They don't have to use regions - just put the movie on a disc unencrypted and it's region 0, which will play anywhere in the world. The only thing stopping more independent film coming out on DVD is the cost of mastering the DVD in the first place for a film that probably won't sell too many copies.

    DVDs needing regional encoding is a myth - the major (MPAA-involved) studios choose to.

    qube

  • Assuming this does support a standard API, wouldn't this give us the ability (albeit closed source ability) to read the unencrypted mpeg stream?

    If that's the case, then how could DeCSS be any more a tool for piracy than this? If the MPAA lets this go, then they'd be admitting that DMCA case against DeCSS would have no merit (as if it ever did). Of course we'd still have the reverse engineering case to deal with.
  • Why? Remeber ATI press-release about 4 months ago. They were promising DVD library (not open-sourced) -- and made some people to buy their video hw -- and since then? Nothing. Even the most important people in XFree doing video stuff doesn't know anything.

    I have an alter-ego at Red Dwarf. Don't remind me that coward.

  • Just a tip - I installed Red Hat on a system with a SiS graphics card, and I had a bitch of a time getting linux support. No drivers, poor documentation - I had to guess on all of the input values until it worked.

    I was kinda shocked to see their name in connection with Linux!
  • The sis6326 is supported in XFree86, hell you can even build the utah-glx module for 3.3.6 for it. I know, because everytime i cvs it i have to ./autogen.sh --enable-extra --disable-sis6326 (among other things)

  • Linux isnt the only other OS that doesnt have DVD (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01, 2000 @01:29PM (#1031863)
    When will slashdot realize that Linux isnt the only other OS besides windows? Just because one company decided to do a DVD thing for linux doesnt resolve the whole issue. The root of the problem of not having dvd support in OS's other than windows is that DVD is not an open format/protocol, simply because Linux has become popular and there will likely be DVD support in the future for it. What about BeOS, *BSD, and everything else, attack the root of the problem and not just your specific needs!
  • http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
    Utah-GLX: A hardware accelerated implementation of the GLX protocol
    Supported Hardware

    Matrox MGA-G200, MGA-G400
    ATI RagePro (The Rage 128 family is not supported)
    Intel i810
    NVIDIA Riva series
    SiS 6326
    S3 ViRGE

  • Yeah, now... that wasn't my point though. I'm using a current 3.3.6 and it supports it and all but the performance is crap.
  • I'm a little confused here. SiS has opened their specs in the past so that open source developers can write drivers for their hardware. This is what all the open source advocates want.

    So the SiS drivers written by the open source community suck, and people have a hard time getting their hardware to work because of the poor drivers.

    Now, they annouce they will be writing their own drivers for Linux.

    Why should there be any connection between drivers/support written by the open source community and drivers/support from the company creating the hardware?

    SiS has give the open source community the 'support' that they want (i.e. open specs) in the past, but users complain about the crappy drivers, and say 'avoid their hardware'.

    I don't get it.
  • You're complaining about SiS hardware, but who wrote the poor drivers? The open source community or SiS?

    SiS has opened their specs in the past, which is what the open source community wants. Don't blame them if the drivers are not up to par, blame the open source community.

    Let's have a little consistency here. NVIDIA gets bashed for releasing good drivers, but they won't release their specs. SiS gets bashed because they've released their specs, but the open source drivers suck.

    What's it going to be?
  • Does anyone know if having a computer DVD player means you have to pay the TV license (in the UK)? I know they say you have to if you've got a card which can pick up broadcast signals, but does it apply to DVD?
  • Point well taken...

    But don't forget alternative platforms (mine being an alpha system) running Linux.

    In other words, the only way to fairly support Linux DVD is an open source driver.

    Right now I'm busy porting Glide over to eventually get DRI running on X4!!! If I see some good DVD software, I don't mind decoding in SW on my alpha. I've got the cycles to spare. Plus, the Multimedia instruction set (simular to MMX) can decode 8 pixels of MPEG per cycle.

    Pan
  • look at the effort that went into the matrox drivers. think its any coincedence that matrox makes the best 2d cards out there? (it was debatable until nine went out) its worth it more to spend the time and effort on supporting good hardware. seems like the SiS cards are not that good and thus, not that worth supporting. If the mga drivers supported gamma, they would be perfect.

  • So you can watch DVD's on your laptop on an airplane.

    Pretty much the only reason I ordered the DVD option on my Compaq 1800T running BeOS, Linux and NT [goingware.com] was so that I could watch movies on airplanes. Being a consultant who just moved away from Silicon Valley, I expect to be traveling a lot.

    The machine came stock with Windows 98. Installing NT ate my hard disk so now I have to install a third-party DVD player and I'd rather use Linux than try to get a licensed one working on NT.

  • Haiku is, in and of itself, merely a simplistic meter format:

    Linux DVD
    Chafes the MPAA so.
    Kill the rat-bastards.

    When Haiku originated, it was intended to be a medium for conveying imagery about nature in general, (not 'seasons' as you would have us believe) and over the years some American english/writing teachers have decided that haiku must neccessarily involve some sort of natural reference.

    Linux DVD
    Chafes the MPAA so;
    As vines to the oak.

    Or, as His Cowardice has put it:

    Linux DVD
    Chafes the MPAA so.
    Drown them in spring rain.

    But this restriction need not be enforced unless the traditional japanese haiku poets somehow rise from the dead and seek out all those who would destroy their artform. In which case, there are approx. 523 billion angst-struck teenagers who are further up on the list than we at slashdot are. Therefore, I present this alternative haiku:

    MPAA will,
    from comment-boards on Slashdot,
    find out where you live.
    Levine
  • Loose-knit simply means "without a rigidly defined organizational structure", and is both an apt description of Open Source development and not uncomplimentary.


    Chill out the paranoia - it sounds like SiS is trying to Do The Right Thing within the limits they must operate under.

  • It's wonderful that SiS already has 3D support, but that wasn't exactly my point :)
  • Well what do you expect? Do they really have some real graphics engineering people working for them? Nope. So why do we think they should be so much better than say Trident (who is also known for crappy 3D cards)? Well we shouldn't... I am just hoping to see options to disable all this onboard crap, & hope other companies making hardware will have the support to do this.
  • Why when I posted this story was it rejected?!?
  • I post this story it gets rejected....An anonymous coward posts it and it goes up on /.

    Damn try and try and try and all i get is rejected;(
  • I'd like a good software decoder so I can see what a DVD would looked like on my I-opened-it.

    Oh, I'm sure it will look like shit, but I'm still curious. Also, I'd have the satisfaction of having the MPAA and Netpliance have a stroke at the same time.
  • Not exactly. The S/390 doesn't run X86 code and wouldn't be emulating a SIS chipset in its virtual machine. You'd need something like Bochs for the X86 emulation, but even then no SIS chipset.
  • The point that interested me the most, because I'm a audiophile at times, was the 5.1channel output. Can you see, in the now near future, something like the Netwinder (Ie, just enough CPU to play a DVD or an MP3) but with a DVD player, plugged into your TV and stereo. It would get on the internet, play movies and write documents for one damn cheap price. Cheaper than buying the bits seperately anyway.

  • SiS are cool (Score:3)

    by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Thursday June 01, 2000 @07:06PM (#1031881) Homepage
    They officially support the OpenBIOS project, of which I am a member (ok, so I haven't been active in a while, I got a Linux job, etc...)

    SiS provides BIOS code *and* hardware, so there.

    Stop trashing them, they're really on our side.
  • Am I wrong, or can't you just concatonate it straight across? True, the DVD would still be encoded, but it would be a copy, right?
  • SiS support had just been included in XF86 when i had an SiS card, but the driver for my particular card was one of the ones that was supposed to be complete. It was crap, the hardware was slow, and the resolutions offered were rubbish. I gave up with the SiS and bought a cheap S3 Virge based card, which worked fine, no problems.

    Now, don't even get me started on the cheap soundcard i used to have too....
  • Windows Media player under WINE works. Havn't tried the Apple player, but i have a feeling that would work too. Only problem i have is that the audio has to be downgraded to 8bit, 16bit gives nasty results with lots of extra noise. But the movie codecs work.
  • Er, I think the major complaint he has is about everything being integrated, the sound going out, and getting a weird error on boot.

    I've never had linux give me a weird error on boot that wasn't either somewhat self-explanatory or easy to look up and fix. Methinks it's probably a POST error, although I could be wrong.

    Either way, the other two have nothing to do with the drivers. I could write excellent drivers for trident cards, but would that make them not suck?

  • No. Think FreeMWare (now called something less memorable) and you're getting a bit warmer.

  • Which version of wine was that? And which WMP (there are several)? The latest I've tried was the 5/29 CVS snapshot of wine with mplayer2 (version 6.4), and it wouldn't even load.
  • Hmmm, yeah. I know what you mean. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact they mark a submition as (rejected) then run it three days later under sombody else name.

    I kinda get the impression you should hold off for a while before submitting. I can imagine Rob or whoever sitting there with a sad look on his fact clicking the reject button:

    [reject], [reject], [reject], [reject], [reject], [reject], "Damn it. Enough already! I'll run the story!"[accept]
    :) It's like one of those radio phone-ins
    "And if your out 99th caller, you win a free slap slaaapdooown! Ooh yeah!"

    Thad

  • I was using the latest (Not CVS) release of WINE (The version escapes me, and i'm not using that box atm). The player was mplayer2, pretty sure it was a 6.4 version, and it worked fine (Apart from aforementioned audio problems).

    Something we may be doing diferently is that i have Winblows 95 installed on a small partition, and have WINE set to use the Windows native DLL's, rather than the built-in's that WINE has.
  • :)) How ironic :)) I'm doing almost the same, except I use the w98 dlls. OK, I'll try with the 05/26 release, maybe it makes a difference after all.
  • Is anyone else out there tired of hearing companies say, "Sometime, in the future, between now and the end of all time, we may actually produce a driver for our hardware DVD decoding cards. But in the meantime, please buy our product and use it on Windows." Frankly, I would really like to see a company come out with a beta or alpha driver and then publicize it. I'm starting to think that it's just another way to gather support from the OSS community.

    "Hey, I know," nudge, nudge, "let's tell them that we will support DVD playback on Linux. Yeah, that's it. Then we won't ever actually produce anything, but we will have everybody saying that we support open source. Yeah, that would be great." Bah. I haven't had much time to play around with the available open DVD playback systems, but I would really like to see one of the Linux distributors have the guts to include it so that we could see what all the fuss is about. (I know, just do it yourself. Sorry, I really don't have the time.)
  • Why do people moderate posts that are under -1 posts that will never be moderated up? If the parent post is -1, then the only way the child post will be displayed is if the threshold is set to -1. Seems a waste of mod points to me.
  • A quote from the message I was responding to:
    "It worked just great in windows,"

    Therefore, the Linux drivers were at fault, no?

    You can't blame hardware with fully open specs if it works great in Windows, but performs poorly in Linux.

  • For the record, I was complaining about the poor quality of the motherboard mostly. I wanted it to be a dual boot 98/linux system, but with the SiS video drivers in Linux not working, I had to go out and buy a new video card(that works beautifully in Windows, same for the onboard sound).

    As for the weird error messages, it was from the BIOS that I could not figure out. I only had to warm boot it after the error, and it started fine.

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