Thanks for your comprehensive response, this is exactly what I was looking for..
> Well, the dvd (the stuff on there is mpeg-2, no?) is encrypted using > weak CSS. MPAA blessed players decrypt this and play it as a mpeg-2? > movie. The legally questionable DeCSS (search for it on any search > engine, especially MPAA member disney's which is http://www.go.com/ > according to 2600 magazine) allows non-MPAA blessed software to access > the mpeg-2 file. I'm not sure if you'd have to store the decrypted > file on your disk to view but I'd assume so?? I see. This indeed sounds very dubious. A pity, because were the media bigshots less zealous in their efforts, they would more easily extract money from me, via the movie rental place down the street which offers DVDs as well as VHS tapes. > > What's the file size of a typical DVD movie? > > IIRC, regular dvd's hold 4.3 gig which is about 2+ hours of video. OK. So I guess that means it must be compressed somehow, since I'm getting about 77 gigs for an 800x600 pixel movie at 16bpp at 24 fps (yes I am picking those values somewhat arbitrarily since I have no idea what the resolution/color depth/fps of a typical dvd movie is). Also I guess that means I won't be downloading DVDs any time soon.. > Well, it is vastly better, although artifacts can appear (mpeg is > lossy). I wonder how it would look on a good TV monitor.. anyone have experience with this? > Likely, unless you have one blazing system (I've heard of people with > dual P500's complaining about playback). With the Creative Labs > hardware decoders you can playback dvd's in Linux. Aha. A hardware decoder sounds like a convenient way to deal with the proprietary encoding issue. Though possibly politically questionable. Also financially.. I'm a student, so I was hoping to save money via DVD vs. TV+VCR (also I just blew a lot of cash on a nice monitor, and two CRTs in one apartment strikes me as a waste -- already one is too much IMHO, though lcd screens still too expensive..) > see http://lurch.ucd.ie/~conormc/linux/dvd.html and > http://www.dvddemystified.com/ for more info. > > You also might want to boycott dvd's comptely, but: > > 1) You don't hurt the dvd sellers/movie industry much by boycotting > (although you would if everyone boycotted...). > > 2) http://www.opendvd.org/ points people to reel.com where apparently > you can purchase dvd's with 8% going to the eff for their legal > case (the appeal I guess?) against the MPAA. (Actually, I'm > confused on this whole case thing. One was against 2600 magizine > for posting/linking to DeCSS and one was against Jon Johanasen > (sp?) the Johanasen one being funded by the eff right? but I'm > getting off topic here and I don't want to start a slashdot thread > here :) Will check out, thanks again chris
