Hi Pavithran, 2009/8/2 pavithran <pavithra...@gmail.com>: > Yes I am suggesting someone to use a proprietary software in a linux > list but I am afraid that there is no *viable* FOSS alternative :( >
Untrue. MythTV, Boxee and XBMC are all (for the most part) FOSS alternatives to Windows Media Centre. > This is because of many reasons : > * Bad Hardware vendors who don't write free drivers . So vote with your feet and buy hardware that _is_ supported. There is a lot of it about. Also worth noting that Linux based systems support _more_ hardware out of the box than _any_ other operating system, including Windows, OSX and BSD (and BeOS, Haiku, OS/2...). > *Many proprietary video formats I'd be interested to know exactly which proprietary video formats the FOSS media player VLC can't play. With VLC and MPlayer I don't think I've yet come across a format they wont play. I think you'll find that FOSS also supports way more codecs than most proprietary solutions. Windows for example doesn't support OGG/Theora/Vorbis, DIVX or H.264 out of the box. Most Linux distros these days can install codecs very easily. > *lack of video standards ( Yes MPEG is a ISO standard but mp3,divx thrive ) There are many standards for video compression, and (as outlined above) they pretty much all work on Linux. Which ones don't? Cheers, Al. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------
