On Thursday 09 August 2007 15:18, James Knott wrote: > Tero Pesonen wrote: > > On Thursday 09 August 2007, Fergus Wilde wrote: > >> he proprietary video formats issue is one for the lawyers, not Linux > >> people. These formats don't play back because copyright and patent > >> owners or abusers will not allow free access to them and have > >> threatened and bullied, and even prosecuted, people trying simply to > >> view files using open source systems. > >> > >> This distinction is extremely important. Badger your government about > >> it, not those working on Linux multimedia, who have shown time and > >> again that they can easily overcome any technical issues when not > >> threatened by corporations and their legal teams. > > > > I do understand this. I'm not blaming people working on opensource > > multimedia -- they are the people who make it possible for me to view > > these videos! The problem is, that an average user coming from Windows > > does not (based on my experience) know anything about the whys and hows > > relating to video codecs on opensource platforms. If things won't just > > work out of the box or with the install of a media player, the said > > things become an issue. Most people have never even heard of video codecs > > in their life. They just start Windows Mediaplayer or whatever and open > > the video file, or as is often the case, the video source or file > > automatically opens the correct player. > > [snippage, see below] > > FWIW, a friend has an IBM ThinkPad, that came loaded with Windows 98. A > couple of years ago, she upgraded to XP and found she could no longer > play video DVDs. After some checking, we found that she has to buy the > necessary software, from a web site that's very irritating and difficult > to navigate through. She decided against providing her credit card info > and went without DVD video playback. Another issue is when you install > such things, you often get a load of crapware along with it. So, it is > not always so easy for Windows users either.
Right enough - I was surprised, when asked to support XP at work, that Media Player can actually cope with only quite a limited subset of formats in a default install. My boss had to pay to download some third party kit before he could even watch a commercial DVD. After that, he still kept encountering things that caused Media Player to offer to go online and download codecs, which it mostly failed to do successfully. So like James, I'm not at all sure Windows folk get the easy ride you mention. And despite my rigorous checking of the hardware of his PC, at least half the time real player knackers XP to the point where it has to be rebooted to get acceptable performance back. Cheers Fergus -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: 0161 834 7961 Fax: 0161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
