[ILUG] MPlayer...

[Rick Moen]

begin Gavin McCullagh quotation:

> One question.  There was a recent question as to whether Quicktime
> stuff could be played on linux ever and many sid no cos "the codecs were
> totally proprietary" (sorry if i got this wrong).  However, MPlayer appears
> to take windows codecs in the form of compiled dlls etc.  Does this mean it
> could take the codec for QT from windows and play quicktime or not?

Speaking just for myself, what I said was 
(http://www.linux.ie/pipermail/ilug/2001-July/034157.html):

  At LinuxWorld NYC, last year, TransGaming Technologies CEO Gavriel
  State showed me Apple's QuickTime 5 beta for Win32[1] running on Linux
  (Debian 2.2 potato) using TransGaming's DirectX v. 7 extensions to
  WINE -- playing the Sorenson-encoded movie preview of The Phantom
  Menace, among other things.  Pretty cool stuff -- and pretty much the
  only possible method, until the patent expires or exclusive-licensee
  Apple Computer starts allowing third-party implementations (or Hell
  freezes over -- whichever come first).

The point being that, where software patents stand in the way[1], 
about the only Linux-playback strategy that won't be subject to legal
challenge is precisely to find ways to use licensed code from other
operating systems (e.g., Win32 codec DLLs).

[1] Enlightened parts of the world, e.g., Europe, do not allow software
patents.

-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick at linuxmafia.com       modern-American-English-usage-improvement association