MCE 0810 / Blu Ray

[Amathus]

I have heard that MCE 0810 is on the horizon, does anyone know if a Beta is available as yet? 

If 0810 is on the horizon, does anyone know what improvements are made / new feature sets?

Also, I have 0710 - does anyone know how I can playback blu ray?

Cheers all.

[Amathus]

Thanks ..  I will hunt the forums re the blu ray / HD issue - I think it is a matter of implementing the H.264 codecs but I am certainly no guru - everyone I know  wants a media center with blu ray playback and whilst MSFT is capable MCE is not so I reckon this is needs to be addressed.

In your reply you stated "NO" I assume it's "NO" to both the blu ray question &  my 0810 query.

Cheers

[niz23]

Amathus.

Thanks ..  I will hunt the forums re the blu ray / HD issue - I think it is a matter of implementing the H.264 codecs but I am certainly no guru - everyone I know  wants a media center with blu ray playback and whilst MSFT is capable MCE is not so I reckon this is needs to be addressed.

In your reply you stated "NO" I assume it's "NO" to both the blu ray question &  my 0810 query.

Cheers

There is no LMCE0810 in the near future.
I won´t indicate any dates. It will just start a bunch of speculations.
We have to resolve several issues before we even get it to compile correct.

The more help we get the sooner the release.
Remember, we do not have any commerical sponsors behind us. Only the community.


Regarding h.264 the problem in many cases is that GPU manufacturers do not release complete drivers for Linux.
They lack a lot of high-end functionality, like h.264 gpu support.
However nVidia have cuda support in their Linux driver since a while back.
It might be a way to use the gpu to offload software codecs.
But someone need to code it.

There are a couple of guys on the forum that have tried "core avc". Basically a h.264 software codec.
Search the forum for it.



/niz23

[Monkgs]

There is no LMCE0810 in the near future.
I won´t indicate any dates. It will just start a bunch of speculations.
We have to resolve several issues before we even get it to compile correct.

Untrue. See this thread http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=6194.0.

Remember, we do not have any commerical sponsors behind us. Only the community.

Also untrue. There are many companies (or at least one) selling LMCE based smart home solutions who contribute to the development of LMCE.

[colinjones]

Just to clarify a few points for you...

0810 Kubuntu/Ubuntu/etc is on the horizon (by definition, 08 means 2008, 10 means October), however this says nothing about LMCE, until it is accepted into the Kubuntu tree, it will always be a case of them (Ubuntu guys) releasing the new OS first and then the LMCE guys scrambling to generate a new LMCE that will build and run on it. But I understand that the ultimate aim is to combine is as a standard option so that LMCE will come out with the new versions of the OS at the same time....

LMCE is entirely capable of h264, the codec is not the issue. There are 2 main issues for BD/HDDVD - first decoding hi-def H264 (lower resolutions, etc are fine), theoretically it should be able to do it with enough CPU grunt, but as Rodercot and others have pointed out, this seems to be a problem, second is the more critical for BD/HDDVD particularly - encryption, specifically HDCP which is an encryption scheme that encrypts the content from the surface of the disk right through to the playback display/amp. So the devices in between need to be able to intercept and handle this to do all the wonderful media centre things. Currently this is difficult, and yes M$ has deliberately muddied the waters and used DRM to its own advantage making it difficult for other players to get into that market. Moreover, for open source, because there is no overriding commercial entity to pay for access to, and licensing of the HDCP encryption technology it is very difficult. The DRM world is simply not interested in dealing with the open source world.

At the moment, the only support is for LMCE (0710 onwards) to rip the disk to the harddrive, then use a decryption library (illegal in most places!) to pass the content through by stripping the encryption off.

And to niz's point, clearly commercial graphics hardware companies releasing proper open source (or even proprietary) video drivers that allow access to hardware H264 decryption would solve many of Rodercot's issues! In fact they have absolutely NO legitimate commercial excuse for not releasing at least proprietary drivers! There is no more risk to them than any other platform, and we have damn well paid for their hardware, we should be allowed to make use of it!

[skeptic]

I may have misunderstood, but what are you using to actually rip the BD movies off the disk?  As far as I know there is no reliable way to rip all BD movies in Linux.  As it happens, I have a blu-ray drive and the one blu-ray movie I bought to test with cannot, to the best of my knowledge, be ripped under Linux.

Personally, I'd be satisfied if I could rip the movies on my Linux desktop, then transcode them into a broadcast quality 720p size.  Much smaller file than native BD, but still much better quality than DVD and from everything I've read you wouldn't notice the lower quality on all but the newest and 50+ inch 1080p tvs, side by side examination aside.  720p broadcast quality would also be easier to play.  This should eliminate the playback issue for me, but I'm still faced with the inability to actually get the movie I paid for off the disk and into lmce.

[MediaEngineer]

The more help we get the sooner the release.
Remember, we do not have any commerical sponsors behind us. Only the community.

If someone could reply to the topic I posted in the Developers Forum a week ago, "Working Build Process?" this community would have at least one more developer who could help.

The build process described in the overlapping (and evidently erroneous) wiki articles "Building From Source" and "Setting Up A Development Environment" fails when trying to build a module of it, and any of the current developers (or anyone else) who can fix those instructions will remove the roadblock for at least me, and probably others who'd like to help get us all to the next release of LinuxMCE.

If you know how to build from the current sources, please reply to that message, or somewhere else I (and others) can see how to do it.

[skeptic]

Skeptic,

 The only program I know of is Anydvd-HD and windows XP sp2. Then txmuxer for BD and eac for HD-dvd. The new version of AnyDVD-HD says it will actually rip to an .iso or .dvd. This is all for within M$ not Linux.

 Dave

That's what I've heard.  Any idea if it works in a VM such as virtualbox? 

[colinjones]

Mediaengineer - I would love that too as I'm new and struggling. However, I think the instructions broke due to the differences in the 2 source trees that the devs are working on merging, and I guess that the thought is there isn't much point correcting them until the merge is complete, presumably because there will be a new set of instructions at that point. From what I have gathered, the merging has been torturous and long winded, but is pretty close (anecdotally).

Do hang in there as we do desparately need more devs!!

[domotiqa.com]

some infos:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD

[domotiqa.com]

the best way should be to rip and play the file with delay!
However, that need good proc... !

[tschak909]

MPlayer's code base is one big pile of dung. Horribly written, hack after hack. Yes. I am qualified to make that statement.

Xine-lib may not be perfect, but it is possible to do a much cleaner integration with that, than it is to try to move EVERYTHING to mplayer.

 -Thom

[skeptic]

Skeptic,

 The only program I know of is Anydvd-HD and windows XP sp2. Then txmuxer for BD and eac for HD-dvd. The new version of AnyDVD-HD says it will actually rip to an .iso or .dvd. This is all for within M$ not Linux.

 Dave

That's what I've heard.  Any idea if it works in a VM such as virtualbox? 

 Well I have tried with Wine in Hardy and it was a no go. I have not tried with a VM. It works just fine under windows and I can rip and remaster there and just transfer to the server when completed.

 Domotiqa : yep been there done that with no luck. As I said there are several series of threads in the forums talking about the issues and we know they are there We need a stable build of Mplayer within LMCE and also knows when we click play on an HD file Whatever it may be.

 rgds,

 Dave

I looked into using wine a while back, but that looks to be a dead end for now.  I don't want to boot into windows if I don't have to, so maybe I'll give virtualbox a shot.  If/when I get around to it I'll post the results in case anyone is interested.

[Amathus]

Thanks Guru / Colinjones rodercot & all ... from what I understand then, 8010 is not a 'near future release' but is planned for October all going well. Seems as though not all is going so well, but it is still a planned release later than sooner I gather.

Re BD playcak. I agree with Colin Jones. Blue Ray playback is stymied by DRM and who is behind DRM? Paranoia reigns supreme in every multinational mega corporation. But not having Blue Ray playback places the open source world in the bleaches to a degree vs the box seat and if it is not Blue Ray it will be something else later down the track to have the same effect. Ripping Blue Ray for playback is not the solution. First up it is illegal. Secondlt it is clumnsy to do so at present from what I read.

I agreen with Cloinjones. We pay for the damn hardware so what is the issue with  having Linux HDCP or whetever decrytion is necessary to effect BD playback? I believe that this must go against trust laws in that one standard adversely and deliberately supresses the growth of its competitors in orer to monopolise the market. What baffles me is that Sony invented BD, are in direct competition with X-Box and yet did not make any moves to support open source software but rather are cutting deals with MSFT.

Frustrating.

[skeptic]

I can only hope that a large influential company or group takes this up and gets the fair use laws changed to force companies to allow people to copy their own stuff.  Unlikely I know, but as media centers become more and more popular, more and more people are going to demand the ability to put the movies and such they pay for on their media center.

Everyone knows protection doesn't stop piracy, yet these companies continue to use DRM to prevent honest people for accessing what they pay for.  The music industry has gone this way, we just need movies and cable companies to follow suit.  I know, preaching to the choir.