Is there an easy, legal way to watch downloadable movies on Ubuntu?

[spaceballl]

Hi All,

We're getting my mother a netbook for Mothers Day, the Asus EEE PC 1000HE. I think she's going to love it. It comes with Windows XP, but I think that Ubuntu is now user friendly enough to put that on for her. I only have ONE thing that is making me want to stick with XP... iTunes video downloading / rentals. Would be great for her to be able to download a movie and watch it on a plane. I'm fine with giving her the linux solution instead, but is there anything remotely comparable to this for getting legal mainstream content in linux? I don't want to burden her with WINDOWS! Thanks!

[spaceballl]

bueller?

[stinger30au]

vlc media player for movies

dont know about itunes stuff

perhaps some body else has an idea

[spaceballl]

I know HOW to play movies... Just looking at how she can actually legally download movies on linux.

[kuahyanguang]

Miro should work fine for that. http://www.getmiro.com/

[bobince]

All the current mainstream* download offerings are burdened with copy protection (“DRM”) which means they can only be played back with proprietary, vendor-limited software. iTunes DRM will only play back on iTunes/iPod; Windows Media DRM will only play back on Windows Media Player and Microsoft-licensed devices.

(*: There are DRM-free download services such as streamburst.tv, but you're not going to find the major feature films you're presumably talking about there.)

The DRM approach is antithetical to open source software as it relies on client-side secrecy to protect the content (which is also why it is generally ineffective). There are a few DRM systems available with proprietary players for Linux (such as, I believe, Real's one), but no site I know of at the time of writing is using those.

Hopefully some day the video download providers (and more importantly their content suppliers) will realise what a waste of everyone's time DRM is, like most of the music download industry already has. But don't hold your breath. Until then, all you can do is keep a DVD ripper and a torrent client handy...

[spaceballl]

So there's no way to legally watch commercial movies on linux then? Other than ripping DVDs? If that's the answer, I'm fine with that - I just want to make sure that I'm no missing some service out there.

I'm setting up her netbook now - She can use Ubuntu NBR for 90% of what she needs. And if she wants to watch downloaded movies on a plane or something, she can just rent them in iTunes.

[gohanssjn]

So there's no way to legally watch commercial movies on linux then? Other than ripping DVDs? If that's the answer, I'm fine with that - I just want to make sure that I'm no missing some service out there.

I'm setting up her netbook now - She can use Ubuntu NBR for 90% of what she needs. And if she wants to watch downloaded movies on a plane or something, she can just rent them in iTunes.

Are you saying you are keeping Windows as well, or somehow loading iTunes into Ubuntu then?

[Godly]

watch-movies.net
I use it almost everyday, works great!

[spaceballl]

Are you saying you are keeping Windows as well, or somehow loading iTunes into Ubuntu then?

Oh yeah sorry for not specifying - i'll make it a dual boot system - will boot into Ubuntu by default and if she wants to watch a movie in iTunes, she can reboot into XP.