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View Full Version : Fluendo DVD Player Released



deanjm1963
July 2nd, 2009, 05:09 AM
Fluendo have just released their DVD player for Linux - in all flavors - both 32 & 64 bit for every mainstream distro. http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/fluendo-dvd-player/

I purchased it (and VERY cheap - nearly half the price of that other one that was available at the Canonical Store which only supports 8.04/8.10) this morning and found it to be very good. There are one or two bugs (e.g. it wouldn't play "multi-regioned dvds - zones 2 + 4 on the same disk, but everything else that I've thrown at it works), but I'm sure they'll be ironed out in the very near future.

For those looking for a VERY reasonably priced piece of commercial linux software and are fed up trying to get other software to play your dvds, give it a try. There are bound to be bugs and I've found their software to be updated often.

And please no remarks about it being commercial and NOT free and that there are alternatives - sometimes those alternatives JUST DON'T WORK. There are not many companies that support open source with end-user products and Fluendo have been a long supporter of *nix's with their codecs and media-player Moovida.

Just my 2 cents worth :rolleyes:

monsterstack
July 2nd, 2009, 05:13 AM
I've never found any DVDs to have playback issues in Linux with VLC. What sort of DVDs have problems? What benefits would I get by using the official player?

deanjm1963
July 2nd, 2009, 05:22 AM
I've never found any DVDs to have playback issues in Linux with VLC. What sort of DVDs have problems? What benefits would I get by using the official player?

And please no remarks about it being commercial and NOT free and that there are alternatives - sometimes those alternatives JUST DON'T WORK. There are not many companies that support open source with end-user products and Fluendo have been a long supporter of *nix's with their codecs and media-player Moovida.

monsterstack
July 2nd, 2009, 05:49 AM
And please no remarks about it being commercial and NOT free and that there are alternatives - sometimes those alternatives JUST DON'T WORK. There are not many companies that support open source with end-user products and Fluendo have been a long supporter of *nix's with their codecs and media-player Moovida.

Yes, you already said that. I want to know what the specific benefits are by purchasing the official player. Some things won't work with the alternatives? Which things? I ask because it will influence by decision to buy it.

swoll1980
July 2nd, 2009, 06:12 AM
sometimes those alternatives JUST DON'T WORK.

You already stated that somethings in that program you bought don't work either. Where as I have never had any playback problems using the free stuff.

deanjm1963
July 2nd, 2009, 06:21 AM
Yes, you already said that. I want to know what the specific benefits are by purchasing the official player. Some things won't work with the alternatives? Which things? I ask because it will influence by decision to buy it.

For some people the "free" alternatives work perfectly, for others, it just "doesn't happen".

My original post is for information about something that might work for those people having problems using Totem/VLC/whatever.

The forums are full of people "Can't Play DVD's"/"No DVD Playback"/etc and those people have installed all the codecs, libdvdcss2, VLC, etc, and they still have no DVD playback.

There are no "specific benefits" by purchasing the Fluendo DVD player, everyone's linux is different - but there are benefits on another side.

Fluendo supply the free codec for mp3 playback which is "freely available", they are a small company trying to do good things for open source, and they need to be supported, not necessarily in monetary value, but "word of mouth" is also support.

You might not buy any of their products today, next month or next year, but it is something to consider when using linux 99.9% of your software is free, compared to "the alternative operating system" where you either pay through the nose for their software, or you download dodgy/virus-ridden copies.

I'd personally prefer to pay a small amount on top of my "free as in beer software" than turn to alternatives.

deanjm1963
July 2nd, 2009, 06:24 AM
You already stated that somethings in that program you bought don't work either. Where as I have never had any playback problems using the free stuff.

If you have no problems, wonderful, but again, there are those who do.

gnomeuser
July 2nd, 2009, 09:05 AM
I've never found any DVDs to have playback issues in Linux with VLC. What sort of DVDs have problems? What benefits would I get by using the official player?

The primary reason for this is patents, if you are say, Dell and you wish to sell Linux based machines that play DVDs, if you were to install one of the Free Software DVD players you would be in violation of the patent license (or if you bought a license for the patent you would be in violation of the license of the software if you didn't provide access to that patent license to everyone.. infinity times anything is a large number).

So if you want to avoid being the victim of surprise buttseks from a bunch of lawyers, being Dell you pay Fluendo.

As a private user, you would, if applicable still be in violation of the patent license if you install codec support for DVDs (or anything really) but the odds of the MPEG-LA hunting you down is very small so you can get away with it. It is still illegal but it's to expensive for them to sue every single private user. It's much more financially viable to sue companies.

monsterstack
July 2nd, 2009, 09:17 AM
The primary reason for this is patents, if you are say, Dell and you wish to sell Linux based machines that play DVDs, if you were to install one of the Free Software DVD players you would be in violation of the patent license (or if you bought a license for the patent you would be in violation of the license of the software if you didn't provide access to that patent license to everyone.. infinity times anything is a large number).

So if you want to avoid being the victim of surprise buttseks from a bunch of lawyers, being Dell you pay Fluendo.

As a private user, you would, if applicable still be in violation of the patent license if you install codec support for DVDs (or anything really) but the odds of the MPEG-LA hunting you down is very small so you can get away with it. It is still illegal but it's to expensive for them to sue every single private user. It's much more financially viable to sue companies.

I figured as much. Well, I'm going to vote with my wallet: if ever I buy a DVD that doesn't work on my machine, I'll simply return it.

Kazade
July 2nd, 2009, 10:26 AM
I've never found any DVDs to have playback issues in Linux with VLC. What sort of DVDs have problems? What benefits would I get by using the official player?

I know the original Matrix DVD doesn't work, something to do with it also having PC content on the disc.

steeleyuk
July 2nd, 2009, 10:29 AM
I know the original Matrix DVD doesn't work, something to do with it also having PC content on the disc.

I've got a few like that, including The Matrix, and they all work with Totem and libdvdcss.

The only film I have which causes a problem is Hitch, which has a dodgy version of ARccOS that Sony thought would be a good idea.

SunnyRabbiera
July 2nd, 2009, 11:27 AM
Cool beans, I give money to Fluendo any day over LinDVD as at least Fluendo is trying to make it work for all kernels and make sure development goes back to the community via gstreamer.

LinuxFox
July 2nd, 2009, 12:27 PM
The price listed is Europe only, so I can't say about US users. It sounds like good news to me, just adds another legal option to play DVDs, besides the one sold in the Ubuntu store. :)

Though I use free and open source software, I tend to avoid "free alternatives" when legal risks are involved, so this is good news to me.

3rdalbum
July 2nd, 2009, 02:20 PM
It might not be so important for the current Linux user who knows how to install libdvdcss2; but it's important for OEMs who want to offer Linux, as they can now include a DVD player without risking a Police visit.

madjr
July 2nd, 2009, 04:19 PM
It might not be so important for the current Linux user who knows how to install libdvdcss2; but it's important for OEMs who want to offer Linux, as they can now include a DVD player without risking a Police visit.

+1

am sure many oems will use this

beattyml1
July 2nd, 2009, 04:46 PM
As someone who hopes to get into the computer building business I plan to use this on all the machines I build (unless my client doesn't care about DVD playback)

zekopeko
July 2nd, 2009, 04:57 PM
could we get some screenshots?

beattyml1
July 2nd, 2009, 05:00 PM
I also forgot I sent an e-mail to get a few more specs

What they have on their website:

Full DVD Playback
DVD Menu support
Fullscreen support
Dolby Digital passthrough
Dolby Digital 5.1 output and stereo downmixing support
Resume from last position support
Subtitle support
Audio selection support
Multiple Angles support
Support for encrypted discs
Multiregion, works in all regions.


Additional Specs:

Does not support Lirc (will support lirc in next release)
Although the included codecs do not curently enable DVD support in Moovida they are planning to release a plugin for Moovida which will enable this


Explanation of Dolby:

Support Dolby Digital 5.1 decoding (5.1 encoded digital on dvd to analog 5.1 sound outputs on PC)
Supports Dolby Digital 5.1 passthrough (like VLC passing dolby digital encoded signal from DVD to external decoder via optical or digital coax)
Does not support Dolby Digital 5.1 Encoding ( encoding other programs 5.1 sound into Dolby digital format and sending it on optical or digital coax)


Additionally you will have access to all release and updates for one year and after that you may purchase upgrade support ($7 for one year $12 for two years, $26 for five years)

Hope this helps

EDIT: I just realized that they also updated the specs/faq between when I got the e-mail response and when I copied and pasted the specs so I updated it so the information wasn't so redundant.

steeleyuk
July 2nd, 2009, 05:57 PM
Screenshots:

Main screen
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1125/mainfaq.th.png (http://img27.imageshack.us/i/mainfaq.png/)

DVD menu
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/3072/menue.th.png (http://img135.imageshack.us/i/menue.png/)

DVD playing
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6071/playy.th.png (http://img156.imageshack.us/i/playy.png/)

Edit: thumbnail images.

SunnyRabbiera
July 2nd, 2009, 08:14 PM
The price listed is Europe only, so I can't say about US users. It sounds like good news to me, just adds another legal option to play DVDs, besides the one sold in the Ubuntu store. :)

Though I use free and open source software, I tend to avoid "free alternatives" when legal risks are involved, so this is good news to me.

But you technically can use the free codecs and stuff if you bought a computer with windows on it

TBOL3
July 2nd, 2009, 09:08 PM
Not in the states. The problem is that your circumventing a type of DRM, which goes against the DMCA. Having windows has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

hanzomon4
July 2nd, 2009, 09:13 PM
I payed for the dvd-drive and the dvd, I'm not paying for anything else

doorknob60
July 3rd, 2009, 03:54 AM
Looks good. Might be useful for vendors like Dell and System76 etc. to bundle it for legal out of the box DVD playback. I don't mind using VLC though so I probably won't be buying it, but I'm sure it will prove useful for some people. It's nice to have companies like Fluendo that care about Linux and support multiple distros and architectures. It's slightly annoying when a company supports Linux but only, for example, Ubuntu 8.04 32 bit. *cough*amazon*cough*adobeair*cough*

hanzomon4
July 3rd, 2009, 05:29 AM
Yeah.. I don't ,me to knock fluendo.. I just think the dvd consortium are crooks. You pay them for the hardware, you pay them for the media, and they expect you to pay them again for legal software!?!? Thats bs.

EarthMind
July 3rd, 2009, 06:39 PM
Yeah.. I don't ,me to knock fluendo.. I just think the dvd consortium are crooks. You pay them for the hardware, you pay them for the media, and they expect you to pay them again for legal software!?!? Thats bs.

I agree, in my opinion DVD drive vendors should bundle a full version of the Fluendo DVD player with their drive for Linux users and an alternative - such as PowerDVD - for Windows users.

cor2y
July 5th, 2009, 07:30 AM
What we need more is software that can do HD-DVD/Blu-Ray more than DVD.
From reading the fluendo FAQ it looks like the player WILL and DOES have problem with the newer dvd copy protection schemes of bad sectors on the disc.
HOWEVER it is cheap compared to the other payware dvdplayers (Cyberlink's Dvdplayer etc) and is actively being developed so with future updates they may lick those bad sectors errors that the free option has not been able to do so it might not be a bad buy later on.
The interface needs work as well and some of what i read on Phoronix says its also a bit cpu intensive and stutering things i expect will be dealt with in updates.
But until then while promising with future releases as of now even at its low price i'd say stick with the opensource players for now.

night-wing
July 5th, 2009, 11:31 AM
Does the FLuendo Player work with Compiz?

gnomeuser
July 5th, 2009, 01:39 PM
I figured as much. Well, I'm going to vote with my wallet: if ever I buy a DVD that doesn't work on my machine, I'll simply return it.

The thing is, no DVD will work with your out of the box Ubuntu. E.g. we can't legally decode AC3 audio and the video format is also patented. Add to this the infamous region coding which requires libdvdcss to decode.

There is no legal way in most countries to play DVDs out of the box, so you will be returning a bunch of DVDs.

It's shameful and sadly it's not much better for modern media interaction. Yesterday my neighbor, an electrician by profession and definitely not technical inclined person, stopped me on the street to ask me questions about his TV capture card. I was surprised he made the work on his own but he also wanted to burn out the legally captured TV shows to DVD and watch them on his big screen TV. However Microsoft Media Center captures this data into a dvr-ms container format, I know inside it's an ASF stream in mpeg format. Clearly this should quite easily be able to be converted but it turns out it's just not.

Regular people are completely screwed by this whole multimedia circus, and things simply aren't improving. Regardless what these people are saying they are hurting average people and hindering their perfectly legal desires to use and consume content.

steeleyuk
July 10th, 2009, 06:46 PM
Just a quick update. Version 1.03 has now been released and things seem to be working quite well. Not tried it extensively, but I've tried a couple of discs and they seem to be OK.

The player still needs work some work (read: using the desktop theme rather that looking like a GTK 1.0 application and reduce the CPU usage), but the functionality is getting there.


Does the FLuendo Player work with Compiz?

Yes, it appears to work fine.

0per4t0r
July 10th, 2009, 07:16 PM
Totem with Xine works fine for me.

Warpnow
July 10th, 2009, 07:42 PM
If you live in the US, you'll be paying out your *** for this program. Especially bad since I've never encountered a problem with VLCs dvd playback in 5 or 6 years of using linux.

steeleyuk
July 10th, 2009, 08:06 PM
I think its aimed more at the computer retailers than the home consumer to be honest. Providing another alternative which is legal.

The Totem/mplayer/VLC/libdvdcss combo is working better than Fluendo's offering at the moment, but they aren't a choice for anybody that wants to go the legal route.

The free offerings have one major problem and thats their handling of certain disc copy protections. There are a few ways around them but none are as simple as putting the disc in the drive and pressing play.

starcannon
July 10th, 2009, 08:18 PM
Fluendo have just released their DVD player for Linux - in all flavors - both 32 & 64 bit for every mainstream distro. http://www.fluendo.com/shop/product/fluendo-dvd-player/

I purchased it (and VERY cheap - nearly half the price of that other one that was available at the Canonical Store which only supports 8.04/8.10) this morning and found it to be very good. There are one or two bugs (e.g. it wouldn't play "multi-regioned dvds - zones 2 + 4 on the same disk, but everything else that I've thrown at it works), but I'm sure they'll be ironed out in the very near future.

For those looking for a VERY reasonably priced piece of commercial linux software and are fed up trying to get other software to play your dvds, give it a try. There are bound to be bugs and I've found their software to be updated often.

And please no remarks about it being commercial and NOT free and that there are alternatives - sometimes those alternatives JUST DON'T WORK. There are not many companies that support open source with end-user products and Fluendo have been a long supporter of *nix's with their codecs and media-player Moovida.

Just my 2 cents worth :rolleyes:
This is great news; finally a legal DVD player for linux. I know, there are alternatives; but I also know that without legite software we are often viewed only a little better than leet haxor pirates. There is room for commercial software, and I will be buying the player. Thanks for the heads up, I hadn't checked in on Fluendo in awhile.

andrew.46
July 11th, 2009, 12:23 AM
Hi gnomeuser,


Regular people are completely screwed by this whole multimedia circus, and things simply aren't improving. Regardless what these people are saying they are hurting average people and hindering their perfectly legal desires to use and consume content.

Beautifully said and I agree with this completely. Having to buy DVD playback tools under Linux is only a symptom of this incredible need for a small handful of people to control media playback and make money from it.

Andrew

beattyml1
July 18th, 2009, 08:38 PM
A thread I started about another upcoming fluendo product release:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1204210

facet-facet
February 2nd, 2010, 10:48 PM
I've never found a DVD that VLC doesn't play but there are three things that WinDVD does that VLC doesn't and I wish it did.
- set bookmarks (ok VLC has a tab marked bookmarks but it doesn''t work)
- save frames
- set Pan&Scan to pick out the best bit of the widescreen movie for my 1680x1050 screen
Does Fluendo do these?