Tim wrote:
Tim:
I've never got the applications that FC4 tried to use to play a DVD,
by default, to work.
James Wilkinson:
Not surprising -- they're not meant to work for most DVDs. Supplying
the code to read most DVD's CSS may well be a violation of the USA's
DCMA, and the MPEG2 encoding is patented. So Fedora *can't* legally
supply open-source programs to play most DVDs.
I already knew about that, but what doesn't make sense is that:
a. There's a default program to play something that it can't play.
b. That it doesn't manage to play non-protected DVDs.
If it could play non-protected discs, e.g. my own recordings, then I can
see the sense in having a default player, but it doesn't.
I totally agree.
IMHO Totem seems to be an utter waste of space. Until I removed it from
both FC4 and FC5, every time I clicked on anything multimedia, Totem
would pop up, try to play the file, fail miserably, then complain it
didn't have the right plugins. Problem is, AFAICT the *mysterious*
plugins are simply not available.
Maybe you have to rebuild from source to enable the *evil* support for
*bad* filetypes, who knows, who cares? All I know is it is a PITA and a
total waste of space. Why it is even distributed with Fedora in its
current crippled form, I really don't know - it just doesn't seem to
play *any* filetypes at all; evil or otherwise.
Better to include *no* player, and state *clearly* in the default home
page on the browser when you first run it (i.e. the "Welcome" page),
that you need to get your multimedia player from from a civilized and
democratic country beyond the reach of the damned American fascist DMCA.
-
K.
