DVD.sf.net was created to provide a repository of DVD-related
software and
DVD information resources for Open Source development.
It is
important to note that None of the software
hosted on this site contains any code which performs CSS decryption.
Such tasks are left to external libraries which must be obtained
elsewhere.
There is finally a new release of libdvdnav. This one just fixes some little problems
and will make several DVDs play even better. The next release will contain some
bigger changes, which will be discussed soon. So any developer who uses libdvdnav
might want to join us on the dvd-devel list.
Although you have not heard a lot from us, this project is still alive and well.
libdvdnav is receiving small but constant improvement to work with more DVDs.
But even now it is hard to find a disc that does not play correctly.
The website has been updated a bit, with some outdated and unmaintained parts
removed.
Today the following announcement was posted on the xine developers' and
users' lists:
hallo everyone, a little while ago the question was rised again if and when xine_dvdnav (http://dvd.sourceforge.net) will be included in the main xine cvs and release tarballs. this has triggered a private discussion about the topic among some of the core xine developers and i am very happy to announce that we came to an agreement pretty quickly. the plan is to add xine_dvdnav, libdvdnav and libdvdread to the xine cvs. nevertheless xine_dvdnav, libdvdnav and libdvdread will continue to be developed on their own, seperate cvs at dvd.sourceforge.net and from time to time stable snapshots will be ported over to the xine cvs (typically once per xine release) - this is pretty much the same method that is used to include ffmpeg, libmpeg2 (among others) in xine. xine_dvdnav will become the default dvd plugin. the former dvd plugin will no longer provide an autoplay button but will continue to exist for test purposes or advanced users; it will probably be adapted to use libdvdread as well. details about this are still open for discussion. however, there will be no css decryption / authentication code added to the xine cvs. this means that by default xine can only play back unlocked and unencrypted dvds (and the dvd drive must be set up for the correct reagion if it is a rpc-2 drive). now if the user tries to play back a dvd and there is a problem either with region locking and/or encryption a dialog box will be displayed informing the user about the situation. the exact text for that dialog box has yet to be decided on. it should explain what the problem is and also talk about the legal problems involved with dvd playback. of course the user is free to install some css library and libdvdread will use it. the purpose of all this is to (1) make it easier for end-users to watch dvds using xine while (2) make them aware of the legal problems involved with dvd playback we hope that this move is one more step towards simple, easy and high-quality playback of high-quality media using a free software player. the xine team strongly believes that this step is in the best interest of all involved parties: most of all, of course, the users of xine - but also the media industry, some of whose paying customers are looking for ways of (hopefully legal) playback of dvds on a free software platform. unfortunately there still is a lot of legal uncertainty about the decryption of dvds, which is why xine still does not (and will not, until things clear up) include any mechanisms to decrypt such dvds. unfortunately this seems to be very contraproductive for everyone involved - we can only hope that the movie industry (and lawmakers) will eventually see the light and let people buy digital media and view them on a platform built entirely from free software - without the fear of doing something illegal in buying dvds and viewing them this way. guenter
The following mailing lists have been set up relating to
local projects:
libdvdnav is a library for developers of multimedia applications.
It allows easy use of sophisticated DVD navigation features such as DVD menus,
multiangle playback and even interactive DVD games.
All this functionality is provided through a simple API which provides the
DVD playback as a single logical stream of blocks, intermitted by special
dvdnav events to report certain conditions. The main usage of libdvdnav is a
loop regularly calling a function to get the next block, surrounded by
additional calls to tell the library of user interaction.
The whole DVD virtual machine and internal playback states are completely
encapsulated.
The code can be obtained from CVS
by checking out the libdvdnav module.
If you are an end user and want to get information on free video players,
please check out these:
When it comes to DVD playback with libdvdnav, xine
is our reference player.