Re: Suse Linux 9.1 Personal Problem. Please Help

From: ecadre (ecadre_at_yahoo.co.uk)
Date: 02/27/05 

Date: 26 Feb 2005 16:51:16 -0800

Hi,

I'll have a go, but it will take a day or so (a bit of checking and
writing and all that), and right now here in England it's way past my
bedtime ....... zzzzzzzzz

The dvd thing sounds a bit complicated, but I'll have a go.

Playing a dvd in itself is not a problem, there are several programmes
that can be installed on GNU/Linux systems that will play dvd's.

But, and this is the big one, commercial dvd's (the pre-recorded ones
from the shops) are encrypted. This encryption is different for
different regions of the world and the manufacturers have tried to keep
it secret.

Windows XP for example cannot play encrypted CD's "out of the box". It
has to rely on third party software that is either installed by the PC
manufacturer or bought by the end user.

A few years back people were able to crack the encryption meaning that
you are able to play perfectly legal dvd's that you have bought on
equipment that you own, eg. on Linux.

Unfortunately, the exact legal position is a bit of a grey area, so
distributers like SUSE do not supply the codecs for playing encrypted
dvd's.

However, the news is good for SUSE users, as we can simply install
mplayer with the right codecs. This means dvd's, along with virtually
every other media format, will play.

Just follow these instructions:

Go to the Packman website;

http://packman.links2linux.org

Here you will find mplayer and the codecs to play all sorts of media
including encrypted dvd's.

The first thing to install are the Windows codecs. The package for SSUE
9.1 is on this page;

http://packman.links2linux.org/index.php4?action=046&vn=2

Download the file "w32codec-all-20050216-0.pm.0.i386.rpm" by right
clicking on the link and choosing "save link as".

Choose a place in your home directory to save the file. When it's
downloaded use Konqueror to go to the directory and click on the file.
Konqueror will open the file and there will be a button saying "Install
package with YaST".

Clicking on the button will open YaST (you will have to supply your
root password) and install the package.

Next go to the Packman mplayer download page at;

http://packman.links2linux.org/index.php4?action=128&vn=2

Choose either package "a" or "b" depending on the your computer cpu. If
in doubt go for package "a" as it will play on newer computers as well.

Go through the same procedure as for the previous package, ie. download
and install using Konqueror.

You will now be able to play encrypted dvd's on your SUSE box.

You may also want to install the three packages mentioned at the bottom
of the mplayer page. They will allow mplayer to play some other
formats, but more significantly the Lame package includes software for
encoding mp3 files. It is referenced by other Linux software for
encoding mp3's.

I hope that's useful..... goodnight :-)

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