Linux & Blu-Ray

[Arron]

I know for some this is a hot topic, so I will try to be nice.

Does Mint/*buntu support Blu-Ray? I heard rumors about MPlayer playing BR without any hacks/add ons, is this true, or another easy out of the box solution?

I would like to get a BR player for my Mint mediapc and start enjoying BR movies on my nice new plasma. A BR player for the pc is much cheaper than a stand alone player, and I don't want the clutter of another box sitting there.

Would it be out of line to ask about BR backups as well? My DVD's + handbrake + cheap 2tb drive = easy clutter free tv room.

Thanks

Arron

[JasonLG]

No, not without hacks. I just tried to play The Forbidden Kingdom BD in MPlayer on Mint 9 and it was a no go.

I'm not sure if it's possible to BD backups either without jumping through a bunch of hoops.

However it is pretty easy to make copies of your DVD's for backup and HTPC purposes in HandBrake. I'm not a lawyer mind you but I'm pretty sure that falls under the fair use doctrine if you own the original. I hope so anyway, I already ripped all the DVD's I own to my hard drive. I've found that with the proper settings I can get pretty much DVD quality out of a 1 GB H.264 file from HandBrake.

[Lantesh]

I'm not a lawyer mind you but I'm pretty sure that falls under the fair use doctrine if you own the original.

If you are in the United States it is not legal to break the copy protection on a commercial DVD even if you own the original, and are only making a copy for backup purposes. The funny thing is that it is perfectly legal to make backup copies of your disks, but without being able to break the copy protection it's not legally possible. Personally I couldn't care less. The layers can all jump off a cliff as far as I'm concerned. If I bought it I'll do as I please with it.

[JasonLG]

According to the 321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios ruling it is legal to to make copies of DVD's that you own for backup purposes in the US. But it is illegal to make/distribute software that allows people to circumvent copy protection.

"321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios
In February 2004, Illston ruled that the company's software, which was intended, according to the company, to allow consumers to make backup copies of DVDs by "circumventing" so-called "copy protection" methods, was illegal under Federal law. She issued an injunction at the behest of several Hollywood studios and ordered 321 Studios to stop selling their product. However, despite finding that the software violated Federal law, she ruled that copies made by consumers (of their own legally purchased DVDs) were, in fact, legal. She wrote in her opinion, "It is the technology itself at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put...Legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer's violation of the provisions [of copyright law]."[6]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Illston

"Under United States' Federal law, making a backup copy of a DVD-Video or an audio CD by a consumer is legal under fair use protection. However, this provision of United States law conflicts with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibition of so-called "circumvention measures" of copy protections.
In the noted "321" case, Federal District Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California,[5] ruled that the backup copies made with software such as DVD Decrypter are in fact legal but that distribution of the software used to make them is illegal. As of the date of this revision, neither the US Supreme Court nor the US Congress has taken definitive action on the matter."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Decrypter

[markfiend]

it is legal to to make copies of DVD's that you own for backup purposes in the US. But it is illegal to make/distribute software that allows people to circumvent copy protection.

"The law is an ass".