[MPlayer-dev-eng] Automatic Codec Downloader

[Mike Melanson]

Hi team,
	Has anyone ever considered modifying the MPlayer distribution so
that it can download codecs automatically from Microsoft? I figured out
how to do it and tried to code it up this evening, but hit a roadblock
when I tried to write a Perl script to do the downloading part.

	I was thinking that the configure script could ask the user if
they wanted to download codecs from Microsoft's site and then launch this
script, which would gather up the FOURCCs and format numbers from
etc/codecs.conf and download the required codec files Microsoft. The
codecs are packaged as .CAB (cabinet) files, and there's a GPL'd tool for
extracting the data that could be distributed with MPlayer. MPlayer would
keep them in the installation tree and install them in the right place
during the 'make install' phase. We could later adapt the script to
download XAnim modules and others as well.

	Anyway, if there's any interest, and/or if anyone knows how to
program the Perl WWW lib (LWP), let me know.

	Thanks...
-- 
	-Mike Melanson