[MPlayer-users] libdvdplay 1.0.0 released

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 09:07:35PM -0500, Karol Pietrzak wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> On Monday 03 February 2003 19:47, D Richard Felker III wrote:
> 
> > IMO the lack of DVD menu nonsense is the #1 advantage of MPlayer over
> > the competition. :)
> 
> Are you serious?? Is this is the position of the developers?

Yes and no. Yes, as in most or all of the developers dislike wading
through DVD menu crap trying to get to the actual movie. I don't buy a
DVD to see nonsense interviews and trailers and whatnot; I buy it to
have a pristine, near-theatrical-copy of the actual movie.

However the answer is also no, in that the developers don't object to
DVD navigation support, as long as it doesn't break existing DVD
playback without menus. Libdvdnav had some problems that made it not
work well with mplayer's design, but perhaps libdvdplay will fix that.
If so, I'm sure someone will implement DVD menus for mplayer
eventually.

> But, then, a friend of mine brought over a DVD and said: "Pull up the 
> menu: I want show you a cool interview"  My reply was: "Err.. my DVD 
> player doesn't support DVD menus..."  "Then it sucks," was the reply, 
> and appriopriately so.

Well then your friend is naive. Judging a player by something dumb
like that is just...what's the word?..."newb". :)

> With many DVDs now having >20 titles and a dozen chapters for each 
> title, what the hell am I supposed to do to find, say, the bonus 
> interview or music video?  Manually scroll through each title?  (Hm.. 
> maybe it's on Title 15, Chapter 6... nope...).

Most of my DVD's are just 1 title (the movie) followed by several
trailers and extra stuff which I never watch anyway, so mplayer -dvd 1
works great. The only exception I've found is anime series, where you
have one title per episode.

> What if I want to play a certain episode on a Simpsons DVD?  Am I 
> supposed to keep hitting ">" to change the title/chapter and then the 
> UP arrow twice to see what episode it is, and then repeat again and 
> again??  [As a joke, that same friend asked a few days later whether 
> mplayer could seek in an AVI...]

Why not ask your friend if WMP can seek in an AVI? Half the time it
can't, which is really sad. A/V sync breaks or audio stops playing
entirely or it crashes. :P

> DVD menus are a very important feature to me, and anyone else I know 
> that watches DVDs.  Any player that does not support them is ignored.
> 
> For this reason (and -only- this reason), I have completely abandoned 
> MPlayer in favor of Ogle for watching DVDs.

Have fun watching DVD's while your Athlon's fans buzz away, covering
up all the dialogue. :) That's what you probably need to watch DVD's
on a slow player like Ogle. I choose a player for technical merit, not
for toys and eye candy.

OK, some things in this message are a bit inflamatory and half in
jest...but really, most people on the MPlayer project aren't very
interested in DVD menus. If you want to see them supported, feel free
to write the code and send a patch, or find someone else who's willing
to do that.

Rich