[MPlayer-users] +3 *** Stars _ I Love MPLAYER <?Any Ideas OnQuestion?>

[Phil Rhodes]

> #1] OK, I know MPLAYER isn't quite suited for playing .EVO (HD-DVD proper) 
> or even .?? (BLU-RAY NEW STUFF)

Not so far. It's likely that playing blu-ray with any form of unofficial 
software, including mplayer, will remain a cat-and-mouse chase between the 
releasing houses and the software engineers for quite some time to come. The 
design of the encryption used on blu-ray discs means that, unless a 
fundamental flaw is discovered, they have to be defeated on a case by case 
basis.

> #2] I see threads in this group about High-Definition video playback. What 
> is this? Is this something else from #1?

An HD video is, only slightly arguably, anything at a resolution of 1280x720 
or greater. It's entirely possible to get HD videos that have nothing to do 
with blu-ray.

> #3] Any plans to expand MPLAYER to revert to playing discs with high-def 
> content? Or can I play my own discs at a lower resolution?

I'm sure they'd love to (I'd certainly love them to) but there are 
fundamental problems with doing it at the moment, as I mentioned above. 
There is no immediate prospect of this situation changing. There are tools 
around which can decrypt any of a list of blu-ray discs, but it's all a bit 
flaky and experimental at the moment; this list is added-to as codes for 
individual discs become available, and they only become available if one of 
a fairly small group of software engineers happens to want to view that disc 
and puts the time into extracting its keys. You might assume that this means 
the films that become available tend to be intended for a post-adolescent 
male audience, and boy, would you be right.

Also, if you're in a non-US market, you will find that this becomes even 
more restrictive because, like so many things, it's all very US-centric and 
the decryption codes for the US version of a blu-ray disc will not work on 
discs intended for different regions. If you own blu-ray, the easiest way of 
playing it with mplayer is, sad to say, probably to torrent a pirate version 
of the movie and watch that. If you've bought the blu-ray I doubt anyone's 
going to cry foul.

P