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----- Forwarded message from Keith Frechette <kfrechet at us.ibm.com> -----
Subject: [LX-TPAD] FYI -- New ThinkPad T22 model for Linux includes DVD movie playback
From: "Keith Frechette" <kfrechet at us.ibm.com>
To: linux-thinkpad at www.bm-soft.com
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 14:11:28 -0400
X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 5.0.5  September 22, 2000

This is an FYI, since I'm not aware that anybody noticed our success
in rolling out "legal" Linux DVD movie playback with our ThinkPad
models.

The IBM ThinkPad T22 laptop computer was released in early April 2001.
For the Linux model, we were finally able to incorporate legitimate
DVD movie playback, using an application called LinDVD, created by
InterVideo, Inc.  I had been working with InterVideo since last April
(when they first publicly announced their intent to deliver DVD movie
support on Linux), and all the pieces finally came together.  I've
included some anecdotal information below for your information /
amusement.

To implement legal Linux DVD movie playback support on a ThinkPad
laptop that includes an "S-Video out" port, we had to overcome some
very *interesting* hurdles. (While I can say "interesting" now,
several months ago I would have chosen a different word. :-)) The
obvious requirement that we had was to take adequate measures to
protect the copyrights associated with DVD movie titles. For example,
enabling the user to transfer DVD movies to other media (video tape,
for example) via the S-Video port would likely have triggered a flood
of lawsuits. (Although there may have been some happy Linux users!)

The primary hurdles were: 1) no standardized way for implementing
Macrovision (copy protection) on Linux, and 2) open-sourced X servers
could easily be hacked to disabled the necessary copy protection.

1) For laptops, the primary mechanism for stopping DVD movie piracy
over the S-Video port is to encode the out-going video signal using
Macrovision. Under Windows, the video driver architecture provides a
standard mechanism that allows DVD playback apps to tell the video
driver to enable Macrovision encoding when playing a protected DVD
title. Under Linux, no such standard exists. Fortunately, IBM, S3, and
InterVideo were able to come up with an interface that allows the
LinDVD app to communicate with S3's driver for controlling
Macrovision. Perhaps in the future the Linux community will define a
standard interface for this, possibly taking advantage of some of the
work we did.

2) Under Windows, the natural place to put the actual Macrovision
control logic is in the video driver. Under Linux, however, video
drivers (X servers) are generally open-sourced, so handling
Macrovision control logic in the video driver is not appropriate.
Instead, the code is placed in a separate, binary-only, kernel driver.
While this provides adequate protection, it does tie the Macrovision
support to specific kernels.  Hopefully we can resolve that in the
future by packaging the Macrovision control logic into a user-mode
driver (e.g. a daemon running as root, which has access to I/O space).

In short, releasing DVD movie playback for Linux was not as simple as
it initially seemed. However, with the constant cooperation of all the
parties involved, we were able to work through the issues. It excites
me when diverse teams work cooperatively together toward the common
goal of improving the end-user experience. And I suppose that's what
has drawn me to Linux.

So, we did it! I hope that our success helps to raise the bar just a
little, that in the future DVD movie support on Linux will be
commonplace, and that we can say to Windows users, "DVD movie playback
-- yeah, we've got that."

-- 
Keith
 
Keith Frechette
Linux Development Lead, Mobile Computing Options and Software Development
IBM Research Triangle Park, North Carolina
kfrechet at us.ibm.com / 919-543-3761 / TieLine:441-3761

----- End forwarded message -----

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