Multimedia Hell :-/

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sun, 2005-02-27 at 08:45 -0500, msoulier wrote:

>I grabbed the w32codecs from the mplayer Debian unsupported repository
>(when the hell is Debian going to include mplayer anyway??) and then
>installed Xine. Works great, plays anything. 


Just want to add: you can use totem-xine instead of totem-gstreamer if
you want to use the win32codecs, but still have the nice totem user
interface. totem-xine uses xine as its backend.

Regarding "when will Debian include mplayer anyway"?:
Basically, when the legislations around the world stop treating people
who want to watch multimedia files as criminals. Debian did include
mplayer, but only in a version that could not read formats for which the
w23codecs are needed, because debian-legal reached the verdict that
using those codecs without a proper license is unlawful in many
jurisdictions.
The mplayer guys requested distributors to not package mplayer if they
don't feel able to include full codec support, to avoid giving the
impression that mplayer sucks. If mplayer is not available in the
official Debian repositories anymore, then probably Debian has complied
to this request.

Regards, Mario