xine-ui for Debian ------------------ This package (along with libxine) is the official successor of the xine media player. Along with the new architecture (with separate libxine), some packaging issues appeared: xine-lib, ie libxine is _not_ compiled with the -fPIC option. This is a clear policy violation, but there's a good reason for this: First of all, the whole point of -fPIC is allowing several instances of the library in memory at the same time, saving memory and gaining performance via saved cache space. But it's very unlikely that someone will watch several movies on the same machine at the same time... On the other hand, compiling the library with -fPIC takes an additional register which results in some 5% performance loss. So with -fPIC, you'd need at least a PIII-600 in order to playback DVDs. Without that, a PII-450 is sufficient... (provided that an Xv capable video adapter is available) Another minor issue is the lack of a static libxine. This is currently not really supported, but I'll try my best to add it to libxine-dev if someone needs it. Just contact me at in that case! the CSS issue ============= Due to possible legal issues, xine doesn't include any code to descramble CSS "enhanced" DVDs. CSS is sold by the DVD industry as a "copy protection", though it's more of a "view protection" as it makes DVDs unviewable with unlicensed players (like xine). Some people have hacked CSS decryption routines, and some of those are available as xine plugins. So if you have such a DVD, have a look at one of the CSS plugin sites! If you are positive that it's allowed where you live, you can just install the Plugin and watch all your DVDs... DISCLAIMER: ---------- The sites listed below are in no way connected to me, Debian or the xine project. We don't have any control over these sites and therefore can't take any responsibility for the things you might find there. Using or distributing the plugins on these sites may be illegal where you live. If it is, you should not use them. We can't take any responsibility if you use them anyway. (end of disclaimer) The sites that I have heared of are: http://www.geocities.com/captain_css http://dvd.sf.net -- Siggi Langauf , Sun, 02 Sep 2001