Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal)

Posted Feb 18, 2007 22:25 UTC (Sun) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
In reply to: Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal) by debacle
Parent article: Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal)

This is true (realplayer), but it is at least a proprietary app that is available on a wide range of platforms (and free players exist too).

Are there any mechanisms or free alternatives that will allow playing of MS DRM10 files on GNU/Linux?

I shall certainly read up on this and send them a educative missive. I was really excitied about the creative archive a year or so ago, but the beeb seems to have been back-pedalling ever since. As a rare outfit which is _not_ funded by per-program sales, they are in an excellent position to show the power of just distributing stuff and not making life difficult for everybody. Missing that opportunity would be a huge mistake.

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Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal)

Posted Feb 19, 2007 9:08 UTC (Mon) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]

Oops, sorry, I was (am) not aware of free players for REAL files. More than one time I stumbled across .R?M files and still don't know how to listen. Could you please point me to a free REAL player?

I do, however, not care at all, whether a proprietary media player is available on GNU/Linux or not. As long as there are no free alternatives, it means the music/film/culture is locked into sth. one cannot control. From one day to the next, the supplier could change the format and not support your OS of choice anymore, or they do not support Linux on ARM or Sparc, or they start to "phone home", or they make you "pay per listen" or whatever.

Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal)

Posted Feb 19, 2007 16:55 UTC (Mon) by odie (guest, #738) [Link]

Any reasonably recent free player should be able to play Real media files, as most of them use ffmpeg. Perhaps not all of them handle the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP), but I know MPlayer does.

Save the BBC from Windows DRM! (Linux Journal)

Posted Feb 19, 2007 20:51 UTC (Mon) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]

I tried to play some REAL files from bbc.co.uk using mplayer, but only some of them work. In one case it could not resolve a network address, in another case it seemed to want a '.dll' file - on a GNU/Linux system! This one works, however: mplayer rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/bbc7/1300_mon.ra

Thanks for the hint and thanks to the BBC for providing audio that is accessible using free software!