Haiku: Media Centre OS

According to my computer magazines, those of you who have large televisions and HDMI cables all over the place may well have a whole computer dedicated to your telly. These Media Centre PCs create a difficult challenge. The computers must be able to output high resolution graphics and surround sound in realtime, yet must also be silent, cool, cheap, and relatively small in size. I know many people have said that it would be great if Haiku were focused on media editing and the suchlike, like the BeOS, but what if we also ensured that it could meet all the needs of the blu-ray fanatics? It’s a pretty large market.

It’s perfectly legal anywhere to give away (not sell) source codes that circumvent a copy protection scheme in order to access a content.

Don’t confuse apples and oranges.

While it is a great idea in theory, there is one problem that prevents it: the DMCA

Because of the DMCA, things like HDCP encryption for HDMI cables can be strictly enforced. This means, no open source system is going to interact with HDCP protected Blu-Ray drives, Blu-Ray disks, HDTVs, etc… In order for the system to be able to interact, the hardware (video card, HDMI input, etc… must have HDCP encryption/protection and the OS must have it as well). This probably costs money and requires lots of restrictions.
This issue also affects getting digital HDTV cable channels via a Smartcard. In fact, the only way to use a Smartcard for encrypted cable tv is to buy a specially made Windows computer (you can’t build your own system and buy your own copy of Windows).

And there you have some of chilling effects of the DMCA. :frowning:

A Haiku Media Centre OS would not play legally purchased Blu-Rays.

But there is a lot of other options.
People download, or copy their Blu-Rays to put copies on their Network Attached Storages (NAS)

Haiku would still play these.

Well, then we do need DVDJon help: http://www.nanocrew.net/

DMCA can’t compete with the USA’s First Amendment.

No problems here in EU.

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[quote=forart.it]Well, then we do need DVDJon help: http://www.nanocrew.net/

DMCA can’t compete with the USA’s First Amendment.

No problems here in EU.[/quote]
The First Amendment has no effect on the DMCA… you could still get in serious legal trouble if you sell stuff that cracks encryption like HDCP. Perhaps there were some clever tricks that people were able to use for DVD encryption, but more likely enforcement is probably just lax. However, stuff like HDCP and others seem to be much more aggressively enforced.

Also, this applies to the EU as well… The EU has the EU Copyright Directive, which does something similar to the DMCA.

[quote=forart.it]It’s perfectly legal anywhere to give away (not sell) source codes that circumvent a copy protection scheme in order to access a content.

Don’t confuse apples and oranges.[/quote]
I was mostly focused on the concept the original poster mentioned (selling an all-in-one box), while I think you were focused on distribution of source code? But that is a good point to make the distinction (where I might have blurred it together). To summarize for everyone else there are two separate categories forart.it mentioned:

  • free source and research papers that breaks or tells how to break the encryption
  • selling anything that breaks the encryption

Fist Amendment vs DMCA
As for source code and research papers, it seems this issue is not really settled. People have been sued for simply telling how to circumvent certain types of encryption (giving the info away for free). They were eventually allowed to publish the info, but there still remains the possibility that people could be sued in the future for doing the same thing. (Although people feel safe to publish some methods - like DVD - who knows what might happen in the future; the point is there is still that legal “landmine”.)
[ref: http://www.chillingeffects.org/anticircumvention/faq.cgi#QID121]

Assuming for a moment, there was absolute assurance that people could freely publish methods for breaking encryption, I think you’d agree with me that it is really not much of a victory. People are still very restriction in their freedoms in almost every other way (selling stuff) because of these so called "laws."
Unfortunately, cool ideas like the one suggested in this thread becomes very hard to accomplish, due to risk of being sued for selling an all-in-one box.

Blu-ray and all physical media are on their way out anyways. Pretty soon (my guess is within 5 years) it will mostly be streamed in one form or another. Of course, these alternate distribution methods might also have strict controls, but that’s another issue.

Well if we would have had all this problems for the DVD playing never will be done on Linux (and now we are trying to port on Haiku, too)… I think if (when) there is a really viable solution for the Open Source OSses will be ported on Haiku, too…

But leaving BluRay alone (it is not so useful… I prefer a simple MKV file, sincerely!) if Haiku can play DVD (real and virtual iso images), avi, mkv, video streaming and so on a very simple way… will be a very interesting Media OS, surely better than Linux create a Media Center OS starting from it it is a very complicated thing (always on Linux nothing work out of the box).

This is my “dream” Tracker can exist in two form “Desktop” is the actual file manager like and “Media Center” in this “pesonality” tracker show on screen only 5 big icons(simply manageable from remote or touch screen) ad a user selected background:

  1. Video
  2. Audio
  3. Pictures
  4. Internet
  5. TV

Video contains all the video file of the system (obtained by alive query!) if you click on a
video file Mediaplayer starts automatically full screen.
A sort of removable disk insertion must be present (so if I insert a DVD or USB drive automatically is proposed to play/show the content!)
Audio is the same of above only for audio files.
Pictures the same for the images
Intenet web+ starts fullscreen in all is glory :slight_smile:
TV a (future?) tv applet that can use hardware cards (Analog, DTT, Sat and son on) and “software” cards (IPTV, WebTv, Justin TV and so on…)

[quote=fano]
But leaving BluRay alone (it is not so useful… I prefer a simple MKV file, sincerely!) if Haiku can play DVD (real and virtual iso images), avi, mkv, video streaming and so on a very simple way… will be a very interesting Media OS, surely better than Linux create a Media Center OS starting from it it is a very complicated thing (always on Linux nothing work out of the box).[/quote]

There are lots of happy XBMC users. You can buy a cheap silent PC, the size of a Wii, it connects to your TV or projector and you run XBMC on that and you’re done.

So, Haiku only has an opportunity here to work very hard to be as good as what people have already.

Yes but XMBC can be beautiful as you want but the possibility that it work out-of-the-box are very
low: a simple example if you don’t have the right video driver X doesn’t start and you are presented with an ugly black screen!
The last time I’ve tried a Ubuntu Live the screen was green! The best you can obtain from Linux in that case in a ridiculous (in 2010!) shell in black&white… and the hell of kernel recompilation…

In Haiku the first time I try it I’ve a black screen too (my VGA is NV6150 embedded) but was more simple to solve the problem F8 during boot and “VESA Mode”: Haiku desktop in all its glory, not a ugly shell :slight_smile:
And now I’ve a working driver for Haiku and not for Linux (well if I recompile it maybe but not out-of-the-box!)

However XMBC as for example Windows Mediaportal replicate a lot of functionality of the OS itself and something that OS has not: a file system DB… thing that Haiku has natively!
A sort of an OS in top of another.

The Haiku solution can be a lot more lightweight as I say maybe a “personality” of Tracker no “Mediacenter Software” of sort is needed the OS itself is a Media Center OS -:slight_smile:

There already is a TV applet in Haiku. I couldn’t tell you what cards it supports, but it does work out of the box apparently if a compatible card is present.

You can use the VESA driver. You do not need to recompile the kernel.

So, in Haiku it does not work, but you declare success – Hooray a great working media system. In Ubuntu the same happens and you declare it a failure and talk about recompiling the kernel, which is completely irrelevant. And this is all because you did not know how to boot Ubuntu in VESA mode?

But VESA is terrible for video acceleration. If the bug in the drivers for the specific video chipset you have can be fixed in Ubuntu you get working accelerated video playback, smoothed scaling and so on and use less power into the bargain. In Haiku is someone even working on such drivers?

[quote]
However XMBC as for example Windows Mediaportal replicate a lot of functionality of the OS itself and something that OS has not: a file system DB… thing that Haiku has natively!
A sort of an OS in top of another.[/quote]

If you’re talking about BFS that’s just a few metadata indices, which is a tiny fraction of what something like XBMC needs. Obviously you can create a sort of toy demo where you manually extract metadata from some files into BFS key-value pairs and then index them, but that turns your argument upside down. Now you’re re-implementing lots of stuff that XMBC already includes out of the box.

Again, your central point seems to be that with lots of additional effort (from where?) Haiku can eventually become what people already had years ago in the form of XBMC.

[quote=NoHaikuForMe][quote=fano]
The last time I’ve tried a Ubuntu Live the screen was green! The best you can obtain from Linux in that case in a ridiculous (in 2010!) shell in black&white… and the hell of kernel recompilation…
[/quote]

You can use the VESA driver. You do not need to recompile the kernel.
[/quote]

Yes I can but you have to admit X is not the simplest thing on earth to configure… apparently is simply change the X.config file, but I’ve always seen black screen and a lot of trial & errors… if you want to enable 2 VGA output… well prepare to a lot of headchache!

It is “not me”, I’m talking of “userfriendlness” (is this a english word?), driver not work I have simply to press F8 end choose VESA driver not to play with a black&white shell and try&errors… and I know use it! But it is not the right thing to configure a OS in 2010, IMHO!

Ahh however I’ve a NATIVE driver for Haiku now, and it work out-of-the-box Ubuntu show me “green screen” (the last time I tried)

For example Windows Mediaportal (that I use most that XBMC but I think the thing is analogous) has the TVSeries plugin that implicate a continue searching on the dirs that I have indicated (there is no way on Windows to know a file is video or is too cost to search all drive) when a new file is added MP search on web if the file is of a series, create a tupla its internal DB and add all the info…

In Haiku you can do the same using BFS functionality:

  • Live query on all Filesystem(s) for video files (live means it is a hook in tracker create a virtual folder in which all video files are and add new file automatically) the application has nothing to do but use a SO functionality
  • get the info from the web (a new kit is the work for acces web content that my be useful for this, too) and add them (synopsips, "nice" episode name, image, rating and so on...) as metadata in the BFS file... the advantage is that not only this ideal application but others can see this info, too...as they are part of the filesystem, now... and I can put ithe file in a USB key or portable if it is BFS formatted, obviusly) and the metadata are not lost as they are part of the file metadata! If I format my OS (obviously my series are in an other drive!) all is lost an Mediaportal 8and XMBC, too) have to reconstruct all its database..

[quote=NoHaikuForMe]
Again, your central point seems to be that with lots of additional effort (from where?) Haiku can eventually become what people already had years ago in the form of XBMC.[/quote]

In reality is the other way around are the others OS that have do a lot of effort to recreate what BeOs (and now Haiku) had out-of-the-box 10 years ago… it’s a pity a real Media Center application was not done… as I said is not really necessary an application can be a specialized version of tracker.

[quote=fano]
In reality is the other way around are the others OS that have do a lot of effort to recreate what BeOs (and now Haiku) had out-of-the-box 10 years ago… [/quote]

How is the reality “the other way around”? The reality you’re confronted with is lots of happy XMBC users.

Nobody much cares that internally Haiku can perform a very quick search for a case-sensitive exact string match on a pre-selected key value. Every major OS has full text searching, which is much closer to what people actually want. Check out Google.

Okay, so this wasn’t a great idea. At the least, we can say that Haiku would be great for playing DVDs, and/or ripping the, to a hard drive for a media library, and watching legal content over the internet, i.e. youtube or iplayer/On Demand.

Yes, I need xmbc or vlc with all codecs :wink:

Just port them then. :slight_smile:

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and you too.

.

Oh, some who ony need and but nothing to give?