threats from MS over Wine's CD/DVD recognition??

[Joseph Garvin]

johan kdks wrote:

>My friend has a Linux PC and when he inserts a CD or DVD, it popups up the cover art automatically and displays all sorts of extended data, like the actors in the film, the studio that released the cd, etc.  And we tried 100 or so discs and it recognized every one perfectly, just as good as Windows XP Media Center does, and it even seems to cache the entries since the 2nd time you insert the disc the recognition is instant (first time takes a few seconds).  None of the other Linux media players I've used do this--they all use freedb which doesn't work for DVD's, doesn't have extended attributes, and doesn't display any cover art.
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Was the media player Amarok? It retrieves CD cover art from Amazon and 
could presumably do the same for DVDs, but I don't think it plays those.

>I've been poking around all day to figure out how it's done.  Someone said it seems this Linux project is pulling the data from Microsoft's Windows media server, like XP MC.  If that's true, I'm sure Bill isn't too happy.  But anyway I figured that code must have been lifted from Wine--part of your "emulation".
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Even if the project did try and use Microsoft's servers, it doesn't need 
or want wine code to do that. Microsoft's servers are completely 
clueless as to what operating system is sending them queries. They only 
know what is sent to them. Effectively Microsoft's servers are a 
blackbox to your computer, and your computer is a blackbox to 
Microsoft's servers. They only know what they tell each other over the 
wire. To query the Microsoft server, you just need to know what XP MC 
usually sends, and code your linux app to do that, using standard linux 
networking libraries.

>But I've been digging into Wine and it seems Wine doesn't do this either, at least not anymore.  In fact it's conspicuously missing since Wine is a Windows emulator, and under Windows you put a movie in the drive and see the cover art and all the info on the disc, and with Wine you don't.
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Wine isn't an emulator. Think of it as providing all the commands 
windows programs expect to be there so that they will run. Wine doesn't 
attempt to have a start menu or my computer or anything like that. To 
see a full OS replacement look at ReactOS.

>  Was this in Wine at some point, and then got yanked because of threats from Microsoft?  I actually see no reference to it anywhere.  If it's another one of those modules like libdvdcss that every needs to have, but nobody wants to host, it's buried so far underground I can't find it.  If Plutohome.org is going to have to pull it soon, somebody should mirror that stuff soon so it doesn't get lost.
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Unlikely. Like I mentioned at the top, you can get the cover art from 
numerous online retailors like Amazon without issue. For movies, 
imdb.com could be used.