> > It might be. On this good ol' PowerBook with a 400 Mhz G3, about a third > > of the frames are skipped or dropped. And as the software seems to be > > improving rather quickly in this area, the new iBooks might soon be well > > enough for smooth DVD playback. > > Are there people actively working on this? The mood I was getting was > that G3's weren't work the trouble. I myself don't have much in the way > of PowerPC assembly brains, or video processing mojo. > > > > Or should I just wait another 6 months for Apple to cycle the hardware > > > again? > > > > There will be even better models in a year and so on, so you could as > > well just let it be. ;) > > Well, yeah, but I'm in the market for a laptop now. The iBook looks > great to me unless there is no hope of realtime DVD playback under > Linux. > > > For me it's now or never, I'll go for a new TiBook as soon as I have > > the money. > > I can't justify $3000 for a laptop, personally. :)
I have played DVD's successfully with mplayer (mplayer.sourceforge.net) - if your using the newer X stuff with dri and the likes then it goes at an acceptable framerate. I'm on a 500Mhz iBook2. Also, as an added bonus you can compile in the ffdivx codec and get divx playback with 100% GPL code! The only issue with it is that it's not optimised for PPC at all (it's even disabled in the makefile - but uncomment it and it compiles) - maybe someone can help out who understands asm on ppc. Also, if your bored try: fbset -depth 16 mplayer -vo fb [video file] Looks real sweet on a framebuffer. As a side note, anyone know why I need ide-scsi to do any CD ripping, but DVD playback only works without ide-scsi? Also, anyone know if the Uninorth AGP bridge code is stable in the latest benh kernel? I want to turn it on and see the speed improvement. Also, glaxium (apt-get install glaxium) works like a charm with the hardware accellerated GL - I'm so happy! Cheers. James Tyson --- Samizdat New Media Solutions
