#BANSHEE MUSIC PLAYER PLUGINS HOW TO#
#BANSHEE MUSIC PLAYER PLUGINS MOVIE#
#BANSHEE MUSIC PLAYER PLUGINS SOFTWARE#

#BANSHEE MUSIC PLAYER PLUGINS SOFTWARE#

Now that all that’s sorted out, let’s look at the players.įor an all-around media player, you can’t beat the free software answer to iTunes: Banshee. But if you have an opportunity to provide feedback to content providers, or have a choice - I strongly recommend choosing Theora and doing whatever you can to support it. And the last I checked, you won’t find too many DVDs that are unencrypted with video in Theora, either. Most of the content you’ll find online tends to be in a proprietary format like Windows Media, Quicktime, or Flash. Unfortunately, finding content that’s in Theora is not as easy as one might hope. It should just work out of the box on any Linux distro. If you choose video that’s in Theora format, you don’t have to worry about any of this.

#BANSHEE MUSIC PLAYER PLUGINS HOW TO#

Fedora and openSUSE also provide a fair amount of instruction on how to get restricted formats enabled. Ubuntu users can find information on setting up Restricted Formats including MP3, DVD, Flash, Quicktime, and Windows Media. You’ll also find a “Universal Edition” of Mint if you prefer its other enhancements but aren’t sure that you’re in a region that allows the bundled multimedia support. Linux Mint, for instance, is an Ubuntu derivative that comes with multimedia support out of the box with its Main Edition. Some distros bundle in support for multimedia, and leave it to the user to decide whether their local laws allow such things. Fluendo also sells a DVD player for nearly 20 Euros, which handles encrypted DVDs and DVDs from all regions. These should work with players that use the Gstreamer format. A complete set of plugins to handle Windows Media format, H.264, MPEG, and AAC formats, which should take care of the gamut of streaming formats. The Fluendo folks have turned adversity into opportunity by offering free and paid sets of plugins. Whereas Microsoft and Apple can license (or own outright) the technologies and bundle them as part of the overall cost of the operating system, the costs of licensing codecs and such for Linux are prohibitive for vendors giving away the OS for free.

This is especially troublesome for vendors doing business out of the United States, because the patent laws and copyright law are so badly skewed in favor of the entertainment industry. Specifically, due to patent encumbrances, the DCMA, and other licensing silliness, it’s either illegal or legally murky for vendors and open source projects to ship codecs to play DVDs or some video and audio codecs. This is not a technical deficiency, it’s a legal one. Let’s start with the obvious: Multimedia isn’t quite as straightforward on Linux as it is on other platforms. So here, in no particular order, are the best video players you can find on Linux, and a few resources to help you get started. In fact, there might be a few too many to chhose from.

#BANSHEE MUSIC PLAYER PLUGINS MOVIE#

Have some downtime and want to watch a movie or two on your Linux laptop? Linux has plenty of options when it comes to video players.

Banshee music player plugins