You wanted MPEG-2? You've got it!

[liz]

We've also made VC-1, H.264 encode and CEC support available - some of these things are bundled with the latest firmware, others you'll have to pay for. See below for details.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1839

[Burngate]

Never mind all that stuff - Stickers! Weheheh!

[ghans]

I would like to thank Dom and all else involved !
Thank you !!!


ghans

[alexeames]

Excellent - thanks RPF

[milhouse]

Many thanks for this, have placed my orders.

One thing that occurs to me is whether it would have been better to put the licence keys in a separate file that is read at boot (eg. licences.txt) since config.txt is often provided by various distributions (obviously without licence key information) and will require modification to re-enable MPG2/VC1 etc.

If we had the keys in a separate file we would just need to copy that file over each time - much easier...

[milhouse]

One thing that occurs to me is whether it would have been better to put the licence keys in a separate file that is read at boot (eg. licences.txt) since config.txt is often provided by various distributions (obviously without licence key information) and will require modification to re-enable MPG2/VC1 etc.

If we had the keys in a separate file we would just need to copy that file over each time - much easier...

Liz replied in the blog post:

No – well, I mean, it’d be *easier*, but it’d be less secure. We have to make it hard to circumvent so we don’t get sued by the MPEG LA!

OK, but I'm at a bit of a loss how a separate plain text licence file is any less secure than a single plain text config file...

[mahjongg]

Its probably because the config.txt file is read by the GPU at boot time, not by easily to disassemble ARM code.

[lavers]

OK, but I'm at a bit of a loss how a separate plain text licence file is any less secure than a single plain text config file...

Yeah, should be interesting to see how many keys are accidentally made public by virtue of people sharing their config.txt...

[mahjongg]

Its tied to the internal unique serial number of the PI.

[fbutler]

Great news!!

[milhouse]

Its probably because the config.txt file is read by the GPU at boot time, not by easily to disassemble ARM code.

Possibly, but if the GPU (through it's bootloader firmware) is able to read one file (config.txt) I'd expect it to be possible to read a second. More work for dom, of course, but "cleaner" than adding yet more end-user (rather than device) specific options to config.txt.

Yeah, should be interesting to see how many keys are accidentally made public by virtue of people sharing their config.txt...

Quite likely... another overhead for developers and maintainers of distributions (though surely the key will be hashed with the serial#?)

[dom]

Possibly, but if the GPU (through it's bootloader firmware) is able to read one file (config.txt) I'd expect it to be possible to read a second. More work for dom, of course, but "cleaner" than adding yet more end-user (rather than device) specific options to config.txt.

I'll think about it. Not sure it makes life that much easier for you:

Code: Select all

cp licences.txt /boot/licences.txt

or

Code: Select all

cat licences.txt >> /boot/config.txt

[Richard_P]

We've also made VC-1, H.264 encode and CEC support available - some of these things are bundled with the latest firmware, others you'll have to pay for. See below for details.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1839

Thanks RPF!

/me tips his hat with gratitude

[milhouse]

I'll think about it.

Thanks.

Not sure it makes life that much easier for you:

Code: Select all

cp licences.txt /boot/licences.txt

or

Code: Select all

cat licences.txt >> /boot/config.txt

True, but separating the licence keys from config.txt just "feels" like the right thing to do... I can't think of any real pro's (from an end-users POV) for keeping it all combined in a single file, mostly just con's.

Admittedly it's not a huge concern, but keeping the keys separate would seem to make life easier for end-users over the longer term (I can imagine schools having fun with "Now children this is what your config.txt file should like like - whoops, those are my special keys, ignore those...").

[Paul Webster]

Well done.

Order placed - don't be too worried if it shows the price in Euros during the process .. it switched to GBP for me when it arrived at Paypal.

[linuxstb]

I'll think about it. Not sure it makes life that much easier for you:

Code: Select all

cp licences.txt /boot/licences.txt

or

Code: Select all

cat licences.txt >> /boot/config.txt

Although I'm guessing we'll have a lot of relatively inexperienced Windows users wanting to do that. In that case, dragging licenses.txt to the FAT partition is far easier than editing a text file they normally don't need to touch, and far less likely to break something.

But I would also like to sincerely thank all that made this possible - especially as it's outside the foundation's core goals.

[mikerr]

Fantastic news !

Nice to see the foundation listening to the users, and not being political about it
("mpeg2 is old and not relevant for educational purposes the pi is aimed at").

It's great that encoding is also there (mpeg2 and h264 encode)

[Twinkletoes]

This morning I was researching the current progress on MPEG2, and was drafting an email volunteering to help as I've been through the MPEG-LA mire myself many times. And now I've thrown that email in the bin. Many thanks, Dom, Liz, Eben etc etc for the time you've put into this. A nice clean solution. Might need to work out a way of buying in bulk though before education customers want to buy 10 classrooms worth...

Bryan

[Evilbadger]

Although I'm guessing we'll have a lot of relatively inexperienced Windows users wanting to do that. In that case, dragging licenses.txt to the FAT partition is far easier than editing a text file they normally don't need to touch, and far less likely to break something.

But I would also like to sincerely thank all that made this possible - especially as it's outside the foundation's core goals.

Look through the options you can specify within config.txt, and the majority of them should not be distributed beyond the users set-up. i.e. I'd be annoyed if a distribution forced a video resolution on me just because it was what the distributor uses.
From that respect I don't see a problem with the codec license keys going into config.txt, with all the other user specific options.

What I'd prefer is the boot options (kernel, kernel_address, ramfsfile, ramfsaddr, etc.) being moved out of config.txt into a file that should be included as part of a distribution.

It all comes down to splitting the distribution specific and user specific options to be in separate files. How that is achieved, if at all, is up to dom and the rest of the foundation.

[W. H. Heydt]

I'll think about it.

Thanks.

Not sure it makes life that much easier for you:

Code: Select all

cp licences.txt /boot/licences.txt

or

Code: Select all

cat licences.txt >> /boot/config.txt

True, but separating the licence keys from config.txt just "feels" like the right thing to do... I can't think of any real pro's (from an end-users POV) for keeping it all combined in a single file, mostly just con's.

Admittedly it's not a huge concern, but keeping the keys separate would seem to make life easier for end-users over the longer term (I can imagine schools having fun with "Now children this is what your config.txt file should like like - whoops, those are my special keys, ignore those...").

Add the set up of a license (once the user has a key) to raspi-config for those that don't want to/know how to muck about with files?

[glotzi]

Add the set up of a license (once the user has a key) to raspi-config for those that don't want to/know how to muck about with files?

They have to learn it.

[nertia]

Thanks for listening to the community. This will only benefit the aims of the PI foundation.

[Dweeber]

I assume this is based on a newer Kernel / Update? Do we know which versions include it?

Just ordered both the MPEG-2 and VC-1 licenses.

[dom]

I assume this is based on a newer Kernel / Update? Do we know which versions include it?

Just ordered both the MPEG-2 and VC-1 licenses.

August 8th or newer.

[liz]

We really *are* sorry, by the way, that we weren't able to tell you we were working on this over the last couple of months; some of the threads here were getting pretty exercised, but we didn't want to announce until we were absolutely sure the solution we had worked properly. I hope nobody's teeth took damage with all the grinding.

We really *do* listen to what you have to say here. Please keep making requests of us; we do our best to address what we can.