The VideoLAN Forums

Is there any way to use VLS on Mac OS X 10.3? I am looking to purchase a new system and I am considering a Mac, but VLS is an important feature. If there is not then does VLC provide the same functionality or what would be the differences. Thus far I have only used the VLS for linux and I have not tried to use VLC.

Thanks

It does run on a Mac, but doesn't feature the same functionality.
PVR, sattelilte, tvtuner and DVD streaming is unsupported, only filestreaming is working.

You should use VLC. it has pretty much the same features and works fully on a Mac.

So you said it will do filestreaming, does that include the TS files?

It should

Thank you very much that helps me out a lot

Okay, so let's say I put one of my DVD's into the DVD drive of a Macintosh OSX box, "server" and run it as the Video LAN server. This is a "typical" movie, something I own. I have another computer (also a Max) upstairs. The server (in my basement), has the DVD player and I'm streaming the MPEG stream to my laptop upstairs. This is a simple example. If the bandwidgth is great enough on my network, I'm assumming that the Server is doing the following.

1. It's playing the DVD using the decoding algorigthm (key) off the player and creating the actual MPEG (visual and audio) stream file that is being sent (broadcast) to the network laptop upstairs.

Okay. I think I understand how VideoLan works under this situation. I don't have this system running yet, haven't downloaded or tried to run this as my server isn't up to the specs needed (with a DVD drive) yet.

But let's suppose I just did a copy of the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS files to the hard drive of my server and I've removed the DVD from the drive. (Because I have a bunch of movies and I don't want to go downstairs to load up each one. So then the DVD information is on the server, but the decription key in the hardware (DVD player) isn't there. So the DVD cannot be decripted "on the fly" with the hardware player and a video MPEG stream cannot be played by the server (as if it's playing a stand alone DVD) because of DVD copy protection.

Video Lan claims it can stream video DVD's off a hard drive. My question is how can it do it, when the DVD is physically removed from the server? Is it possible? I've seen the DCDESS option talked about, so I guess my next question is whether the DVD copy protection DECESS (spelling?) crack is being used to decode the DVD image files "on the fly" and create a MPEG stream from the server?

Is that what is happening here? (I'd find it hard to believe, because those who report about "ripping" DVD backups don't seem to be "ripping them in real time", but I might be a little behind the technological 8 ball since I've got some older machines and haven't upgraded my server or laptop lately.)

Please elaborate if possible.

I also have a DVD burner, so I'm guessing that I can stream my own content (unprotected) from my own home created DVD's (home movies, etc.).

Thanks.