Fedora Can Now Ship MPEG2 Support, But What They Will Ship Is Yet To Be Figured Out

[OneTimeShot]

More importantly, who actually uses mpeg2 these days?

Well, as you say - most people's DVD collections uses MPEG2. MPEG2 is actually a pretty decent video codec, widely supported with hardware decoding, and now completely without patent risk. Sure there are better video codecs - but then there are also better image formats than JPEG.

It means that I get to choose between AV1/Opus (probably no legal issues) and MPEG2/MP3 (definitely no legal issues) for any project. Either way I choose (or I am forced into), it's going to be a completely headache-free solution...

[phoenk]

I understand the technical aspect, but I'm talking about the practicality. Maybe my silly comparison to USB1/USB3 wasn't very effective.

In other words, you said it yourself... DVD. The world has moved on from DVD, we reached Blueray and we moved on from there as well, both rather dead technologies to the Western world. Now everything is streamed or comes in some kind of Matroska container & the AV1 codec.

More importantly, who actually uses mpeg2 these days?

The thing with media is that we will want to perpetually access it. Just because new movies are generally not mastered for DVDs doesn't mean people won't wish to watch their old movies which they only have on DVD. Unlike computer hardware, new movies do not obsolete their predecessors.

Also, Blueray is far from dead. It is the only medium many movies can be legally acquired on for personal use, and most movies released for public viewing are available on BlueRay. Both the Xbox One and PS4 use BlueRay disks to distribute their games physically. The latest standards for multimedia are also able to be utilized via BlueRay, like HDR. Regadless of your feelings regarding the technology and its application, it is far from a dead medium.

[(tpm)]

MPEG-2 video is also still used in many digital TV broadcasts (DVB, etc.) for what it's worth.

[wizard69]

For all that it matters I propose this selection method.

1. get a dart board.
2. Randomly past the names of the various potential solutions on the dart board.
3. Grab the secretary from the front office that has no idea what MPEG2 is.
4. blind fold that secretary and hand here an hand full of darts.
5. point her at the dart board and let here do her best to hit the board.
6. the first strike on the dart board, hitting one of the pasted on solutions, is your next MPEG2 solution.

Sounds silly? Maybe; but considering how outdated MPEG2 is, this is certainly a viable way to cut out the debate and arguing. In the end the need for the code is going to slowly fade away as new encoding solutions take hold.

[Spooktra]

In all honesty, I personally don't really care about mpeg2 and I think most people don't.

Lets be honest, for the past decade or so, everyone installs an extra player to be able to have viable desktop experience. Like VLC, MPV, ffmpeg or even the extra gstreamer plugins.

its like... adding USB 1 support when everyone is running at USB 3.

Boo, Hiss, how dare you criticize the Fedora teams "innovations" and all the "good" they do for the Linux desktop! Don't you appreciate how they bring the "latest" technology to Linux users "first", thanks to their hard work Fedora users can now use 30 year old technology out of the box!

Man, Fedora is "innovative"!!!

[starshipeleven]

Boo, Hiss, how dare you criticize the Fedora teams "innovations" and all the "good" they do for the Linux desktop! Don't you appreciate how they bring the "latest" technology to Linux users "first", thanks to their hard work Fedora users can now use 30 year old technology out of the box!

Man, Fedora is "innovative"!!!

Ah come on, it was a legal issue. Patents are a thing you know.

[Spooktra]

Ah come on, it was a legal issue. Patents are a thing you know.

Why is it this "legal" issue only seems to be an "issue" for Redhat/Fedora and no other Linux distro?

[starshipeleven]

Why is it this "legal" issue only seems to be an "issue" for Redhat/Fedora and no other Linux distro?

Arch or Gentoo user detected.

Ubuntu asks you this during installation and keeps them on a separate repo.
OpenSUSE has completely crippled media subsystem in the default install, and you have to use packman repositories to install a working one (no it's not stuff from Arch, that's the name of their main third party repo), on Debian you need to enable non-free repos (which you have to enable anyway because of other reasons in most cases).

[calc]

Now everything is streamed or comes in some kind of Matroska container & the AV1 codec.

That might be true in another year or two once devices have AV1 hardware acceleration but that certainly isn't true now.

Most current material is in h.264 (mpeg4) or h.265 (hevc), both of which are a patent minefield and will be for decades to come.

Netflix is working to convert to AV1 asap but the end hardware has to support it before it can really be used.

MPEG-2 video is also still used in many digital TV broadcasts (DVB, etc.) for what it's worth.

I'm not sure about DVB, since I don't live in Europe, but in the US satellites are quickly decommissioning MPEG-2 and moving to HEVC, as its a much better use of available bandwidth.

ATSC 3.0 whenever it finally gets deployed is switching over to HEVC as well.

[carewolf]

The problem with DVDs is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System, not patents.

Not a problem. Easily breached and legal to do so in the EU. Might be a problem in the US though but that is your problem