Raspberry Pi Mpeg2 License
What makes the Raspberry Pi so different that it requires a licence to playback MPEG-2 videos, and how exactly does this license work? MPEG-2 Licencing & The Raspberry Pi Other operating systems include the cost of the various codecs within the price of the operating system. Codec Licenses. The Raspberry Pi was designed to be an educational computer. As part of that educational mission, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has gone out of their way to minimize the manufacturing and licensing costs in order to keep the final cost of the device down. An MPEG-2 (~$4)and/or VC-1 license(~$2) purchased from the Raspberry Pi store. Access to the command prompt on the Raspberry Pi (either at the physical device or via SSH). First, we will walk you through getting the serial number off the board and purchasing the licenses you need.
- Raspberry Pi Mpeg2 License Hack
- Raspberry Pi Mpeg-2 License
- Raspberry Pi Mpeg2 License
- Raspberry Pi Mpeg2 License Key Generator
- Raspberry Pi Codec Pack
Since August 24 2012, it is possible to buy a licence to hardware-decode MPEG-2 videos.
Here are my questions:
- Does it mean that, without this licence, the RPi cannot handle at all MPEG-2 video, or it will struggle to play it smoothly?
- In what form comes the licence? Is it a file to install in the ditribution? Or is it a hardware activation or something?
Thank you.
3 Answers
The license enables you to decode and encode (where applicable) the mentioned media types using the built in hardware encoders/decoders.
- H.264 Encode is enabled in the latest version (Included in Pi Price) which is great!
- For an extra £2.40 you can watch MPEG2 video, ie DVD's are encoded in MPEG2!
- For an extra £1.20 you can decode VC-1 video, ie Microsoft's Silverlight Video
Hardware en/decoders are much faster and do not rely on the core CPU to process these files; rather the GPU is used to process the files. It talks directly to the Video Memory (decoding) or RAM (encoding) making it nice and smooth. You do not need this license and can use software versions. But it is really slow.
The license will be a file you place somewhere or a key you define as a global variable for the system. The en/decoder libraries will request these and pass them into the hardware where they will be resolved on that chip; if the key matches the serial number and is valid you will be allowed to use the exposed API (I can see this getting hacked very quickly).
Raspberry Pi did not include this to keep costs down. For us, a few quid is ok, but if they made a million units that is £3.6million extra they have to spend on something only a fraction of people will use.
Piotr KulaPiotr KulaRaspberry Pi Mpeg2 License Hack
The license enables playing MPEG2 content on the RPi with hardware acceleration. Without the license it will not play the file. The license is a key associated with the serial number of the RPi.
Raspberry Pi Mpeg-2 License
Hope this clears the doubt. More information available at Rpi site under Codec license
Raspberry Pi Mpeg2 License
One thing to note:In Australia and other parts of the world, Live TV is MPEG2. You won't be able to view Live TV on the Pi without either adding software codecs or buying a licence.(i.e. Video won't display; Audio will work as it's AC3).So if your country uses MPEG2 Video and you plan on watching Live Tv on the Pi, buy a licence with your Pi... dsicovered this too late and still waiting for my licence.
protected by Community♦Nov 24 '13 at 10:33
Raspberry Pi Mpeg2 License Key Generator
Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?