Someone’s may doh! at Microsoft these days (or maybe not ?)
Moonshine is a simple and probably effective project that bring Windows Media content to the Linux browsers and desktop. Using Microsoft codecs. Legitimately.
the Moonshine desktop player
Did you know Microsoft distributes Linux codecs, didn’t you ?
If I remember correctly, though, those codecs are licensed to be usable solely with Novell’s Moonlight (nice uh?). So here’s the trick: Moonshine is a (simple?) Silverlight application ran under Moonlight that plays the video.
Moonshine is a browser plugin that proxies the Moonlight plugin, claiming support for Windows Media content. When Firefox comes across content advertised as Windows Media, it loads the Moonshine plugin which in turn loads Moonlight.
Moonshine then loads its media player application, written in Silverlight, into the proxied Moonlight plugin, which is able to play back the Windows Media content.
The desktop player is Firefox with the standard web chrome replaced with controls to drive the media experience.
So, basically Moonshine’s engine is a Silverlight application, which is wrapped by a Firefox plugin and advertise itself as Windows Media capable. Also there’s a desktop player, which is just a browser running such plugin.
Not everything (moon)shines
Who wants to stream Windows Media content BTW? And who wants Silverlight at all ? Neverthless this is maybe the only legitimate and free (as in beer) way to play Windows Media content on Linux in those unfortunate nations that allow software patents to exist.
Does it work ?
Don’t ask me, I didn’t tried, I don’t even have Moonlight installed. But if you try, let me know !
How to get it
I actually find the silverlight framework sort of beautiful.
Simple, well abstracted, fits in a browser.
Not much of a M$ fan though, but the CS dude in me can’t help finding it attractive.
Well, it seems to work fine after my admittedly limited test. To be honest, I’ve never been much of a fan of streaming video so I’ve never really bothered to fine-tune other plugins before. That being said, when I’ve tried other plugins in the past there was always something of a disappointment present. They never seemed to work quite right in all circumstances.
That may turn out to be the case here too (only time will tell) but right now it feels like this is the most hassle-free one.
@Jonas: thank you for your report !
@pel: right, but it’s not really the language beauty to be the issue. Mono is indeed attracting many Linux developers because it feels nice. No wonder Moonlight feels the same.
Yup it works. I managed to get good video streams from MSNBC.