DIRECTV Scores Points in the Linux Community

by Lisa Hoover - Sep. 22, 2008Comments (5) | Trackback URL

Unlike NBC's coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games, DIRECTV customers who have the NFL Sunday Ticket SuperFan viewing package can now watch live football games on computers running Linux.

Using a combination of Adobe Air and the open source Flex framework, DIRECTV will stream the Sunday showdowns and also deliver game highlights, statistics, and real-time scores via a desktop app or Web browser.

According to a prepared statement, DIRECTV claims this service is "the first broadly deployed entertainment package to integrate the Digital Rights Management (DRM) capability available in AIR via Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server (FMRMS)"

Though some may balk at using Adobe Air, at least the package is available to Linux users which, for many premium services, isn't always the case. While TiVo is easily -- and better -- replaced by MythTV, finding open source solutions for tools like Slingbox isn't always easy. DIRECTV's nod to the open source community is a good start, let's hope it's a sign of more to come.


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5 Comments
 

Its the least they could do after stealing from the FOSS community and not contributing a single line of code!

0 Votes

Whatever. Are you ready for some Football?!

0 Votes

Tell me about it. I'll take any excuse to write about football. Linux was just a great bonus. :-)

Go Chargers!

0 Votes

Have been having local bandwidth problems at home so started using this great new service with 'ripping' fast speeds. I think they are limited sign-ups but I got in :) see http://parkmytv.com - an idea whose time has come, now I no longer bother my wife when logging in remotely and change channels on her :>

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great so in this nod to the 'open source' community, we get the privilege of installing closed-source, non-free apps so that we can infect our own systems with DRM... and we're going to ask for more?

> let's hope it's a sign of more to come

Sorry but I belong to the Free Software community where the license is more important than the development model. No thanks DirecTV.

0 Votes
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