Canonical to Offer Multimedia Codecs and DVD Playback

Canonical announced a few days ago the availability of a DVD player and some media playback codecs for Ubuntu 8.04. These kinds of tools were until now available only for Canonical's hardware partners, but Ubuntu's financial sponsor decided to provide every user with the possibility to purchase them for himself. Fluendo and Cyberlink, two of Canonical's partners, will be the providers when it comes to these new  additions, available via the Ubuntu store.

One of the reasons for this move was the necessity to offer these services to users who install Ubuntu themselves, rather than acquire a pre-installed version.

"It is important to us that no matter how you choose to access Ubuntu, pre-installed or as a free download, that you can have a similarly rich experience," said Gerry Carr - Marketing Manager, Canonical. "The vast majority of our current users will have installed Ubuntu themselves. These users should also be allowed legal DVD and media playback and so we have built a way of letting them do this."

The downfall of this is that codecs cannot be redistributed cost free, therefore they cannot be included in the ISO. This is where the Ubuntu store comes in, as Canonical created a specific download area for these services. Here's how Gerry stated the matter in his own words, "We cannot ship codecs through the distro, as they are not free to redistribute. So we have built a restricted download area that is accessible through the store. Once purchased you can find your software here which will then install in the familiar hassle-free way that Ubuntu users appreciate. A pretty cool feature is that, should you wipe out your machine you can go back to the restricted download area and access your codecs again. Enjoy".