Jon Lech "DVD Jon" Johansen — the Norwegian who helped crack the crypto on DVDs — has now cracked certain elements of the Microsoft video streaming-server. The hack makes it possible to view Windows video streams with software that Microsoft hasn't released or approved.
His latest hack was done to make Media Player content available to the open source VideoLAN Client (VLC) streaming media player. VLC is available for download to 12 different operating systems and Linux distributions and has seen more than six million downloads to Mac. Apple is even pre-loading VLC on some Macs destined for high schools in Florida.
Johansen told The Register he'd acted following requests for NSC support in VLC. One developer is already hard at work integrating Johansen's decoder into the VLC.
Johansen said: "Windows Media Player is not very good and Windows and Mac users should not be forced to use it to view such [NSC] streams."
The NSC file contains information about the stream, such as the name and address of the stream server. When the file is opened in Media Player, the file is decoded and then connected to the stream server specified.
(Thanks, Supi!)
