linux and quick play

I'm going to buy a custom compaq eventually all windows software will be removed. I would like to keep quick play it runs on a linux kernal. Will linux be compatable with this or should I save $38 and not get quick play in the first place.

 

As far as I can tell, Quickplay is a stripped-down version of Windows which has its own small partition on the hard drive. I have it on my HP dv2000t, though I have never used it. Anyway, I did not wipe it out when I installed Linux, and GRUB does have an entry for it, so I assume that Quickplay should be usable with Linux installed. I'll try it out later today to make sure that it still works.

 

The box says quick play takes up 1024 meg of space. On the Hp Compaq forum on the stickey the difference between Hp and Compaq is where I got the information about it being a linux kernal.

 

One good thing of QuickPlay is the sound is really good. I installed couple of video player in Linux and XP. None of them can compare to QuickPlay's sound.

 

Well, as it turns out Quickplay doesn't work on my system. Booting to what I believe is the Quickplay partition (a 1.1GB partition at the end of my disk) just results in an error about how "hal.dll" is missing or damaged (that's the Hardware Abstration Layer, a vital part of Windows). Either booting to that partition from GRUB is not enough to use Quickplay, or at least important one file on that partition is damaged.

 

That's weird. Have you crashed sometime during playing DVD? Grub boot my Quickplayer without any problem even I reinstall Ubuntu 6.10 three times.

Although there is no way to lunch native QP in Linux, This howto help you to start anything Linux media player that you want.

 

Well, no. Actually I have never booted into Quickplay. I just don't use it. This was my first attempt and it didn't work. My best guess is that there are some bad sectors on that part of the hard drive and the hal.dll file really did get corrupted.

 

For some reason, hal.dll is the Windows file I've found gets corrupted the most. I think that the HP version of QP (Like Media Direct from Dell) requires a full, functioning version of Windows XP on another partition to function.

 

Sylvain, it does require an entire partition to run it. Actually the booted QPlayer is slightly different from Qplayer in XP Home/Pro. It is under XP Embedded (simplified version) or CE.

 

Did you install GRUB in MBR or somewhere else ? I have XP PRO and quickplay and I am planning to make a dualboot system with ubuntu.

 

Please, call it the kernel. Kernal is only applicable to the Commodore OS.

/me cues the "the more you know" jingle

Anyway, I'd say Quickplay is worth it only if you can see yourself using the quickplay features. If not, why bother? I'm also not sure if it scans the Windows partition for media, and if so, you won't get any benefit from quickplay aside from a fast-booting DVD player afaik.

 

Right, and I've had distros of Linux tweaked so that they boot faster than QP. Use less power too.

 

quickplay doesn't scan available NTFS disk. Neither play mpeg4/divx, rm/rmvb and so on. It is a real good mpeg2/dvd player, and that's it.

 

Quickplay works fine for me, working with GRUB. It can read any partitions, too.

But does anyone know how to make GRUB detect whether you started the system using a Quickplay button, and take corresponding action?


Thanks

 

This would be great to know, sorry for the bump. Hopefully someone knows this.

 

Now that is helpfull you just saved me some money.

 

If Quickplay/MediaDirect exists on a separate partition that it never touched during the formatting of C:\ and the installing of Linux (even after you change from FAT32/NTFS to EXT3) and the media key is hardwired to load the quickplay/mediadirect, then I cannot see how the feature would NOT work. I don't have a notebook that can do this, but from just thinking it out that's what I see.

 

Generally, it doesn't work like in Windows partition. There is difference.
GRUB only treat Quickplay button like normal power up button, and doesn't recognize the key value. In Linux, that key is undefined.