Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:25:17 +0200 From: cpghost <cpghost@cordula.ws> To: Bob Johnson <fbsdlists@gmail.com> Cc: Chandhee Thala <cthala@gmail.com>, FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: vlc won't play region encoded DVDs Message-ID: <20070818122517.GA982@epia-2.farid-hajji.net> In-Reply-To: <54db43990708171057k481fbe0aycb1473293c744145@mail.gmail.com> References: <77647f500708161933h4bac6ea1u29671ae701296cd7@mail.gmail.com> <54db43990708171057k481fbe0aycb1473293c744145@mail.gmail.com>
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On Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 01:57:01PM -0400, Bob Johnson wrote: > > I was under the impression that VLC ignored region-encoding when > > playing DVDs, but this is apparently not the case on my BSD box. > > In all but the oldest DVD drives, region encoding is supposed to be > enforced by the drive itself, not by your software. You can change the > region code setting on your drive a few times, but there is a limit (5 > times, I think). Have you succeeded at playing the same DVDs with VLC > on a different O/S? All RPC-2 drives behave that way. It is enforced by the firmware, not the hardware itself; and firmware can be hacked / replaced, so that the RPC-2 drive can be flashed to become RPC-1. You'll void your warranty though: http://www.rpc1.org But IIRC, though I may be wrong, mplayer (proably vlc as well) don't care at all about that. They grab the data directly off the drive, and if it's CSS-encoded, they can DeCSS it on-the-fly when linked with /usr/ports/multimedia/libdvdcss. I've been able to view out-of-region region-encoded DVDs both on RPC-2 and RPC-1 drives (both old and recent) with mplayer without any problems; and, yes, I've switched regions much more often that just 5 times per RPC-2 drive: no problems at all. > I hope I'm wrong, though. The sooner this idiot DRM stuff dies, the better. Yep. Region encoding and CSS are broken anyway and have been no problem for a long time already; the real interesting hacking is now being done on AACS, but that's another story in the neverending race between good and evil. ;-) > - Bob Cheers, -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
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