Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 10 Dec 1998 00:24:52 +0100
From:      "Julian Stacey" <jhs@jhs.muc.de>
To:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
Cc:        alk@pobox.com, hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, terry@jhs.muc.de, gj@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   DVD Country Locking in drive hardware ?
Message-ID:  <199812092324.XAA14801@jhs.muc.de>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 06 Dec 1998 16:38:18 PST." <199812070038.QAA00880@dingo.cdrom.com> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi,
Mike Smith replied to someone else's:
> > 
> > Has anyone got a DVD-RAM or other recordable DVD drive working with
> > current?  If so, what kind, and in what sense of 'working'?  Thanks!

A friend ordered a DVD drive to avoid the Jan 1st changeover to DVDs that are
deliberately crippled in the DVD drive to enable "Country Locking"
	(apparently some scheme by Hollywood to force for instance Germans
	 to wait (& pay for) for the German dubbed version of programmes,
	 rather than watch the original American version.
	 I believe this is currently done in the MPEG card, but friend
	 speculates if you have a fast enough CPU to use instead,
	 can avoid the lock ... ? )

I reckon there's lot's of us who'd want to access films & data in the original,
regardless where we bought the media, so if this rumour is really true,
maybe we (in Europe ?) should be rushing out to buy DVD drives now ?
(The friend <terry@jhs.muc.de> says some DVD suppliers are already holding
back sales to match new stock presumably pre-crippled with the national locks.

Comments ?  I'd love to be told this is not true :-)

Julian
--
Julian H. Stacey         jhs@freebsd.org         http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199812092324.XAA14801>