Verily I say unto thee, that stilicho spake thusly:
> Aside from encryption, another issue is the region coding. At one
> point libdvdcss would bypass region coding and let you play any DVD
> from any region on any DVD reader. This was an advantage of Linux
> over Windows or Macs. But then they started forcing the
> manufacturers to sell only DVD devices that enforce region coding in
> hardware (you are limited to 5 region changes, then it's stuck). I
> was never able to find clear documentation of this situation
It's called RPC2 (Regional Playback Control version 2), which differs
from version 1 by implementing region locks in the drive's firmware,
rather than just in the player/OS software.
However, this draconian "protection" can be easily overcome, by simply
flashing RPC2 drives with an RPC1 version of the firmware:
http://rpc1.org
I did this to my laptop's replacement drive recently:
http://liggydee.cdfreaks.com/page/en/Optiarc-AD-5590A/
And I didn't need Windows (or even emulation) to do the flashing either,
since the tool is available as a native GNU/Linux application:
http://binflash.cdfreaks.com
There are certain drives out there which use encrypted firmware, or
immutable ROM chips for the firmware, which cannot be flashed, so you
need to avoid those. The only such devices I've come across so far are
from MatsuSHITa (a division of Panasonic), such as the one which
originally came with my laptop (and thankfully died within just six
months, thus giving me an excuse to replace it with one that actually
works properly).
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It
| is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William
| Pitt the Younger
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
01:45:39 up 114 days, 9:28, 5 users, load average: 0.01, 0.08, 0.08
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