DVDs are simple? Re:var is mysteriously clogged

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 04:40:21PM -0500, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> I agree. Interestingly, the player I got was branded "Hong Kong 
> Electronics", but made and purchased in Malaysia. :-)
> 
> Does anyone know whether there exists a region-free PC DVD drive? Most 
> set a region in firmware, which you can only change a few times before 
> it's permanent. While open source players ignore the region mismatch, 
> Windows players don't; it would be nice to know if there are region-free 
> PC drives just like there's are region-free standalone players.

RPC1 drives did it all in the player, while current RPC2 drives do it in
hardware and software.  RPC2 drives are the ones with max 5 changes.  I
have flashed a couple of pioneer drives in the past with unofficial
firmware that made them RPC1 rather than RPC2, after which there is
software for windows that will fake the region code when the player
accesses the drive.  Of course Windows Vista won't play DVDs from RPC1
drives, but all current versions don't mind.  Of course if you could get
a player for windows that simply ignores the mismatch you would have the
same result as linux, which might be simpler.

Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml