Hidden-Feature DVD Players Again 175
FModnar writes: "As described in this review on DVDfile.com, another DVD player has been found that exhibits the same menus as the Apex DVD player did a few months ago. Some of the 'hidden' features include the ability to turn off region coding and Macrovision." Sounds like this is a higher-quality player, too. Since both of the Apexes I bought failed within weeks and had to be returned, I certainly hope so. If enough players are region friendly, "chipping" may never catch on much in America.
We should bend over and take it up the ass (Score:2)
Re:you moron... (Score:2)
And if you didn't buy them at all, the makers would have an incentive to play fair.
The whole
--Shoeboy
Can somebody tell me... (Score:3)
All of the people I have spoken to in Europe and South Africa all claim the reason they want region-free is so that they can buy cheap DVDs early from the US market. So why is the US market interested in this?
Is this just a matter of personal freedoms, or do US DVD-fans get cheap imports too from somewhere?
Sorry, I'm just confused....
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Defeating Macrovision is EASY. (Score:1)
The Raite is a piece of crap (Score:1)
Re:Look at home before you finger US Rights (Score:1)
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:1)
Actually, this is not correct. With a published work, once copyright expires, it enters the public domain & can be reproduced freely. Original artwork, on the other hand is different & I suspect this is the source of your confusion. If I own a Picasso (for example), you must recieve my permission to publish any reproduction of it. For those rights, I can charge you whatever fees we can agree upon. This right has nothing to do with copyright. It's an ownership right-- I not only own the painting, I own it's likeness as well. This right never expires.
Macrovision - technical theory (Score:5)
I understand the excitement about getting rid of the region coding on the DVD system. But I wouldn't get too enthused about getting rid of Macrovision; you can do that yourself with a soldering iron and about $20 in Radio Shack parts. And no, I don't have a schematic to share, but if you're interested, I'll tell you how it works.
Unlike most of the discussions here which revolve around digital systems and digital technology, Macrovision is analog.
VCRs, just like cassette decks, have to have a recording level set, so that the tape is neither under-recorded or oversaturated. The appropriate recording level varies by scene and by source; all video signals should in theory have a specific level, but in practice, they don't. Therefore, there must be some compensating mechanism.
VHS VCRs (but not Beta, 3/4" or other professional formats) set their recording level using the black level in the "vertical interval", which is the black bar that you see when your vertical hold control is set wrong. There are scan lines there, and they contain a sub-black pulse that is sent to the vertical oscillator in the TV set to reset it to the top of the frame. But, a lot of the vertical interval is just video black, and is there because early TV sets needed a couple of lines to recover from the vertical reset.
As TV sets became more advanced and the need arose to hide more stuff into a TV picture, the vertical blanking interval has been used for lots of extra things: most notably, closed captioning, pay TV decoder controls, and setting record levels on home VCRs.
Try rolling your picture sometime and see if you can get it to stay on the vertical interval. You'll see a couple of bars flashing around for closed-captioning, and a couple of other bars flashing around that would provide digital signals to turn on and off older addressable analog pay-TV decoders (if your cable company uses them). (Usually, this stuff is in lines 19 and 21, odd fields only, but this depends on the cable company.)
VHS VCRs use black lines to set the record level. I can't remember the line numbers specifically, but it's line numbers in the teens.
If you want to prevent a VHS VCR from recording properly, therefore, all you need to do is screw with the blackness that should be present. If you replace it with white bars and stripes, the VCR will set its recording level low, and the rest of the frame of video will appear dark when you play it back. If you flash it on and off, the VCR will compensate during recording and flash the image bright (normal) and dim. Macrovision also screws with the recorded color indirectly; because the chrominance information's record level is generally set by the amplitude of the colorburst pulse at the start of each scan line, it will appear that the colors get to be too intense (saturated) for the given brightness (luminance) of the picture.
Okay, that's how it works. And, only VHS VCRs are vulnerable (and older/cheaper TV sets that don't properly deal with having crap in the vertical interval). So, how do we kill it?
Simple. What you need to do is detect the Horizontal and Vertical sync pulses, and make sure they always get through to the TV set. That's easy, they're the only things that should be between 0 and 0.3V (out of 1 volt of video). So, selectively filter out anything above 0.3V.
Set up a PLL or something to watch for the 60Hz pulse in that sync stream you've just found. A good chip to do this is the National Semiconductors LM1881 Sync Separator chip. Pin 3 will give you an output that you can use to reset a counter. Throw together a counter circuit using TTL or CMOS logic that will count 23 horizontal sync pulses (pin 1) after the vertical pulse from Pin 3. Once the counter has counted that many lines, you need to make it pass the video. You've now made a 23-line-long vertical pulse - your TV might or might not cope with it, your VHS VCR definately won't (but it won't hurt anything).
Now, all you need to do is, in the time that the counter is counting those 23 lines after reset, you hold the video output to your VCR to 0.3V. Congratulations, you've just scrubbed Macrovision from your video.
I figure about four commonly-available chips and a small power supply. I tried it myself a few years ago using just the LM1881, a counter, and about 6 transistors. I built my Macrovision scrubber not to make VHS copies of movies, but because I collect 1950s and 1960s TV sets, and many of them don't play well with Macrovision, and I still want to be able to watch rented movies on them.
Another trick that works sometimes is to just run the video into the video in jacks on a Beta VCR, and run the recovered video out. Most VCRs, while they're just idling, rebuild the sync pulses and intervals (this is why a lot of older VCRs don't pass closed captioning info to your TV). Since Beta VCRs set their recording level a different way, they're immune to Macrovision.
Re:what does this change? (Score:3)
The weasels are then brought the rest of the way to the center of the earth, beneath the molton "core", which everyone knows was constructed in 1856 to draw attention away from the Masters Of The Earth. Oddly enough, the Masters Of The Earth care little for what actually goes on topside, so they'll work for pretty much anyone. The igniting of weasel warriors is only one of their many services. You might want to call for a catalogue.
After 14 weeks of re-programming, not dissimilar to many of the world's major religions, the weasel will no longer be able to speak anything other than your name (or your dog's name, if you wish your dog to be in control of the weasel. This is advisable for high profile Evil Overlords). An additional three weeks of combat training follow, where the weasel learns a variety of techniques and strategies to become more effective in the field. All this time, they have been bathing them in rubbing alcohol and feeding them charcoal briquettes. At the end of combat training, they are given a cigarette and a pack of matches, and after the first attept to smoke them, they become flaming weasels. The fire will last for approximately 4 years, after which, you might want to consider a new weasel anyway. During that time you will find your weasel is an infallable assasin, and nearly as good in open combat.
I hope this was helpful.
Not worth it. (Score:1)
Is the jump in price worth fixing "some" audio sync problems, and minor improvements to audio/video quality? I think not.
Re:Uhm, this ain't news... (Score:1)
VDDV 600A (Apex DVD Player) Available Online. (Score:2)
Re:List of Multi-region-hackable DVD players (Score:2)
Very interesting... (Score:1)
My replacement doesnt seem to have macrovision, Ive been able to record to tape and video in on my computer flawlessly.
And it plays mp3 cds.
-Brook Harty
VHS and Beta (Score:1)
Also Sony controlled licensing on the Beta format. If you wanted Beta VCR that left you with either Sony, Sanyo, or NEC, which manufactured both. JVC had something to do with the VHS format, and there were much more players to choose for VHS, probably better prices too, but I was a youngin when the tape wars were going on.
Re:what does this change? (Score:1)
Blockquoth Ranger Rick: Blockquoth gnarphlager:
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Like I See It (Score:1)
To me it is a matter of personal freedom. Even though I live in the US and may never purchase a non Region 1 DVD, I don't like the MPAA manipulating the market and creating an artifical demand.
Re:Can someone confirm / deny this? (Score:2)
Think of it like a contract. I own a piece of art. It's displayed in my private gallery (i.e. not on a street corner or other public place). You want to photograph it. I can decide whether or not to allow this, as you have to come onto my turf to do so, even if it's a work on which the copyright has expired. I can even tell you that you may photograph it for your own use, but that you may not reproduce your photographs of the work for commercial (or any other) purpose. You don't have to agree to those terms, but you don't have to see the work, either.
IANAL, YMMV, etc.
-Isaac
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:1)
[OT]Blueyonder are allegedly coming to my area (Stoke Newington, London) at the end of the year, with a cable modem type thing. Are they any good? I'm sick of getting whupped at Unreal Tournament by the bloody europeans with 60ms pings, while I'm crawling along at 130...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Can somebody tell me... (Score:2)
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:3)
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Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:4)
Among the other interesting things I learned while there was that such decisions are often made out in the open by project managers and higher level group leaders.
It also seemed that the suits were privy to the info, but the word was mum on it between the number crunchers and the code spitters.
Obviously the regionless aspect of a DVD player is a lucrative enough feature that even the large companies choose to ignore it.
Of course, with so much $$$$ to gain, they would.
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:2)
According to that fact I should have been able to have access to it as it's been in the public domain for the last nine years.
wrighty.
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:2)
Since when? Certainly in the UK, they're fairly common. Virtually all of the Samsung players, for example, can have region coding and macrovision disabled with a programmable remote. I just wish the Extiva 2000 was available over here (it's their Nuon-enabled DVD player).
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:1)
Re:what does this change? (Score:1)
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:1)
The people who made betamax kept the rights to the players (maybe other equipment?) while the creators of VHS (sony?) licensed it out to everyone. costs driven down....
Look at home before you finger US Rights (Score:3)
Of course they're one step ahead of their Commonwealth Cousins in the UK who don't even HAVE a constitution or a bill of rights, but that's getting ahead of the fact that "rights" aren't a concept considered valid in the UK, but we settled that matter with them at Yorktown a couple hundred years ago.
Look, I appreciate the fact that the US doesn't do a lot of things right, but those most often complaining need to take a cold, hard look at their own political situation before they start blaming us. If after that they don't like the US, then fine, DONT use US products or services. DONT come here. Simple solution.
Re:Can somebody tell me... (Score:1)
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Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:1)
If somebody doesn't care enough to renew their work, what gives them the right to suddenly wake up and claim rights if someone else much later thinks of a new value?
"It's a Wonderful Life" would be unknown today if it hadn't entered the Public Domain, and been used by cash-starved PBS channels as Christmas filler.
But... As soon as the movie studio saw it getting ratings, they managed to yank the movie back out of the public domain - and began making a mint off it. Now you won't see it on PBS anymore, just on NBC. Gross.
This system is fucked. It needs to change.
-- RadVen
Re:Region codes are history (Score:1)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Cheating the DVDA? (Score:4)
If you don't want to play the DVDA's rules, don't. Make your format that isn't DVD. If it's better than DVD, and offers more features, then it will catch on, and it'll beat DVD -- remember VHS versus Betamax? VHS was more popular. It won.
A better solution would be for all the companies and organizations with a grudge against the DVDA (like Apex) to band together and create their own, region-free format. That's the Open Source way.
The DVDA made its rules for making DVDs -- and nobody's forcing anybody to get in line and make DVDs. As Yoda says, "Do. Or do not. Or do not try. There is no 'try.'"
What good if not NTSC? (Score:1)
Put another way, what's out in other regions that I can't find here (in the US) cheaper? Different, out-of-print movies? Better featured discs? I can't help but notice that whenver I hear about imported DVDs (and LDs, to a lesser degree), it's usually about Anime (which is fine, I suppose, but not my personal cup of tea...)
Re:availability (Score:1)
Heh. I like that. I know what you meant, but the idea of the basic tenents of Christianity being cult related ammuses me for some reason.
Re:Regional coding is about mind control (Score:1)
What will cause problems is multicultural areas. I have no idea how they deal with South Africa where they have had two strongly segregated parts of society until recently.
Re:Can somebody tell me... (Score:1)
DVDs, Macrovision, Failure-Prone Apex Stuff (Score:4)
Quality at its finest, huh?
You know, these days, with the manufacturing and sales margins on consumer electronics (especially cheap off-brand stuff), there's no attention to quality. Save $0.05 per unit by not putting a heat sink on a transistor. If you're making 100,000 units, that adds up on the bottom line. Especially an off-brand like an Apex, which everyone is going to buy anyway just for the hidden features...
Once the 90-day warranty is up (and even before, if you feel brave), flip off the lid and feel for anything that gets hot (be careful not to get killed; if you don't know what's live, don't do it). If you've got access to any kind of thermal imaging equipment, use it. (I use an military AMIRIS system at work to find hot spots.)
Stuff to look for is output transistors for the spindle, since they'll be running the whole time the DVD player is on, and they're going to be running between off and full saturation, so they're dissipating electricity as heat in resistive mode. Look also for regulator ICs and switching transistors in the power supply, stuff like that. Pretend you're an overclocker, wanting to get the heat off a CPU chip - don't go so far as water cooling, I'm sure it's unnecessary - but it's exactly the same thing. Lots of black anodized aluminum heatsinks, lots of surface area, lots of non-conductive thermal transfer grease.
Every 10c drop in temperature can double the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of a semiconductor.
Look also for under-rated capacitors, both thermally and voltage-wise. Electrolytic and tantalum capacitors are expensive power supply components; to save money, the manufacturers often skimp on the voltage rating. ie. 6V capacitor on the 5V bus. Not much of a tolerance. Go to Radio Shack, and replace the capacitor with one with at least double the voltage rating (but the same capacitance value). Remember to get the polarity right, and I hope your multilayer board and surface-mount soldering skills are good.
My worst one was at work: we made the mistake of buying a Daytek (Daewoo) monitor. Three warranty replacements later, the current one came in. I'd have bought an NEC myself, but we couldn't return the Daytek by this point. First thing I did was take off the back cover, toss it in front of the AMIRIS, and find the horizontal output transistor was lit up like the sun. Pulled it out, put a huge heatsink under it ($3.95 at a local electronics parts shop), and dropped the temperature of it by 40c.
The monitor has been fine now for 2 years. However, it did have a sibling that was bought at the same time, and lasted three weeks out of the warranty period before the Horizontal Output blew up and took the flyback transformer with it. Sadly, I never got to get into that one and retrofit it with the heatsink that it should have had.
My replacement doesnt seem to have macrovision, Ive been able to record to tape and video in on my computer flawlessly.Yeah. I'm not sure how different video cards set "record levels", basically the automatic gain control for the input stage of the Analog to Digital converter.
If I were designing one, I'd probably use one of the AGC chips readily available for VHS VCRs - they're cheap, easy to use and easy to find. However, not only are they the reason that Macrovision works only against VHS VCRs, but since computer hardware makes consumer electronics pale in its pursuit for the elusive and almighty buck, I'm sure that I'd have the software gurus do it.
If you're using a 16 bit A/D converter to sample the incoming stream, no one would ever notice if the A/D luminance resolution was a little low: the software can easily be made to pad the data if it determines that the sync pulses or whatever are too high or too low. So, some video cards may be immune to Macrovision, and some may not. It might even be possible for drivers to be written to scrub Macrovision from the incoming video signal on those cards that leave the video level setting up to a software number-crunch.
Keep in mind that Macrovision is entirely an analog "feature" of the outgoing signal from the DVD deck. If the vertical blanking interval is recorded on the DVD (unlikely, but I don't know, since I don't yet have a DVD player and therefore haven't played with them much), then your DVD player will send it out unless it specifically scrubs it. But it's more likely it's not in the movie, but a concession by the electronics industry to the MPAA, and the disc simply turns on or off the Macrovision circuits in the DVD player. So, it fails to turn on the Macrovision circuits sometimes....
Has anyone ever tried running a DVD player on a computer with an ATI Xpert@Play98 or similar card equipped with a video output jack? Does Macrovision exist on those? I'm sure the video converter chip on those doesn't actually get Macrovision commands from the video card driver.
And it plays mp3 cds.Yeah, someone at Apex really likes to ruffle feathers with intellectual property owners. :)
Re:This is actually true. (Score:1)
Once again, religion pretending to have a special relationship with morality fscks it up for everyone.
(wow, I said suppression, expression and obsession in a single sentence!. I will never need to do manual labor!)
Re:Can somebody tell me... (Score:1)
Well, I buy Japanese imports of anime titles... and those usually run you twice or more the cost of a US DVD. Same with Japanese CDs. However, there are titles that I'd like to have that won't make it to the US soon (or ever), such as the Shoujo Kakumei Utena movie. And even though the Japanese anime discs are more expensive than their US counterparts (if one exists) a good portion of the time they are of higher quality - the aforesaid Utena movie is less than an hour and a half long but is on a dual-layered disc, and the bitrate stays in the 9s almost throughout the entire movie. What does this mean? It means that it comes out beautifully, with no artifacting, bright colors, and a picture sharpness that rivals laserdisc (or is even better). Only problem I see is that there is no English translation on all but a very few titles (I believe Gainax is going to do English subs on the DVD release of FLCL), but I don't care - I want to see it regardless.
People in the US have been importing anime laserdiscs for a good long time now, and laserdiscs were never region coded. The region coding on DVDs is a just minor annoyance with the availability of region-free players. (FWIW, I have a region-free, and Macrovision-free, Pioneer-DV525.)
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Re:pr0n (Score:2)
Back in '94, I had my laptop when I was visiting a friend. When I let her know that I could get onto the net with it, she was like "so, can you show me some dirty pictures off the net?"
news:alt.binaries.pictures.nude [pictures.nude]
Even way back when (before it was fully commercialized) it was one of the biggest volume newsgroups (both in terms of MB of data and numbers of subscribers) on the net. But the signal to noise ratio was MUCH higher.
Apparently not very good build quality (Score:2)
Sounds like this is a higher-quality player, too.
The article says:
If there's an area where the unit falls extremely short, it's in its build quality. The unit is a fairly flimsy creation that I don't expect to last for terribly long. That's a problem if you're going to be using the Infinity as your one and only player. If you're using it only for multi-region stuff, it should have a longer shelf life. After all, less play means less wear and tear. For those intents, I think the Infinity is a good idea.
Nice to know that the
(and remember this next time you bitch about traditional journalists not taking you guys seriously).
What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:5)
For example, 50 years or so from now when The Matrix enters the public domain, will Macrovision magically turn itself off? Will the DVD decss itself? Will it magically become region free?
If you take the long view, there is a real legitimate reason for technology (and hidden menus) that get around technological copy protection.
chris
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:2)
And even if you did create this new magical format, who is going to release films on it? All the big distributors are so tied up in DVD that they would be unlikely to enter anything vaguely resembling competition.
Personally I don't really understand why the whole region encoding system was added to DVDs. People who *really* want to watch those grey imports will always find a way.
wrighty.
If you want quality (Score:1)
availability (Score:1)
> there is an interest in region-free DVD
> players - cheap DVDs!
As a European, I'd rather tell about their availability as they often cost the same, whichever region they are.
For example, The Alien Legacy box or the Die Hard box was out in Zone1 months before being available in Zone2.
There are other cult films like "The 10 Commandments", etc.
Now, if I were a Yankee, found of cult films, I think I'd look for films like Jacques Tati's, Marcel Pagnol's or other famous European film-makers.
<THIS IS NOT A FLAME>
You might have Hollywood but there are also some pearls by here.
</THIS IS NOT A FLAME>
I hope this could give you some clues about why people coul look after region-free solutions...
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Some shows aren't released (or edited) in regions (Score:4)
Don't think there are many? Try the enormous amount of anime available in Japan - anime's too much of a niche market in the US for many videos to be "profitable enough" to re-encode and sell abroad.
Also, there have been several shows from the BBC that I've wanted, but have never been released in the US. Once again, the studios/etc. involved don't want to risk the investment in another video distribution for another country.
Another very good reason is that there have been several movies released with different versions in different countries - scenes added or deleted according to the movie censors in each locale. For some examples, go to the IMDB and check some of the movies' running times - they will often be 2-10 minutes longer in some countries than others.
If there were no regions, then I could order those Japanese DVD's, or those UK DVD's. Or maybe I could get those foreign copies that have the extra 15 minutes of footage that the US censors cut out.
Re:Most DVD Players Region Free? (Score:1)
All Sony dvd players (well in the UK anyway) require a mod-chip to become multi-region. No cunning menu hacks unfortunately.
Troc
pr0n (Score:2)
Home projectors.
gif/jpg
mpeg
fast home dialup
VHS
Any more?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:No big deal (Score:4)
1. The contract that DVD player manufacturers have with the Big DVD Guys, which I understand explicitly states that their players must not play DVDs from the wrong regions.
2. The laws which there may be in the US, which theoretically may prevent one from chipping one's own DVD player, on the grounds that doing so would circumvent the copyright protection. I would be interested in what would happen if this ever went to court, since in no way does a region-defeating chip help you copy the DVD (although if the chip got rid of macrovision also, there might be a point).
Surely the first item applies equally to DVD players sold in any country?
I have seen lots of UK stores selling chipped players (we have one, it came with a year's guarantee from the shop for both the player and the chip), but not selling players that come with multiple regions out of the box.
I'm also interested to know if people in the US put up with region-1-only DVD players when nobody else does, just because of this curious piece of legislation. Or is it just because nearly all films that US people might want to watch are out in Region 1 anyway?
Macrovisions, TBCs, TV Station Graveyards. (Score:2)
Actually, *any* old TBC is great to have around the house, period.
Some TV stations have been known to sell old equipment from their "graveyards" to staff. I once picked up a complete old RCA Image-Orthicon color studio camera. (Circa 1963? 1964?) I was in high school at the time, working on the side as a cameraman for a local TV station. I used to hop onto my bike after school and head right over to the TV station down the road and do the dinnertime newscast. So, one day when one of the older techs there dropped me off after work, with my bike, schoolbag and a 400-lb studio camera in the back of his van, my mother flipped. <sigh> I wish I'd been allowed to keep that thing. It was so cool.
Anyway, I did get to keep a couple of early digital TBCs. They were free-standing, 19" wide rack-mount, occupying three units on the rack. Made by Grass Valley, about 7 or 8 years old when they were retired off one of the mobile trucks in 1991. No computer required, but they were full of 1Kx4 static RAMs. Plug in the video, bring the level up until the SAT light flashes during bright scenes, then crank it back a bit. Run the output video to whatever you want.
Once you have a TBC, you can run a VCR through the TBC, run the TBC's sync output into a good camera (most security cameras have sync in jacks, so that you can run dozens of them on the same display), and then do dissolves and stuff back and forth from the camera to the VCR. To say nothing of dubbing rental movies (but it's easier if you have any non-VHS VCRs kicking around).
And TBCs are great if you like to freeze-frame video: most of them will hold a picture in static RAM if the signal is lost. (Notice sometimes on live news coverage, if the satellite feed is flaky, the announcer will appear to freeze momentarily? That's a TBC freeze, hiding a screen full of static.)
Nowadays, of course, you can do all this on your home computer. But having a few 3/4" VTRs, an old Amiga 500, a couple of TBCs and a home-built genlock gave me a tiny little TV studio a full decade before the iMac.
Re:you moron... (Score:1)
Preach on brother...
I don't own a dvd player or a dvd. I won't even think of buying one until something breaks for the open source side.
I'm not a zealot by any streach of the imagination, but somethings are worth making a stand for.
Re:VDDV 600A (Apex DVD Player) Available Online. (Score:2)
Re:Region codes are history (Score:1)
Furthermore, if you go to the virgin Megastore in Paris, you won't find any DVD player that handles the region coding, they are all region free
Re:British Colonial Fuckups Aplenty (Score:1)
The reason I picked on the British is that half the time this topic comes up there's some UK-ite complaining about how awful the US is. I just thought those Brits who might think about chiming in with the usual suspects (blacks, native americans, etc) might like a little reminder that the high horse from which they judge the US has trampled quite a few people.
The Swiss? Don't get me started on the branch office of the Reichsbank, no women voting until 1973, and the general Swiss banking contribution to corrupt kleptocratic governments everywhere.
Re:Region codes are history (Score:1)
This all assumes that you are talking about the UK, how region cetric of me
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:1)
wrighty.
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:1)
The copyrights will never expire. Every 20 years the Big Boys get the congresscritters to add 20 years to the copyright laws.
Re:Can somebody tell me... (Score:1)
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Re:No big deal (Score:1)
Then you would be wrong, in many countries cartels are illegal and coontracts unreasonably in restraint of trade, or otherwise for an illegal purpose, are void and unenforceable.
Re:Where is it carried? (Score:3)
Look for Afreey LD-2020 instead. It's the same player.
According to this page [reviewer.co.uk], the firmware on the latest versions of this player are no longer hackable. Caveat Emptor.
Why this story under 'Toys'? (Score:1)
It's the chipset, not the player (Score:2)
This shouldn't be a suprise.
Re:What good if not NTSC? (Score:2)
Pioneer (Score:1)
Regional coding is about mind control (Score:1)
By adjusting different region versions and different language versions of the same DVD's. By carefully adjusting the films, they can implant subtle concepts, and use us for all manner of things.
What about availability overseas (Score:2)
I've been considering getting a Scan SC-2000 [scan.co.uk] which does appar to have a very similar feature list to this player, except that it's build quality is rated as very good in any review I've found. It's meant to have very good audio sync and good picture quality - has anyone actually used one?
The only downside to the scan player is that it cant disable macrovision (only region coding) but that doesn't really concern me since i cant think of any reason why i'd want to copy a dvd to vhs <cringe>.
At 160 quid or thereabouts + vat it's quite a good price. ($230 + tax)
Re:Some shows aren't released (or edited) in regio (Score:1)
So why bother encoding it in the first place? (Okay, Apparently a lot of them don't).
The point is, in the originating country (in this example, Japan) it is considered profitable - so they encode it for their region (and hteir region only).
However, they then decide they don't want to have to pay for a re-encode for another region, creating the new master, new packaging, more paperwork for foreign distribution deals, etc.
Macrovision is added later (Score:3)
Macrovision is "added on" by the player, according to some bits on the disc (discs can switch Macrovision on and off individually - it's not global to the player). All DVD-CCA licensed players *must* have Macrovision encoding on any composite/S-Video/component outputs. This includes PC-based decoder cards, which is why the makers of those cards refuse to give specs out to free/open source software developers. Once you have specs it would be trivial to defeat the added Macrovision even in Windows, and we can't have that.
Re:Can someone confirm / deny this? (Score:2)
Good question! I have no idea.
I suspect that if a previous owner has allowed unfettered distribution of reproductions that any future owner wouldn't have the right to restrict them, but I'm not sure of the specifics.
The law is a fuzzy thing, especially civil law. Terms like "legal" and "illegal" don't really apply to situations like this. If the owner advised you to cease distributing reproductions, AND he chose to sue you AND you lost in court AND no further appeals were granted AND a judge ordered you cease such distributions AND you didn't comply, then you could fairly call your continued actions "illegal", but that's only one way the process might unfold.
-Isaac
"Chipping" DVD players. (Score:2)
There is one major drawback to the chip- it nearly always requires much more than a simple chip replacement, usually soldering at several points in the player, which means that your warranty is certainly voided.
Region Coding not for DVD Manufacturers (Score:2)
If someone were to come out with another unregioned standard then the publishers would simply refuse to publish to it and it would die. Remember until the death of DIVX a lot of companies (such as Disney) were not going to publish a lot of their material on DVD at all.
Re:Macrovisions, TBCs, TV Station Graveyards. (Score:2)
You had a Toaster? <jealousy>Bastard!</jealousy>
Not just useful with a Toaster, though. Actually, my most powerful machine at the time, my old A500, was a relatively late addition to my home TV studio. (It came about the same time as a friend of mine slipped me a copy of Broadcast Titler 2.0 that they used to use to replace the $50,000 Chyron machines for newscasts.)
Before that, the TBCs were useful for syncing my only (at the time) 3/4" VTR with my camera's internal sync generator; once that was done, I could do crossfades between sources, and capture them onto my VHS machine.
After a while, I scored some more derelict 1970s-vintage 3/4" decks, and started to get creative when I threw together a luminance keyer.
You know what a "Chroma Key" is, right? Ya know, the blue screen background? It's entirely an analog way of superimposing one video source over another. Matched sync is critical (so I couldn't do it without either a whole bunch of synced cameras or VTRs on TBCs). All that the chroma key does is look for a specific color (commonly blue) and switches to the other video source while that special color is being sent.
Actually building a chroma keyer is just a matter of watching each line of video for a specific amplitude and phase of chroma information being sent in the scan line. Detecting the phase is the really tough part for me with my self-taught informal electronics training, and when I did this, I was in high school and so couln't afford to dedicate $200 of parts that I'd bought in Radio Shack blister packs to being smoked off a piece of perfboard in a failed attempt. <grin>
So, I just went the easier way: when I knew I wasn't in a horizontal or vertical blanking interval, my sync separator circuit held a line high. A high DISP line coming off my homebrew sync-sep board meant that I was in a displayable part of the video signal, and was used to turn on and off a small comparator circuit.
Any time the source video, in the displayable area, got above a given brightness, it switched to the second video source. With that, I had very crude "blue-screen" ability.
It was really cool, too, because if you played with the thresholds, comparator recovery times and other neat stuff like that, you could absolutely butcher a piece of video in all sorts of MTV "How did you do that?" ways.
In fact, one of the broadcast engineers at the station, who knew that I was good with a soldering iron and had had me rebuilding VTRs with him at one point, asked me how my luminance keyer circuit was coming along. I brought it in the next day, and plugged it in on the bench, and we threw some synced video at it. It was quite unspectacular compared to some of the big-$$ chroma keys at the station, but because it was easy to mess with, we were sticking capacitors across the comparator's switching output to introduce some smear in the source switching. We got some neat effects out of it that way, and even ended up showing it to the news producer, who used it to produce a neat smeared overlay for the opening of the evening newscast. That was cool.
Ahhh, I love NTSC video, even if it is completely inconsistant and archaic. The NTSC video signal represents what is probably the single most complicated analog waveform in general use.
Re:No big deal (Score:2)
And just think, if there wasn't that silly assault weapon ban, we could OVERTHROW GOVERNMENT. Damn, I'm joining the NRA!
(for those sarcasm-impaired, that was sarcasm)
Re:Macrovision is added later (Score:2)
Okay. And the storage mechanism for the series of raw frames is MPEG, isn't it, which would roughly mean that it stores each frame once, then adjusts each one in sequence according to the change?
I figured it was purely digital; the only question being whether or not it actually stored each complete frame as it would be stored on a videocassette or broadcast over the air. But I doubted that, since it strikes me that the overhead to actually attempt to store sync information and stuff in a digital format (rather than just create it on playback) would hamper compatibility with other future formats, as well as simply being unnecessary.
Macrovision is "added on" by the player, according to some bits on the disc (discs can switch Macrovision on and off individually - it's not global to the player). All DVD-CCA licensed players *must* have Macrovision encoding on any composite/S-Video/component outputs.So, all we need to do is learn what line on one of the really big VLSI chips on the board is held high/low to keep Macrovision on/off...
Unless the image is processed digitally into a frame, including vertical and horizontal information, before being send to the D/A converter for output... That would make things a little bit more difficult. But if you're running a DVD player with composite and S-Video outputs, I doubt that's the case, for a variety of technical reasons that stem from the nature of the way color information is modulated onto NTSC luminance information.
Hmmm... Actually, the more I think about it, if you have separate outputs on the DVD player, I'm more convinced that the video is prepared in analog format first, then somewhere along the way a sync processor circuit gets in between, adds chroma, H+V sync, and performs the chroma modulation to the luminance signal. Somewhere along the way, there's probably an output from the DVD player's computer that turns on and off the Macrovision circuits. It's only a matter of finding that signal line somewhere in the myriad of pins connected to all those proprietary chips.
This includes PC-based decoder cards, which is why the makers of those cards refuse to give specs out to free/open source software developers. Once you have specs it would be trivial to defeat the added Macrovision even in Windows, and we can't have that.Now, I understand.
In either case, though, unless you're a complete purist and don't want to add any extra electronics between your disc and your TV set, it's probably just easier to throw together a small scrubber, rather than trying to take out the Macrovision at the source.
Macrovision sure does make it tough for me to watch old movies on my antique TV collection: a 1954 General Electric doesn't play very well with stuff hidden in the vertical blanking interval. Nor does my 1957 GE UltraVision, nor does my 1956 Admiral Bakelite, nor does my 1960 Philco TravLer, nor does my 1954 RCA color. Only my 1955 Motorola doesn't seem to care.
Watching Ben Hur on an ancient black and white TV with my surround-sound system running just seems so weird, but it's also a lot of fun. <grin>
Re:Just don't buy DVD's (Score:2)
This argument might be legitimate if region coding were time-limited (and not applied at all to DVD releases of past movies); however, this is obviously not the case.
It's a market-cartelization scheme; nothing else.
/.
Just don't buy DVD's (Score:2)
As mentioned in a previous post, it would be easy by encoding region code 0 on all DVD's: no harware changes are hardware needed
List of Multi-region-hackable DVD players (Score:5)
Re:availability (Score:2)
Lea
Most DVD Players Region Free? (Score:2)
Oh well... I just fail to see the point of this article...
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:2)
Apparently so. But -
1) When some court finally gets around to outlawing region codes, the makers can save themselves the cost of a massive recall by having a "hidden" menu already in place to disable RC restrictions. Now all they will have to do is mail out letters saying "follow these steps".
2) The cheats are perceived as marketable features. This has been discussed in other branches of this thread. I will add that there is a sort of game of chicken going on between the makers and the DVD cartel. The makers know the cheats to be marketable. Knowing this, they know that someone is going to break ranks to take advantage of it. If anyone breaks ranks, then everyone else pretty much has to follow in order to maintain sales. Fortunately (from the makers' POV) there is strength in solidarity among cheaters: the DVD cartel needs them, too. If DVD revokes all the makers' licenses, how can they hope to keep selling DVDs?
So we'll continue to discover that this and that model of player is cheat-enabled. Indeed, as I have said several times before, fact (1) virtually assures that all existing players are cheat-enabled, whether we know about it yet or not.
Sure, there will be lots of lawsuits. In the long run, technology will almost certainly win out over syndication (though internet distribution may make the whole thing moot before all the wrinkles are ironed out).
Meanwhile, the more squeemish makers can hide behind the claim that the "hidden" menus were intended for service diagnostics, and consumers are not supposed to be using them.
--
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:2)
Alternatively (Score:3)
Re:Cheating the DVDA? (Score:5)
As a good example, i bought my Samsung player on the very basis that it was easy to crack so i could play the Region 1 DVD's in Region 2. Another good example is several well known UK supermarkets were selling players that could be easliy cracked, and told the buyers how do it. The players flew off of the shelves.
The easier it is to crack the player, the more people will want one.
VHS vs. Beta - technical differences (Score:4)
Actually, the reason VHS vs. Beta turned out the way it did wasn't because of any technical superiority on the part of the VHS format. It was purely price.
In fact, Betamax is a direct descendant of the popular (though old) broadcast format, U-Matic (3/4"). It's the same thing; as video tape head technology moved along and the head gaps could be made smaller, the whole thing could be scaled down in size.
To this day, Beta mechanisms, exactly the same as any old Beta VCR, are the foundation of the Betacam format, which is used in TV stations worldwide, especially for ENG work.
Beta tape is threaded out of the cassette through a much simpler "U"-load system than VHS's "M"-loading system, which basically looks like a Rube Goldberg invention. Instead of a cumbersom system of posts and hacked-up bicycle chain, U-Load systems use a loading ring, which just powers the tape around the head drum with less than half the moving parts of VHS's M-load. The design of the ring-based U-load system is centered around leaving the tape loaded during rewind and fast forward. That way, while you're fast forwarding or rewinding a Beta or 3/4" cassette, you can just hit the REW/FF button and have the picture come up on the screen so that you can see where you are in the tape. With VHS machines, the closest you can come to this is to hit FF/REW while you're playing, and the machine will scan ahead/behind faster. You miss out on the full rewind/fast forward speed.
Beta HiFi isn't a kludge the way VHS's high fidelity sound system is: rather than needing the separate "depth multiplex" hi-fi heads that VHS uses, the Betamax recording spectrum allocated space to FM modulate the sound and record it in between the luminance (brightness) and chrominance (color phase) parts of the signal. This means lower cost and better reliability.
Further, Beta allocates more space on the recording spectrum to allow better encoding of chrominance information. That's why, if you compare a similar vintage VHS machine with a similar vintage Beta, the colors will appear to be more real and usually with less chroma shift (tint change).
Beta's electronic design is such that the HQ system added to VHS playback circuits isn't required: VHS HQ doesn't have a Beta counterpart; Beta is HQ from the drawing board up.
Beta's head drum is a clamshell design, similar to most of the better 3/4" VTRs. The top and bottom of the head drum is stationary, with a small slot that allows the heads to poke through for tape contact. VHS (and cheaper 3/4" VTRs) use a spinning upper head drum. The idea is that the tape will ride on a cushion of air above the spinning head drum, and it reduces tape wear a little bit. But the spinning head drum causes stability issues that reduce the picture quality.
Beta was also designed so that at all recording speeds, the VCR uses the same head azimuth. VHS doesn't do that; for good picture quality (especially in EP mode), you need a four-head VCR, since a two-head VCR is optimized for SP playback/recording. When you hit pause or slow-mo, the VHS VCR turns on its tracking adjustment circuitry and inches the capstan to a complete frame, then it switches to its EP heads, which usually have a better azimuth angle for static display. This is why a 4-head VHS machine is required for a clean pause. Beta VCRs only need two heads to do it, but will only do it if they're equipped to fine-adjust the capstan position.
Want a neat piece of trivia? VHS stands for "Video Home System", and it was designed by JVC (Japanese Victor Company) as their entry into the home VCR market. The Beta format was originally designed as a compact 3/4" professional machine, with the word "Beta" being a Japanese word for "close" - because the Beta video tracks were closer together than 3/4". Beta cassettes, initially, weren't very long: as a professional format, most videocassettes were 20 minutes to 1/2 hour.
VHS is just a knock-off format that does the same thing as Beta, but without infringing on any of Sony's patents for helical video recording, automatic tape (as opposed to cassette) loading, signal processing, etc.
It saddens me that VHS won. Unfortunately, it's gotten to be pretty damned hard to rent a Beta video at Blockbuster, so I run VHS at home, too.
Actually, I've got a bunch of early VTRs, including a Sony 3600 open-reel 1/2" VTR, several of the very eariest Beta and VHS machines, and several 3/4" professional decks. Oh, and a 1967 Ampex Cross-Track open reel deck. Lemme tell you, compare the impotent little plastic noises that today's VCR's make with one of my old 3/4" editing decks, it's just incredible. Hit the play button, and there's a sound of a big motor starting up as the head drum is brought up to speed, and the a good succession of solenoids being turned on and off... "snap... snap... CLUNK!" as the machine engages the play mode.
It's like the difference in sound between a Honda Civic's 1.5L engine, and a Chevy 454 V8.
And man, a 1975 Sony 3/4" professional deck will produce an image that will blow the doors off the best of today's home video equipment.
why macrovision off (Score:2)
When I turn(ed*) off Macrovision, the picture was great.
That's why, for me anyhow
And as far as movies from India (or elsewhere), well
The movie industry is free to engage in the petty tyranny of region coding as far as I'm concerned, but they're breeding the same kind of "respect" that scrambled cable did -- region-coded releases I think demonstrate a fairly crass indifference to the customer who purchases a film. And so many people have no compunction about breaking their system with hardware hacks like this.
timothy
*before I brought back the two separate P.O.S. Apex players, that is.
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:2)
Well... although the copyright may expire someday, a movie or any other material does not become public domain, when it does. I fact, The Matrix will always belong to the people who made it. You will not have to pay for licenses then (that is why older movies can be sold on cheap video tapes), but you will still have to ask, before you distribute it. So, the DVDs' proctection mechanisms will "make sense" even then (in fact they don't make sense at all, but you know what I mean...)
this comment was uncalled for (Score:2)
Why can't people leave the Slashdot editors alone? Are you just jealous that they can make a living at this, where you can't?
Please. (Score:2)
If I release movies for it, I will be breaking copyright law. I will go to jail and probably become the love slave of some 400 pound guy named "Sunflower".
If, however, I make a regionless DVD player, I have broken no laws and, were I to be taken to court over it, I could probably prove collusion in the movie industry, could probably countersue for damages, and would probably win both suits.
(VHS, by the way, won for a reason, and its popularity was artificial at first. There was a time in which there were as many Beta movies on video store shelves as there were VHS movies. Then the MPAA decided which format it liked best, not consumers.)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Re:Alternatively (Score:4)
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:5)
The right to decompose slowly. You, your kids and quite possibly your grandkids will die of old age before 'Steamboat Willie' enters the public domain.
--Shoeboy
what does this change? (Score:5)
Flaming Weasels
Yeah. You read that right. Flaming weasels. Now, you might just dismiss this as some sort of delusion, but I ask you, have you ever been attacked by flaming weasels? If you have, you realize this is no joke. There is no hiding from flaming weasels. No escaping. Once the weasels have been sent, there is no turning back, and you may as well just disclose your proprietary closed-source sock drawer, because the weasels must be appeassed.
And here we are talking about new players which are going to break down in a couple months, but tell me, does that make the threat of weasels any less real? And who do you think the armies of flaming weasels are going to be sent to first, Joe Compliant who buys his standards-compliant dvd player, shops at wal-mart and votes democratic? Of course not, he's part of the Master Plan(tm). The weasels are going to be sent to "take care" of the deviants, the people who watch foreign films, the people who disable life saving features in their dvd player, the people who want to remake the world in their own way, not the time-warner-dvdcca-ms-mcdisney way. And the weasels will continue to attack until you or I or SOMEONE does something about it.
There is one hope. There is one possible salvation, one glimmer of light in the dark night of the weasel, though not too dark, as that they're on fire, and fire does make a little bit of light yanno. The weasels aren't exactly subtle. You're going to know they're coming, which in a way, is much worse. We only have one chance to defeat this scourge and take back the rights that we have so willingly sacrificed.
It is time for RoboMow(tm) [robomow.com]
Region codes are history (Score:5)
Within a few years it will probably be hard to find any players that only support a single region code.
Re:What happens when copyrights expire? (Score:4)
Close, but no cigar... Per the US copyright office [loc.gov]:
HOW LONG COPYRIGHT PROTECTION ENDURES
Works Originally Created On or After January 1, 1978:
A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
Works Originally Created Before January 1, 1978, But Not Published or Registered by That Date:
These works have been automatically brought under the statute and are now given federal copyright protection. The duration of copyright in these works will generally be computed in the same way as for works created on or after January 1, 1978: the life-plus-70 or 95/120-year terms will apply to them as well. The law provides that in no case will the term of copyright for works in this category expire before December 31, 2002, and for works published on or before December 31, 2002, the term of copyright will not expire before December 31, 2047.
Works Originally Created and Published or Registered Before January 1, 1978:
Under the law in effect before 1978, copyright was secured either on the date a work was published with a copyright notice or on the date of registration if the work was registered in unpublished form. In either case, the copyright endured for a first term of 28 years from the date it was secured. During the last (28th) year of the first term, the copyright was eligible for renewal. The Copyright Act of 1976 extended the renewal term from 28 to 47 years for copyrights that were subsisting on January 1, 1978, or for pre-1978 copyrights restored under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), making these works eligible for a total term of protection of 75 years. Public Law 105-298, enacted on October 27, 1998, further extended the renewal term of copyrights still subsisting on that date by an additional 20 years, providing for a renewal term of 67 years and a total term of protection of 95 years.
Public Law 102-307, enacted on June 26, 1992, amended the 1976 Copyright Act to provide for automatic renewal of the term of copyrights secured between January 1, 1964, and December 31, 1977. Although the renewal term is automatically provided, the Copyright Office does not issue a renewal certificate for these works unless a renewal application and fee are received and registered in the Copyright Office.
Public Law 102-307 makes renewal registration optional. Thus, filing for renewal registration is no longer required in order to extend the original 28-year copyright term to the full 95 years. However, some benefits accrue from making a renewal registration during the 28th year of the original term.
For more detailed information on renewal of copyright and the copyright term, request Circular 15, "Renewal of Copyright"; Circular 15a, "Duration of Copyright"; and Circular 15t, "Extension of Copyright Terms."
Re:what does this change? (Score:3)
He says, "All I got right now is this box of one dozen starving crazed weasels."
I said, "OK, I'll take that."
So he hands me the box, and I open up the lid, and the weasels jump out and they immediately latch onto my face and start bitin' me all over. Oh, man, they were just goin' nuts! They were tearin' me apart! You know, I think it was just about that time that a little ditty started goin' through my head. I believe it went a little somethin' like
this:
DOH! Get 'em off me! Get 'em off me! Ohhh! No, get 'em off, get 'em off! Oh, oh God, oh God! Oh, get 'em off me! Oh, oh God! Ah, Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh Ohhhhhhhhhh!
This review is VERY questionable (Score:2)
Any site that posts a positive "review" followed by a link to a dealer's site has no integrity - and should not be trusted!
I think Slashdot should not be posting any such stories. I go to Slashdot looking for quality information. This reeks of marketing.
Maybe there should be a story on paid DVD player reviews!
Jebus Cripes, there are people this ignorant?! (Score:4)
I guess it's been so long since a work has entered the public domain that people have forgotten what public domain means. You'd have to work hard to be more wrong. Public domain means anyone can use/modify/publish the work in any way and for any reason. You don't have to ask Thomas Nast or James Montgomery Flagg's permission (or rather the permission of their estates, since they're both long dead) to use the image of "Uncle Sam" in your art, or even to republish them unmodified.
-Isaac
Lifespan of a disc? (Score:2)
Could always happen that civilization will come crumbling down (a somewhat less likely proposition (are we really all that civilized anyhow tho???))
Re:you moron... (Score:2)
American of Danish descent actually, but thanks for caring.
--Shoeboy
No big deal (Score:5)
Yes. If you're an American. This is not just an American forum though. There are actually countries where region locking is considered anti-competitive and hence illegal. Look at New Zealand. It's only because the American public willing surrender their rights little by little, that you're prepared to live with this.
In other places, there is nothing remarkable about this player. In South Africa, most shops will show you the region beating features before you take the player out the door. I had three different sales people explain the region-defeating features of three different players, in one afternoon.
/* Wayne Pascoe
Website for discussion of Infinity (Score:4)
You can find the forums at http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/list.php?f= 13 [nerd-out.com], and can find general region-free/loophole news and information at the main Nerd-out.com Apex site [nerd-out.com]
--Alowishus
(yeah yeah, shameless plug, but the site is there for the community, not my benefit... so take advantage of me while you can!