[tlug] Re: [CoLoCo] RESPECT MICROSOFT

["Gernot Hassenpflug" <aikishugyo@example.com>]

steven smith <sjs@example.com> wrote:

>Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:
>> /../
>> Do you happen to know a list of DVD drives that lack region locking?
>
>/../ They also refer to a region free
>drive as a "region 0" drive.  I did a quick search /../:
>http://www.pcreview.co.uk/articles/Hardware/Make_your_DVD_drive_region_free/
>/../

This site is famous for its coverage of how to get stuff to play
without DRM and other marketing^W "protection" schemes, and here is a
bit about DVD players and what they must support:
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/rpc1.htm
It appears that DVD drives manufactured up to 1 January 2000 do not
have to support region codes. The region free state was called RPC-1.
This explains the name for the most famous site where firmware can be
obtained to make a large variety of drives region-free.

Wikipedia, although I would not trust it without resorting to a real
reference, says at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
that mainland China widely uses region 0 DVDs (playable in all regions
as mentioned by steve smith above). This does not clarify anything
about the DVD players though: do you get a region 0 DVD player -- I
would assume not. The thing that a player would do is deactivate the
region coding: such as apparently in Australia where "every
DVD-playing unit, excluding PC devices, is shipped modified with a
region-free chip installed. This was a result of a landmark ACCC case
in which the High Court of Australia ruled that region lockouts
breached fair trade and market competition practices." The rest of the
Wikipedia entry is interesting too as it describes some differences
between stand-alone DVD players and PC-integrated DVD drives.

For people using Windows Vista, it seem there is specifically no
support for the older (pre-2000) DVD drives (probably any such systems
will not be able to run Vista for other reasons):
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/12/09/502014.aspx

Some of the quotes (if true) in that thread are classic, and no doubt
raise hackles among members here on this ML :-)
"Why buy a MediaCenter device at a premium when it is crippled thus?
Unless of course you buy one from an OEM like Sony who is both behind
the MPAA regions AND sells deregionalized DVD players ... or one of
the other major MPAA studios who cynically markets NTSC Region 4 discs
(in a PAL only region) where only deregionalized players can use
them.."