[MPlayer-users] DVD RPC (fwd)

[DEBERT Jean-Louis]

Steffen Barszus wrote:

>  > > that's probably the reason why so many guys (girls:) are making
>  > > region-free firmwares on the net). But it's also known that some
>  >
>  > they do it for windows lamers
>  
>  and only for them. In windows there is a tool called 
>  dvd-genie that make it 
>  also possible to play every dvd regioncodefree, this tool starts the 
>  comercial soft-dvd-player and everything is alright. So it's 
>  a myth that the drive itself take care of it. 

No it is not. It simply means that there are _two_ checks, one 
in the software player (which dvd-genie, or libdvdcss, take care of)
and one in the _drive firmware_, which _cannot_ be bypassed if it is
present in the drive's firmware (the firmware itself does the check
when the software requests "read title key", and will return an error
if the region codes on the drive and on the DVD media do not match).
That's why you have "patched" firmwares out there, where this check has
been removed.
If you read the documentation for dvd-genie (or other tools) it says
unambiguously that it will act at the _software_ player's end, but
that you _must_ also have a region-free drive for it to work at all.

By the way, most computer drives manufactured before 01/01/2000 were
region-free originally from manufacturer, it's only after that date
that region checking (RPC2) became mandatory.
At that, most current computer drives (but _not all_) can be made 
region-free again with a patched firmware (I did with my own,
ACER 10/40).