On 27/04/14 12:39, Russell Coker wrote:
On Sun, 27 Apr 2014 07:44:59 zlinw@mcmedia.com.au wrote:
region free firmware is the main stumbling block for me. I lived overseas for quite a while, so I need to play region 1 as well as region 4 discs. some uk discs too.
errrrrrrrrr, lets put it this way......... libdvdcss allows one to watch DVD's from different regions, its a cryptographic cracking system so some distro's (Debian any way) do not package it. For a long time I have sucessfully viewed zone 1, 3 and 4 DVD's using this library. The library is transparent in use if its present a player (eg xine) will use it, if its not present it will of course not use it.
I believe that doing so requires that the drive itself be region-free. Some drives will just refuse to return the data.
Some years ago I had to re-flash a Pioneer drive to make it region-free. I still own that drive even though I've sent many newer drives to e-waste because I want to have a drive that I know can be used to read disks from multiple regions.
Does anyone know what portion of modern drives are region free? Would it be worth my effort in testing all the DVD drives from my spare parts shelf to find some that are region free?
Well I tried region 1 & 2 in my Pioneer DVR-216 using VLC and deCSS. Works fine. I think that all drives sold here are region independant after the case a few years ago that found region coding was an unwarranted restraint. Region coding is handled in the drive firmware, deCSS just deals with anti-copy encryption.