On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 07:52:12PM +1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
Replacing my venerable CD-ROM with a DVD drive has moved onto the to-do list. A quick bit of googling suggests that linux compatibility isn't an issue, and they'll mostly be SATA. Internal drives seem less advertised, but not excessively scarce.
Is it the case that some makes (e.g. LG) read scratched discs better than others (e.g. ASUS)? The 3:1 price difference between HP and ASUS doesn't surprise much, since that's usually the cost of the name plate.
From the beginning (many years ago) I have had problems with some DVD drives not reading video DVD's correctly so these days I usually have 2 DVD drives, and LG and either a HP or Pioneer DVD, if the disk wont work on one it will (usually) work on the other. Note: I do not have a TV or infact watch TV at all, I do though uses DVD's for some entertainment, because of this it was worth my while to go to some effort to watch DVD's. Robin Humble said...
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. Lindsay
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? -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
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.
participants (3)
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Allan Duncan -
Russell Coker -
zlinw＠mcmedia.com.au