Re: Blu-Ray Region Coding
- From: "Bill's News" <billsnews@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:43:32 -0800
"RL" <rl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fjia11$snf$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bill's News wrote:
I've got an LG BR/HD player under WinXPHE-SP2 using PowerDVD,
delivered with the drive, as the player. The LG wants to
check for firmware updates and PowerDVD is in strict
compliance with the player spec - what a PITA, VLC was much
friendlier;-)
As I'm only renting media from NetFlix, I've not had the
question of BR region coding arise. However, what reading
I've done suggests that BR is region coded while HD-DVD is
not.
AnyDVD and DVDFab claim to handle BR/HD. They both say they
remove BR region coding, among other restrictions. I'd guess
that the software/firmware region enforcement strategies are
otherwise similar to DVD drives.
Thanks Bill for a sane reply.
HD-DVD apparently does support region codes, as there has been
some discussion of using them. My concern with buying a
Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive is that they possibly can be locked to a
region, like a modern DVD drive. If this is enforced by the
firmware, then it wouldn't be possible for AnyDVD and other
products to rip the data in order to remove the region coding
without updated firmware (which may never exist for the drive
I buy).
Since it is possible for at least two currently available
programs to override currently implemented region logic, then it
must be implemented in software. Were it to become firmware
implemented, undoubtedly requiring the larger volatile memory of
future specs, it would probably not be long before other
programs would appear to "update" the firmware. So far, the
industry has been quite good about observing backward
compatibility, yet they could change heart. However, region
coding cracks would seem to me a minor issue when compared with
copy protection cracks. How many billions of dollars will they
continue to throw at these issues? Is it any wonder that among
the richest men in the world are more programmers than studio
executives?
I'm hoping it is all software-based, and that there will be no
problem using disks from other regions. I'm just trying to
confirm this before I rush out and buy a drive, only to find
that I buy some region coded movies in the near future (they
are already appearing), and end up with a drive locked so I
can only play one.
Here's a MUCH more annoying issue with BR/HD player software
(namely, PowerDVD). Whenever I use that player to play captured
HDTV, the player suggests that I should turn off it's DD7.1
support. If I do not, the player does indeed act poorly or
crash. If I do, then the player blithely removes the NVIDIA
audio drivers used by my HDTV capture device, requiring me to
reinstall, from the beginning, the capture software and updates.
This causes me to use either MPC or VLC, as I did before, to
play HDTV. Which in turn leads me to compare the image
quality - in those cases - to PowerDVD. The two free programs
win hands down. Up until now I was giving all the stars to my
ATI x1300 graphics card and ATI's drivers for it. Now, it seems
that MPC & VLC produce superior video quality to PowerDVD - and
without audio issues. I can only hope that they will some day
add BR/HD player capability.
.
- References:
- OT: Blu-Ray Region Coding
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- Re: Blu-Ray Region Coding
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- Re: Blu-Ray Region Coding
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