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One note we can take from the history of a commercially unsuccessful product is DAT copy protection. DAT had the potential to become a consumer audio format, but the industry was really worried about copy protection since with DAT you can make perfect digital copies. They put in a copy protection "feature" called SCMS Serial copy management system. After a few years deck manufactures started producing decks that defeat SCMS. Maybe this will happen with HDTV media protection. If not, I'm sure somebody will figure out a way to bypass it or reverse engineer it.

The disc, like most BBC DVDs, will probably be dual region 2 and 4; so the Australians will be able to see it.

Different companies have different rights areas; the BBC will want to release a R1 version for NTSCers out there, but it's not such a high priority for a company which is resoundingly Region 2. Also, BBC discs are released by Fox in the States, who won't want their area treaded upon. Complain to them.

Maybe also the rights to HHGTTG are owned by someone else; "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and "The Avengers" are owned by A&E, for example.

Now you get all the problems we have every time something cool is released in the States that we can't get; e.g. "Almost Famous" bootleg cut, Monty Python series box sets, Criterion "Life of Brian" and so on. That's why a lot of British people (including me, and most of uk.media.dvd) have their players modded. You should too, even if it's just a DVD-ROM drive and DVD player software (or a H+ hardware card.) Enjoy a whole new world!

For the software side of things, I use DVD Genie, which works with a number of different players, including WinDVD.

However, you also need to have a DVD-ROM drive that is region-agnostic. You can check this with DVD Genie, one of the tabs in the program allows for this. If the drive is RPC-1(Region Protection Control, I think), your drive doesn't care what region encoding the disc has, and all you need is DVD Genie. Most drives are RPC-2, though, meaning that it will allow for a certain number of discs from different regions to be played before it "locks" on the final one, usually the fifth switch. Many can be changed to RPC-1 by installing different firmware(I did this with the drives on both my desktop and my notebook.). The best place I know to find region-free firmware is The Firmware Page.

Good luck to you.

Austria
http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/pub/linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Vienna)
Canada
http://sunsite.ualberta.ca/pub/Mirror/Linux/mandra ke/mandrake-8.0/iso/ (Alberta)
Czech Republic
ftp://klobouk.fsv.cvut.cz/pub/linux-mandrake/Mandr ake/iso/ (Prague)
ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake/iso/
France
ftp://chronos.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/linux/dist ributions/Mandrake/iso/(Belfort)
ftp://ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/unix/linux/distribu tions/Mandrake/iso/ (Paris)
ftp://ftp.uvsq.fr/pub/mandrake/mandrake/iso/ (Versailles) Germany
ftp://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/mandrake/iso/ (Chemnitz) Spain ftp://ftp.cica.es/pub/Linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Sevilla) United Kingdom
ftp://ftp.mirror.ac.uk/sites/sunsite.uio.no/pub/un ix/Linux/Mandrake/iso/ (Canterbury) United States
ftp://ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu/pub/linux/distributi ons/mandrake/iso/ (Georgia)
ftp://ftp.stealth.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.mandrake.com /Mandrake/iso/
ftp://jungle.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributio ns/mandrake/Mandrake/iso/ (North Carolina)

> All the more reason to buy a DVD player that lets you change its region code an infinite number of times

I know you mentioned DVD players, but unfortunately all the new DVD-Rom drives are RPC-2 (meaning user & vendor are locked after 5 region changes)

Fortunately, you can flash the firmware in your DVD-Rom drive:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/

You can see the region lockout status for different drives here:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/dvd /page0.htm

*now to find out who the oem is on my no-name brand dvd-rom player...*

> All the more reason to buy a DVD player that lets you change its region code an infinite number of times

I know you mentioned DVD players, but unfortunately all the new DVD-Rom drives are RPC-2 (meaning user & vendor are locked after 5 region changes)

Fortunately, you can flash the firmware in your DVD-Rom drive:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/

You can see the region lockout status for different drives here:
http://perso.club-internet.fr/farzeno/firmware/dvd /page0.htm

*now to find out who the oem is on my no-name brand dvd-rom player...*

Now here's where you can get a firmware upgrade that'll make your T22's drive region-free. Nice to have Linux users in on this now.

I found some here. An interestign thing is that I was wrong. It isn't a chip but a literal filter over the lens. You just have to remove that. Wen my friend said he opened it and removed the IR filter for some reason I thought it was a digital filter, but apparently it's an optical filter. Another page said that the USB version doesn't have the IR filter.

--

It has a firmware update, and also a patch to Apple's "DVD Region Manager" which bypasses the count change decrement code. The current drive in the G4 is "MATSHITA" (Panasonic/Matsushita) 8584-A (the same .hqx file contains the firware and patch)

I don't know if the Region Manager patch can be used with any Mac DVD drive or not, but I don't see why not.

There are other patches for drives in the wintel world as well.

I'm not talking about information or knowledge. Or Das Kapital. I'm talking about pornography. No one is trying to keep people from learning about various political philosophies on the Internet. But sorry, pornography does not and never should qualify as a valid use of public workstations.

What if I am writing a freelance article on cyberfiltering software? Wouldn't I want to see what is getting blocked. Isn't that a legitimate, not-necessarily-prurient use of public infrastructure?

What if I am writing a book about the differences in the depictions of sex in male and female oriented media. Isn't that a legitimate reason to look at porn?

What if I happen to think that Picasso's Woman on a Pillow is art and you think it is pornography. It isn't a matter of sensualism -- it's a matter of artistic judgement that puts Hustler into the porn category and Picasso into the art category (news flash -- Picasso like booty -- young booty too).

http://perso.club-internet.fr/flory/