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http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

Actually, bit-for-bit copies do not copy the DRM. Regular DVD recordable media specifically does not support CSS. The exception is "Authoring" media, which only works with special Authoring recorders that do not work with regular recordable DVD discs. This was clearly due to paranoia by the movie industry. Of course they never expected that their encryption would not only be broken, but trivially, meaning that the CSS information is not necessary to make a copy.

http://pioneerdvd.rpc1.org/Gen...

I have never owned a dvd player that honoured the no-skip directives on dvds

Try looking at the big-name brands sometime. You've been able to get cheap Chinese players for a long time that don't honour them, but even something like Apple's DVD Player app honour them. More recent computer DVD drives enforce the region coding in hardware, so its difficult to bypass entirely in software.

Psst!

Sometimes the hardware isn't that terrible, it's the stupid ass firmware installed on the hardware that cripples it. Anyhow, it's not like most manufacturers want to do that - but rather some assholes out there have to ruin things for everybody.

This might be the place to go to find your answers...
rpc1.org

they can't install custom firmwares that remove the restriction.

You can install custom firmwares on the mac yourself however that prevent the region change counter from deducting.
http://forum.rpc1.org

Go to the Firmware Page:

http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

Download and flash you DVD firmware, region coding problem solved. Anyway under WTO rules DVD regional encoding is a violation of trade laws, so you can circumvent the coding without any fear of prosecution since the United States is a member of the WTO and must abide by the treaty, well in theory at least. Just ask native Americans about treaties and the US Government if you need a clearer answer.

5. Get a copy of MacTheRipper and get rid of that pesky region encoding
6. Find some region-free firmware for your drive and flash it (this is a little risky.. ) http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

(I know this is off topic...kinda)

Check out the Mac forum of rpc1.org. There are a few apps and the possibility to flash your firmware to make it region free. I'd try the apps first.

If you check this thread http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=38176 on the site you linked to, you will see that indeed, the newer Matsushita drives (830-850 series) used in all MB/MBPs can NOT be flashed to RPC1 or read discs from outside its own region, and all attempts at working on a firmware hack have been abandoned due to the issues I mentioned in my earlier post. Of course there are still many RPC1-flashable drives being made by other companies, but none which will fit in the slimmer slot-load form-factor of the MB/MBPs.

Also note that this behavior is NOT normal for a region locked drive. With most locked drives, you can still use DeCSS-based software such as AnyDVD, DVD Region Free, DVD Decrypter, mplayer, VLC, etc. even if a RPC1 hack is not available. OTOH, only the newest Matsushita drives will flat-out refuse to read encrypted sectors (even in raw/direct mode) when the regions don't match. Software cannot get around this problem because these Matsushita drives won't even attempt to read data from the disc unless the region code matches.

So, unless Apple has dumped Matsushita in the new MBP revision, the only possibility for region-free on a MB/MBP at this time is to use an external drive, and for me that is not an acceptable option.

I don't know exactly what kind of Matsushita drive is in the MBPs, but many of them can be flashed to be region free. The behavior you describe is normal for a region locked DVD drive by the way, they're all supposed to work that way.

I'm not going to comment on it any further... http://www.rpc1.org/

You could always try flashing the DVD drive to an RPC1 firmware(http://forum.rpc1.org/viewforum.php?f=30) in combination with Region X(http://xvi.rpc1.org/region.html) to handle the region changes. I was using this setup on my machine for a while and never had an issue. YMMV

You could always try flashing the DVD drive to an RPC1 firmware(http://forum.rpc1.org/viewforum.php?f=30) in combination with Region X(http://xvi.rpc1.org/region.html) to handle the region changes. I was using this setup on my machine for a while and never had an issue. YMMV

Sorry if this is an obvious teaching-granny-to-suck-eggs suggestion, but have you tried re-flashing the DVD drive firmware?
http://www.rpc1.org/

For LiteOn drives (many other brands/models use repackaged LiteOn, including many Sony drives)you can change/reset/disable the region code quite simply using THIS.

Any DVD drive which has a 'can only switch x times before the region is permanent and cannot be changed anymore' operation is defective. They are designed this way quite deliberately - made this way to frustrate consumers of DVD disks, forcing them to use specific suppliers ( who pay the required bribes aka 'licensing costs' to the DVD and movie cartels ) who sell them with large and uncompetitive price markups. You are unable to shop around for the best price/deals in the global market, as you can with essentially any other good or service. Its essentially criminals colluding together to remove competition and screw you over for money. This type of market manipulation and collusion is illegal in countries that have strong consumer-protection and antitrust laws in place.

Your drive can likely be repaired such that there are no restrictions on region. This is done with RPC1 firmware, it removes all switching retrictions, region restriction, and lets you play disks from any region, as well as region-less disks.

The Firmware Page probably can help repair your DVD unit and restore its full functionality.

It says there are limited switches when you are asked to switch it.

RPC2 was made to stop you from doing what you are doing. So of course it's a pain.

That being said, the chance that you are boned now is tiny. Go to rpc1.org and remove the rpc2 lock from your drive once and for all.

http://rpc1.org/

Additionally, DVD drives are so cheap now that even if you were boned, it wouldn't be that big a deal. I wonder of the region coding people ever thought that drives would be come so cheap that people could just keep 6 drives around (the number of region codes settable) for about $100 and bypass all the region coding stuff anyway.

The page you linked to is at rpc1.org. RPC1 is the non-region coded firmware which Windows Vista will not be supporting.

Uhh, yes, that's the domain name. If you spend two minutes browsing the site, you'll see they have plenty of RPC2 firmwares. link

(A bunch of savages in this place, I swear. I'm not even supposed to be here today.)

You don't get it, do you? The problem is that the drive you can buy at newegg is region-locked, and the region can only be changed 4 times.

Oh, I get it. I get that you've never heard of the dangerous brothers. Just flash your drive with a region-free firmware and you're done.

Of course, your solution of buying four drives and a new computer case would work, too, but that's the type of advice you get from the floor-monkeys at Best Buy.

It's such a pain in the ass to get any media, especially DVDs with diff region codes

Get a decent DVD drive like the NEC 35xx series (or similar; these are cheap, like $40) then get one of the custom firmwares (warning: ads) that completely remove the region coding garbage. Then you are all set.

Yeah 'cause there is no way that we won't see hacked firmware released for TV capture cards like we do for dvds.

I'm sure we also won't see someone using a felt tipped marker thanks to the wonderful people protecting the world with great laws like this..

Of course all the people using such things will be terrorists, so I guess that's ok. I hear there are other bits of Cuba to fill anyway.

You can buy a Liteon 1213 drive, and re-flash it into a dual-layer capable, 16x burner. Using Liteon's notorious tool, Kprobe, the actual burn quality is improved, resulting in a disk which can be read back faster in an ordinary dvd reader. IN OTHER WORDS, if you have a 1213S, it's in your own best interest (in terms of burned disk quality) to upgrade the drive into a 1633S.

For years, Liteon has been well known for it's products being upgradable to the next model. You could buy a 401S (a basic 4x DVD-R burner), and upgrade it to a 811S (an 8x DVD-R/DVD+R burner). Or in this case, the 1213S can be made into a 1633S, with just a simple firmware flash.

More details here, here, and here.

No, you can't. For about the last five years, DVD drives themselves have been enforcing region coding in firmware. Firmwares that do not enforce regioning are called RPC-1. Ones that do are called RPC-2. The only way to make a recent drive RPC-1 is with a hacked firmware, since the companies only release RPC-2.

The Firmware Page is one of the best sources for hacked RPC-1 firmware. But if no one has hacked up a new firmware for your drive, then there's no way around region coding regardless what software you're using.

1. can I get a region free DVD drive for my Dell laptops?

Possibly. Try having a look on The Firmware Page and seeing if there is a region-unlocked firmware for the drive in your Dell laptop. Your other alternative is to get hold of a program like DVD Region Free which I believe will strip off the region coding (and other things) before it reaches your DVD player software.

Here.

For the NEC drives, the best source of info is CD Freaks forum.

As shown here, Sony does use Lite-on for this drive.

Here you go!

http://superdrive.cynikal.net/

more info on mac dvd firmware is available from here:

http://xvi.rpc1.org/

However, I haven't seen anyone else yet mention the following quote from that link:

Note: There doesn't seem to be a BookType setting for DVD-ROM DL with current firmware revision.

I for one have a settop DVD player which will not play discs burned without the DVD-ROM BookType setting. Does this apparent lack of the DVD-ROM DL BookType setting mean that double layer discs cannot be BookTyped yet? It appears that single-layer DVDs can be booktyped, however, from what I can glean from the article and from the firmware site.

www.cdrinfo.com
The firmware page

Two forum threads about upgrading your NEC-drive :)

NEC 8x DVD Burner $81 - Free Double Layer Conversion 12-May-04
newegg has the NEC 8X Beige DVD+RW/-RW Drive, Model ND-2500A, OEM Bulk packed for $81.50 free shipping. No rebates. Click Thru to see new price.
Hack it into a NEC 2510A DVD+R Double Layer burner! (Thanks Ken) Save $120 over a new Double layer burner!

Here's a link to the article linked by techbargains.

And here's a link to a page with the firmware (scroll down to NEC 2500).

- JoeShmoe
.

I'm well aware of the hacked firmwares, I used a few of them on my DVR-A04 (and a good link is here). While those firmwares are pretty good, what you're forgetting is that the way that they manage the overburn (because that's really what it is, in the case of the DVR-A04, you were basically overclocking the burn, it's just that Pioneer did some testing and found that certain media didn't have any problems with it), they use a "default" write strategy for the overburn. This doesn't necessarily work very well (especially for some 4x discs, it seems). Luckily 2x wasn't a part of the official standard, so how 2x is done doesn't matter, but 8x is part of the standard, so it does matter.

And yes, I have your strategy, buy a few blanks of a type, and then see how well they overburn. Of course, I'm now running into some problems on some of my media, because it wasn't designed to overburn, but that's my fault. Also, don't forget that some manufacturers change who makes their discs, so it's possible to get one batch that works great, and one batch that doesn't.

What I'm sick of is these drive manufacturer's coming out with a drive, saying it's "8x", but then when you read the fine print, it says that 8x isn't approved by the standards body yet. So, if the standard changes and the drive can't be patched to meet it, then you're SOL when it takes effect, and it becomes difficult to buy your special media.

At this point, I refuse to buy an 8x (-R) burner, until there is an announcement stating that 8x (-R) is an official standard and that there is firmware for the drive that supports it. I got burned on the 2x thing before (that burner cost me $500), I'm not getting burned again.

Also, let's not forget that companies like Pioneer that do this are keeping the cost of the higher speed media high. The reason for this is that all of that testing for a media to get (specifically Pioneer) 8x certified costs money to the media manufacturer, and that cost gets passed on to the consumer. But, from Pioneer's take, if they didn't do it, they wouldn't be able to sell drives (because their speed would be less than +R).

-- Joe

(Coincidentially, this was reported today in MacSlash.)

You can get custom hacked firmware for your drive, specified by manufacturer and drive-revision. This makes your drive RPC1, ie enables unlimited sone-changes.

Take a look at thid dvd firmware page. There are probably alot more pages, but this was the first I found with google.

If you use Windows however, you should beware. Your OS or/and Player might be counting too. Use DVD Genuie.

That should get rid of those nasty zones.

Then I bought another that's showing a corrupt firmware(AS-IS, damnit).

"The RIAA can at any time change the DRM rules," he wrote in November, "and considering their history, it's likely that they will when the majority of consumers have embraced DRM and non-DRM products have been phased out. Some DVDs today include commercials which can't be skipped using 'sanctioned' players. If the RIAA forces Apple to include commercials, what excuses will the Mac zealots come up with? 'It's a good compromise'?"

Well, one can always try a patch, although I wonder if the DMCA would apply. It's not circumventing a copyrighted work, it's the exact opposite-- circumventing having to WATCH a copyrighted work.

MOD CHILDREN UP! ;)

Yep, but not for long : one of my computer is an AlBook which features an UJ-816 superdrive.
I however read that xvi considers Santa'ing for me...

And the people dehacking these BIOSes will probably be the same folks who dehack DVD firmware, like these guys.

The trick will be getting past the DRM in the unhacked BIOS to install the dehacked BIOS. Considering the skill of these hackers, it'll probably take them five minutes.

Personally, I think the best way to contest this is the age-old adage: Bote with your wallet. Don't buy mobos with these BIOSes -- buy the competition, even if it's not as useful. Make it clear to the mobo manufacturers that you won't buy a mobo with that BIOS, and because they used it you won't buy their stuff. If enough people refuse to buy this stuff, it'll sink faster than the Titanic (or the Itanic).

I did a successful flash and now my LG DVD-ROM 8161B works perfectly! The auto-reset firmware sets the available number of region changes to the maximum every time I boot the computer. Neat!

I thought that these days the DVD-ROM firmware controls the number of available region changes, not OS or the playback software.

Yup.. of course, that doesn't stop programs like the one mentioned above from sitting inbetween the firmware and the OS/playback software and giving it different numbers.

However, there are quite a lot of places where you can get region-free firmware..
Flash once and liberate your drive from geographical restrictions forever!

Sheesh. You people are so frickin' lazy...

--grendel drago

Strange how you're suggesting that one reads the forums and you don't even know that Firmware Flash forums has a thread which shows you how to downgrade the Pioneers' firmware.

Kiss DVD Region Free

It took a couple of weeks for it to arrive, but it finally got to me.

First thing I did was to make it regionless - Region free Kiss DVD

Next, due to lack of the software CD, I had a hard time working out how to get the ethernet port to work - luckily, a nice person on Kiss DVD forum pointed out to me that the software was also on the same .iso that is used to update the firmware.

Once software was installed, and the IP of my windows machine entered into the Kiss DVD setup, I was able to play all of my files that were Divx4,5, Xvid, mp3 etc.

It requires a windows machine to stream the data through, but if you can share a drive to it eg, samba, then you can share from non-windows platforms.

In fact, it plays them better than on my PC (Athlon 1600, 1G DDR, GF4-Ti4200).

So far, the promised Divx3.11 support is not yet with us, but indications are it will be with us in a few weeks. Once it has, it will make the noisy computer beside my TV redundant!

While I do recommend this to the people who need to be on the leading edge, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't have a CDburner - though who would buy a Divx player who didn't?? -due to the need for frequent firmware updates.

KiSS Technology DP-450 and DP-500. There are even efforts underway to dezone the 450 and 500.

While I agree with you about the limited usefulness of this device when it doesn't support MP4 ASP (don't give a damn about DivX 3.11...) there's no reason why you couldn't make the drive region free; there's even a page with illustrated step-by-step instructions so probably even Joe Sixpack could do it, as long as he owns a PC...

np: Sabi - A Scene When The Train Leaves (Metamatics - Rewired In My Manor)