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MPAA Investigates Apex DVD Player
RiscTaker writes: "Wired reports that the MPAA is investigating the Apex DVD player because of its ability to avoid region coding, Macrovision and CSS.
" I bought my Apex 600A last week at the former home of the $99 iOpener, and found that the secret-menu hack described at nerd-out worked flawlessly. Perhaps the MPAA would like to invest in a time machine to revisit the days of mercantilism, or to stuff the encryption cat back into the bag it's long since vacated.
how come /. is so fucking slow?
go and spend some of your fucking money for higher bandwith!!!!!!!!
keep bringing non-working DVDs back to the store;
if needed, show them that your old DVDs work;
"They are trying to win sociologically. Sure, there'll always be the malcontents and malfeasants who will trade hacks and thumb their noses. But 95% of the world's people (esp. in the industrialized nations) will do what has been socially approved and will avoid that which has been labelled "bad" or "illegal". That's why the MPAA is trying to paint everyone with the "pirate" label ... because Joe Q. Public hears "pirate" and thinks "ooh, bad"."
This is why you see so many people driving 55 and always following driving rules. Oh and there's no underage drinking or smoking. And by the way the whole drug epidemic thing is a myth - because everyone that's not a geek is a sheep. Please!
RiscTaker writes: "Wired reports that the MPAA is investigating the Apex DVD player because of its ability to avoid region coding, Macrovision and CSS. " I bought my Apex 600A last week at the former home of the $99 iOpener, and found that the secret-menu hack described at nerd-out worked flawlessly. Perhaps the MPAA would like to invest in a time machine to revisit the days of mercantilism, or to stuff the encryption cat back into the bag it's long since vacated.
thank you
It's big chains like Blockbuster (owned by xtian fundamentalists, according to some horror stories about working there) that are largely responsible for edited US videos- a studio has to edit a video or they won't buy copies, and they may decide it isn't worth the trouble to also release an uncut version. As usual, we just have to hope it's sufficient to support local shops owned by sane people.
Presumably storage for software updates (embedded flash RAM, which can only accept a finite number of writes anyway) is managed by the i-Opener and/or the service provider, not the user. It's too bad they don't allow archiving onto PCMCIA cards or something, but I suppose that would add cost and complexity, and mostly appeal to people who'd put in a hard drive and Linux anyway (if not just buy a PC instead).
glad to hear that such a "hack" exists.
Remember, each craft is unto itself a DVD region. None of the litigants are separate, nor regular. This is why this type of player will succeed.
Whatever they can do, evidently thinking things through isn't on their list.
MPAA: Must Persecute Art Aficionados.
However, some discs check to see of Disc region ORed with player region == disc region. This detects region zero players, the the disc will refuse to play, hence the need for region selectable players.
That's a pretty tepid imitation of the incomparable Og, of rec.humor.oracle fame.
That's news:rec.humor.oracle. Bad supplicant, no preview.
I ordered my iOpener late Monday afternoon after the slashdot story ran on Sat. I live in Chicago, and all Circuit cities were out (5 counting ones in FAR suburbs), as well as the warehouse. Nevertheless, I paid full price ($99) to the cashier to order one. I was pretty grim about actually getting one, but I thought I would at least give it a try. Well, low and behold, mine arrived 6 days later. And it was upgraded to a true 200 mhz cpu. Circuit City never cancelled my order, they are still selling them at $99, and they are SLOWLY arriving. Maybe this will give some hope to future owners. -Christian
Hey, is it my fault I purchased this player for one distinct reason to play MP3's. It's not my fault that Apex screwed up when putting in the CSS and Regional code stuff. I have tested the "secret menu" but I have not used it, and I have no intention of using it. So what if they were to remove the CSS key for Apex off of the DVD's, using the menu couldn't you just bypass that DVD player death penelty?
Most people are probably illegally copying these games, but there is still a valid and legal use for mod chips. The DMCA may create problems, but I doubt it.
No, they're not the same... at least the Apex is different from the rest. The reason the Apex is similar to say, the Raite, is that they both use the ESS Videodrive chipset. ESS provides reference firmware for the things, so manufacturers just take their firmware and make small changes. Raite firmware won't work on the Apex though.
I saw this come up on a mailing list I'm on called LINK yesterday. It concerns Mr Jack Valenti, the head of the MPAA and what his tactics are like. In particular how he's given shit to the Australians for years on things. Here here to 2600 Magazine, 2600 Australia and everyone else for standing up to this guy...!
From fist@ozemail.com.au Thu Mar 23 10:43:37 2000
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2000 15:08:24 +1100
From: Stewart Fist
To: link@www.anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [LINK] Re: [2600-AU]: MPAA smackith down
Grant writes about Jack Valenti coming to town.
Just for information, Jack was President Johnson's minder and trouble-shooter
during the Vietnam War, and had a big hand in the Bay of Tonkin resolution
that got the Yanks and us involved.
He also spoke about Australia's development of a film industry in the early
1970s (talking to Hollywood moguls) saying that moves by indigenous (ie
Australian) film industries were a threat to Hollywood's export industry and
should be resisted at all costs. At that time the owned and controlled about
90% of the key cinemas and all the distributors in Australia.
He was a close friend of the Labor Minister for the Media, Doug McLelland
("Dutchess Doug" who's son is now in the Federal Opposition). The Minister
supported the Americans, saying that the Australian film industry was still in
the kindergarden stages, and we should let the Americans come here to make
their films, so that we could learn from them.
He also asked Jack to help find a job for his daughter who had just shifted to
the USA, and in the same letter he suggest that the US industry might nominate
a representative to sit on the Australian film production committee advising
government. Australian film and TV production associations weren't given a
representative on this committee.
Don't under-estimate who you are dealing with here. He has very strong
political connections on both sides of the Pacific, and an enormous amount of
financial backing.
Jack visited Australia to pay his complements to the Minister for the Media
within days of the election of the Whitlam Labor Government, and we gave him a
big welcome -- quite a big turnout of film and television production people,
all carrying signs.
You might like to consider doing that again.
--
Stewart Fist - writer and columnist
See http://www.australianIT.com.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/ (some archives)
http://www.electric-words.com (main archives)
70 Middle Harbour Road, Lindfield, 2070, N.S.W, Australia
Phone +61 2 9416 7458 Fax +61 2 9416 4582
=)
LMAO
you da man!
The DVD CCA people could pull Apex's decryption key on all future DVDs released in the future, so you'd be stuck with only old movies. There are only about 400-500 keys, and probably many more player models expected during the life of DVD, so I suspect that Apex has only one or two keys for all of their products. This would put a major hurt on the very innocent people who made the mistake of buying a product from a company that later on released a hackable product. The alternative is that the DVD CCA doesn't pull Apex's key... but then what good is the key if it's useless at stopping pirates. Could the DVD CCA really still claim it's purpose is for copy protection and not just content control?
you must be the john katz troller, the guy infatuated with anal rape and jizz licking. your post was another sad recitation of what goes on in your twisted mine. The troll to which you replied has a poignant, stark reality to it which encapsulates what it means to be a real troll.
Go back to vinyl records.
Slash doesn't like much of anything these days, em being a notable example. Especially in extrans mode, which is what the author of the parent used.
Extrans dosn't appear to be working at all, also the option to change defaults appears to have vanished too.
i want to be able to watch dodgy HK action films without waiting for your *ahem*members*ahem**cartel* to release it in my region.
Actually, many HK-movies come without Regioncoding. I have a copy of "Shaolin Temple" (awesome martial arts...) that's marked "all regions".
MPAA: Slash Dot Sucks Dick
If an encrypted DVD (which most are) doesn't provide a session key for Apex players, they simply can't make any sense out of that disc. One wonders if manufacturers are going to quietly start including DeCSS in firmware, in case the MPAA colludes against their products....
The Wharfedale 750 from Tesco... 180 quid, region hackable from remote. Don't know about Macrovision though...
My Creative Labs Encore can bypass macrovision and regional coding with a bit of software, how come no one ever made a fuss about that?
OK, the Yamakawa also has the hidden menu. Check ou this page: here
I've never seen so much misinformation surrounding a product... Yes, you can still order them from CCity, yes they're 99. Whether or not you can order more than 1 at a time depends on your salesdroid. None of my orders have been cancelled, as of yesterday.
This is all too true.. I don't know what the fuss is about.. Must be the CSS key decoding that is the major booboo here. Hell, my Toshiba drive that came with my Dxr2 card (Creative , now also supported with and without CSS in Linux! Way to go!) was region free from the start, no firmware upgrade needed. Other Dxr2s came with firmware upgrades to disable regionchecking, and at the time, together with remote-selector you sorta had it all. Also in all major stores, your dvd will be fitted with regionfree chipping (or better yet, selective region coding, since some DVDs require a region key that corresponds). Hell, if ppl didn't do this, they simply would not sell any DVD players.. And also, since it is not illegal to import and own different region coded DVD movies, there's no real reason to have it there to begin with.. Of course, this brings to question just wthat the topic here says, what then is the overall purpose of encoding anymore ?? It's a nuicanse, that's all..
I thought there were 6 regions. What's 7 and 8? International waters? The UN? The Illuminati? Cabal members? Bob? Space? :)
"Still, Apex officials said the next version of the Apex DVD player will have the hidden menu disabled.
How many people want to bet this isn't true? If it is, then this company is run by the most braindead idiot in the world. No one is going to buy and unknown, POS import from CHINA when name-brand players (that have available region and macrovision hacks) are only $50 more.
Ridiculous. They'll claim to disable the menu, and in a couple weeks someone will find it again. That or Apex management will suddenly see sales drop and go bang their heads on the wall.
Here's a clue, jack...if you are a HARDWARE vendor, then you don't do anything to piss off consumers. If they want to disable regions and macrovision then by god, you better let them or you won't sell anything.
Oh, true, you may get sued. So play cover-your-ass and take your chances with the courts. After all, you will be making money hand-over-fist so you can now afford some good attorneys who can challenge these bogus rules.
Oh, by the way, what the got the MPAA's panties in a knot about disabling CSS? There's no way to output an unencrypted stream! What the hell is the point?
Credit purchases can be tracked. Registering your player is just stupid. Registration, is the first step towards confiscation. Just ask any former Australian handgun owner. It's also why the gov't would love to someday outlaw cash.
It's where you bend over and TIMMY BOY does it to you!!
After all, Malda's ethics are HIGHLY DUBIOUS (FSF donation, paying moderators, VA 'sponsorship' etc), so why not just join in the Malda /. Love Fest.
Yeah Baby!
Just with he'd call me more often :-(
Are there any 'special instructions' for RCA units?
eh?! I found this wacky arse website with "anti-linux" pics..http://www.polyester.net..Check this out..
Click to en-large the anti-linux movement.. erm. ok..
They got something called "geek satire" also..
Oxygen with Linux? Science fiction could become science fact
Rare meteorite promises glimpse into creation and the source code of Windows2000
Hackers suspected as Microsoft 747 explodes in mid-air due to blue screen of death.
Cisco integrates routing, switching and underwear drawer technology.
IBM plans to change the shampoo world.
Microsoft Unveils Plans for X-Brush tooth brushes.
It's called "getting a clue", and hopefully they won't be the only vendor to realize they can earn a lot more money by making us happy.
Gather up those pink ribbons and deck the Web for TIMMY!!
Copyright generally requires substantial creative work. A string of bits from a random number generator doesn't qualify any more than the shape of my apartment key or even the title of a book.
Entropy is what makes evolution impossible, though of course the atheist science community will have none of it. Write your congressman and let them know that you require CHRIST JESUS to be a part of all publicly-funded science research. Let's see how quickly we can rid science of all the anti-Christian riff-raff. My guess is two years?
God, that was good. Now wipe yourself off and get me a pizza
We needed a replacement for Roblimo. Apparently he's having a tounge replacement. The last one wore out licking up to Malda.
C'mon, no one's going to do anything to China. It the world's best source of cheap labour. We know it. They know it. Even if their license is pulled. Why would China quit making the players and exporting them? What local Chinese legal recourse would the DVD-CCA have? No one boycotts China for doing anything illegal. Turn a blind eye and keep on trading. That's how it works. That's how it's always worked.
getting on the train, perhaps?
Shit! They've annoyed BOTH of the Great Satans! Talk about taunting the universe!
Who eats 'em? I shove them down my pants...
I see this every now and then in reference to various DVDROMS and players, but am not sure what it menas exactly, but that all DVD devices mfg after 1/1/00 must be RPC2. Is this some kind of anti-hack hardware?
Mod it to play import games? Yes it's legal.
Mod it to play copies of games you own? Yes it's legal.
Mod it to play copies of games you don't own? No it's not legal.
Sony making so the same mod is needed to play imports as to play copies? Priceless.
Actually if the mod to do imports was different than the mod to play copies, Sony would've had an easier time cracking down on the latter mod chip. I do own more import games than domestic. I NEED the mod chip. It plays copies too, but that's not why I did it.
Dont worry, TIMMY-BOY will take it like a good'un.
So why not join the Malda-Bum-Boy sponsored /. Grunt In?
Its easy, just remove the firm Penguin from your gaping butt-hole and let TIMMY-BOY do it to you? GRUNT AWAY FOR LINUX!
And none of them were even made in the recent past... except for the Apex. What good are these 'secret menus' if you can't find the fscking players for sale anywhere?
samsung 709 (at least for a while yet) via the aiwa hi-fi remote hack
Big surprise.
that could be my day, but i'm so busy i'm lucky to even get in one troll, much less get bites
If Microsoft had invented the zones on DVD players the general public would be all out to attack Microsoft. That being the case why are we letting the media companies off so lightly? I think we should request that either zones be band or have a special time decay zone. Basically you time stamp your DVDs so that they would not be viewable before a certain date in a certain zone - still not great, but at least I could buy by DVDs anywhere in the world and see them anywhere once the film had been shown at all the cinemas. What on earth happened to the global village, or do these media companies see it as the global village of ghettos?
10. Do all of the above abroad, where there is no DMCA. (Ooops... like it helped Jon...)
ho hum, dawg pix. ...but that "losers" directory, now that's pretty cool! lots of other awesome pix too.
Does anyone know whether there is a hack for the ProScan DVD player? MPAA - Monopoly Pays Again and Again
what are you up to now? I'm at a lazy 155...
I wonder what Sig has by now...
--
+&x
Looks like that "secret menu hack" has already been pulled ... :-(
OOG SPEAK GREAT WORDS OF WISDOM. ALL OF SLASHDOT MUST LISTEN.
WE NEED OOG WEBSITE FOR OOG TO SPREAD GREAT WORDS FOR LIFE. WWW.OOG.ORG ?
That's the excuse they use. But I think the developers of these things hate region codes as much as anyone else around here, and do this on purpose. After all, how does disabling Macrovision help in testing?
This page has information on disabling region codes. How could so many players have these "accidental" features, all with different button sequences to enable them, and why are they mostly region 2 players? The demand for imported movies is probably highest in region 2 (Europe often gets movies after the US), so the manufacturers add multi-region features to help sell players. How well would a single-region player sell when all the competition is multi-region?
*All* of the players I've seen that had ways to de-region/de-macrovision the player from the remote control or front panel controls were ALL 1st generation players. These were expensive as hell because they were still new tech back then, so there aren't many around now. The Apex is still on shelves and is dirt cheap too. name one other player still being sold at a major chain outlet today that is hackable without having to resolder SMD ROM chips (not a task for the meek)?
Nice try, but Google doesn't cache the pictures!
Press SETUP with no disc in the player. Arrow down so 'PREFERENCES' is highlighted. Now press STEP, |<<, >>|. You are now at the secret menu. Set the region to 'bypass' and macrovision to 'off'. Not sure what turning css off does, or those wierd magic codes stuff. Note the cute phrase at the bottom of the menu: "YOU SHOULD NOT BBE HERE". Someone has a sense of humor!
Let's also go arrest everyone with an old TV set that can tune the upper end of the UHF band, where cell phones can sometimes be heard. ;) After all, it's an illegal radio reception device, right? Damn, America is stupid. I'm about to make a major purchase over at unamerican.com and start turning some heads..
DeCSS => Norway
cp4hack => Sweden
Linus T => Finland
Check them out once, they are different countries after all.
Do the US's laws apply over there? I don't think so.
Neither do I. And that's a Good Thing (tm).
-AC Suomesta
Have they stopped selling 'em?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
DVDs can only do 25 or 29.97 fps. Not 24.
OG.
Because that is a slippery slope.
;)
My social security number is just a number. So is this post. So is a computerized representation of my genetic code. According to your interpretation, no electronic media is copyrightable provided it is represented as a number (which it is, a long binary one). Or at least the *number* isn't copyrightable....
Jeez, this stuff makes my head hurt. I liked it back when I thought I was buying an actual program, and not just a license to use it. Oh, and I'd never copy it, I just hit upon the right (unpatentable) combination of bits to produce a disk that's surprisingly similar!
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
The apex doesn't even have a registration card.
If you disable Macrovision, you'll have a pure video signal that you can better test to make sure the player is putting out a decent signal.
Just for all the people wanting to run out and buy one....
:)
This player has some serious issues with Dolby Digital output and dvd's that support seamless branching.
Take a look at the Forums on nerd-out.com first!
If you can stand it's many flaws/quirks, it is a kick-ass player.
Plus it's fun to say screw you to the MPAA
(owned by xtian fundamentalists, according to some horror stories about working there)
I don't think that really accounts for much, if they were 'Christian Fundementalists', they wouldn't even buy and rent out the 'edited' versions either. I'd say that there's more pressure on the customer side than originating within the chain itself.
Personally, I don't see a point in not releasing a director's cut. Once Blade Runner's director's cut was released, how many people bought the other version? I'm not even sure if they are available at all in any format anymore.
In my area, there's ostensibly a Family Video rental store, where you can find some dumb sex video next to Star Trek. That's wholesome family entertainment there!
> no, but taking it to court could stop the sale of it.
Wouldn't this count as restraint of trade? Banned under WTO rules?
Hehe. It's soooo funny. I did Circuit City's first website when I worked for AnswerCity, their old defunked telephone tech support dept. We called it AnswerWeb. I had to actually go to meeting with senior PHB's (Rick Sharp and so on), and try to convince them the web was the way to go, especially for customer support. Eventually of course they dicked me over royally. *JEEZ* the stories I could tell.
They didn't get it then, and I doubt they get it now.
At any rate, I thought ya'll might like to know that the apex players are available from their website for express pickup if your local store has any in stock. I'm picking mine up this morning.
Circuit City is all out. Who else sells them?
Gone is the thrill of the secret and forbidden!
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
What I know about HTML could fill a thimble with plenty of room left over for the seamstress's finger, but as an experiment, here is the text in question with one difference--
Watch your wording - what you said is technically wrong on a few counts. CSS is a trade secret, not a copyright, and as such is suubject to different laws. Because of that, they could go ahead and sell an unlicensed player as long as they can prove that the CSS decryption information is in the open and therefore no longer qualifies as a trade secret.
--The only thing I changed was to use capital b's and i's instead of lowercase, and if this looks the same when seen here as it does in preview, you'll see that that has made all the difference.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
APEX 600A review on epinions HERE.
pronoblem
I am so pleased with the performance of this unit. I would recommend this unit to anyone. At the retail price it beats just about all sub-$500 players on features. This news makes it all the better...
pronoblem
This what they are feared that they will lose control of their regioning of DVDs. Well I guess it doesn't take a long for it to start slipping away without the use of DeCSS. The Saga continues.
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
I've tried them out at a couple of Circuit City stores, and all the ones I've seen have the menu. BTW, all the stores I went to said they don't normally display the Apex (even though they've been running newspaper ads nationally for at least a month) and that you have to ask to see one or buy one.
this wasn't in new jersey was it? i tried to by one over the weekend and they only had the display model left and they told me that according to state law - if they sell something - they have to display it. luckily - i found another circuit city that had them - when i called for quantity they had 5 - and hour later when i got there - there were 3 left and they were all bought before i left (me, my roommate and some other guy)
-Jae
Hollywood video - "We only stock wholesome movies" - worded in legalese, of course.
Blockbuster - look at the drama section... lots of child-unfriendly content.
I just use Netflix which happens to have no such inhibitions (http://www.netflix.com).
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Network Administrator
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Looks like my Sampo 560 is also one such device. Readily available at Fry's.
:(
There is one problem... it apparently got misaligned with a region 2 disc from blockbuster (?!?!?!) featuring Jackie Chan.. The whole thing just vibrated to hell.. I am thinking of calling up Sampo for repairs.
Oh, and it plays CD-Rs and MP3s.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Network Administrator
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Oops... I forgot that one. And to do it anonymously, coward that I ought-a-be. ;-)
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Region 0 is "any", so yeah, players play their own region plus zero. IIRC, the region encoding is a single byte of data, with a bit for each region (1 to 8, so zero would be no bits). In theory it's possible to encode a disc to more than one region by setting multiple bits.
DVD video playback is controlled by a kind of virtual machine (this is what allows for branching, multiple angles, etc), and certain player settings are readable as registers in this VM. Its possible to put code on the DVD disc to read the region setting and refuse to play if not set correctly. Apparently there are a couple of discs out there that will refuse to play in the Apex (or other hacked players) if the region code is set to "bypass", but will play if the region code is set to what the disc wants.
(My guess is that VM implementation bugs are what causes some problems with some combinations of DVD movies and players, for those discs that really exercise the VM.)
-- Alastair
Jeez - the story hasn't even been up for that long, and the Nerd-Out Secret Menu page seems to be taking for days to load!
*sigh*
All this bandwidth at school and nothing to burn it on right now... Think I'll go download some more Q3 Patches ^_^
Kagenin
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
The thing I love about Sony is that not only does it make the players that play the movies we love, but it also makes the movies! Weeeooo hoo!
--Bernie
Well the situation where I live (Iceland) is a bit different than in other non-english speaking countries. Movies are not dubbed here (with the exception of animated films). Subtitle creation is no a credible reason, I think. Sometimes premiers are close to US premiers, sometimes Europe. But DVD-wise we are region 2.
My point however was that player cracking and between-region purchasing make the region system moot.
-haffi
I'd guess that it's so that the MPAA members can release movies in different regions at different times, charging more in one region than the other. This was they can charge those high first-week prices when they release it and they won't have to worry that people have already bought the movie from the neighboring region at the lower fourth-week prices.
Oh, and of course it keeps those nasty foreign movies from infiltrating the US market and ruining America's morals (or Hollywood's profits).
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
Also dig the cool menus and the nice, nice sound quality.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
One point:
Which are you more likely to do? spend the time to try and copy 12+ Gigs of movie, or spend about $20 for the original?
I can understand the probs the industry had with people copying VHS movies that cost about $50 to $75, but when the medium (DVD) is retailed for barely more than the effort to copy it, whats the point in copying it?
As for the region bullshit, what was that intended for? Some kind of wierd censorship idea?
May the RIAA and MPAA suffer the legal equivelant of terminal gonorrhea
Yes, one day I may actually learn to spell...
http://www.vddv.com/prod01.htm
This describes the companies own info on the player. One of key features is "Region free", and NTSC/PAL compat. (very important for chinese viewers as most have either PAL or NTSC discs and TV's) Plus you can get bulk shipments of 4!
All the US needs to do to put the screws to Taiwan is to do nothing. Just tell China "Hey we don't care. Do what you will, we're staying out of it."
My paranoya realy got to my when i noticed that I
couldnt get a hold of a dvd-rom. I live in Stockholm, which is suposed to be the hotest it-region in europe and there isnt a singel DVD drive available in _any_ store in town. I can realy feel the MPAA breathing down my neck.
Id better go put some tape to form an X
on my window.......
Das Ix
This is my sig, show me yours
It's not like some company couldn't go make a DVD player without a CSS license now; it's just that companies are afraid of the DVD CCA's high-paid attorneys.
Are any of the manufacturing companies based in Taiwan? If so then the MPAA had better give up and get a life NOW.
The US would coma out far worst than Taiwan from any trade sanctions and any form of military threat would be seen as threatening mainland China.
"Local Police and MPAA Officials Confiscate Illegal DVD Players!" Yeah, great publicity for the MPAA. Confiscate those DVD players!
Except that this just wouldn't work. Whilst with DeCSS the item in question is a piece of software and special laws appear to be appled to software. A DVD player is clearly an applience.
The MPAA wouldn't last 5 minutes as the defendants in a criminal case, which is what they'd get by this kind of behaviour.
Or maybe theft (and getting cops to act as robbers) is legal in the US...
And just how legal is this "region-coding" crap, anyhow?
Depends where you are. In the US large companies have lobbied hard for special legislation for software. (Legislation which will take literally years to be properly examined, even that which explicitally violates the US constitution.) In other places, e.g. New Zealand the government have declared the whole thing "illegal under international law". Thus making it difficult to sell a player which accepts the region coding.
That's the excuse they use. But I think the developers of these things hate region codes as much as anyone else around here, and do this on purpose. After all, how does disabling Macrovision help in testing?
Many Home Entertainment devices (e.g. TV's and VCR's) have extra features accessible from the handset. Typically test/diagnostic and fully documented in the service manual. (Are any of these "hacks" in service manuals, BTW?) As for the Macrovision this can case problems where a VCR is used as a modulator for a TV which does not have SCART/SVHS/Composite Video/etc inputs.
Can you buy this player in the UK? If not is there another one that can play mp3? There is a very similar player available in Germany badged as a Yamakawa.
In which case it is avaliable to anyone in the EU, which interstingly is more people than the US... The only complication for the UK is having to convert pounds to DM (or Euros).
When you buy any player here in the Netherlands, you can pay an extra NLG100-200, and they'll "de-regionlise" it for you. Still covered by warranty too!
I picked one up in Austin recently and the guy at Circuit City told me they sell 20-30 of the Apex's PER DAY--and this is only one store. At this rate, we'll keep the MPAA's lawyers busy for YEARS!
I had not intended to buy a DVD player because of all the deCSS flap, but with the Apex, I can screw the MPAA and the RIAA in one swoop--SCORE!
----- Leghorn "Not responsible for program content"
Well, perhaps there is a software solution to this.
1. Release your DVD player software that, for some strange reason, turns off macrovision and lets you change the regions around as much as you want.
2. Release a "patch" to turn on the macrovision and prohhibit region changing to please the MPAA and stockholders. Have te readme list what it EXACTLY will patch up.
The solution? Just don't install the patch. Admit the macrovision and regional bypasses as "bugs" and let the QA team take the hit. Hmm, I see a potential moneymaker here.
Sony is really big, I wonder how the President of Sony's income compares to that of Bill Gates.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I also believe that the censorship aspect is an important part of it. I mean the reason why American movies are censored in the first place is to comply with the will of our government. However, you shouldn't think that only the Republicans are respnsible for the current heavy censorship of American media, people like Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and Ms. Tipper Gore are a big part of it too.
This is one of the reasons I vote Libertarian.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I'd say the last two words of the .sig (that you didn't copy) kind of answer your question.
Intolerant people should be shot.
probably not, for the same reason that region encoding dosen't count as restraint of trade (quite how that isn't restraint of trade I have no idea)
Looking at the Wall Steet Journal for March 20, 2000 Pg. A27 one of the little news clippings had that The Playstation 2 DVD bug, the ability to play othre region DVDs, may prompt the recall of the PS2.
From the Article:
"That [overriding regional coding] would violate an agreement that requires hadware makers to sell DVD players that can play only softare sold in the same market."
Interesting huh?
Do you really think that the MPAA would try a force a recall on Apex? They can my have Apex 600A when they pry it from my cold dead fingers ;)
After the second time they ran out, 2 clerks at one store told me they just got some in, but they had all been re-worked to remove the secret menu. I bet them that it still worked,
This rumor has been floating around the net for months now. I suspect it was started by canny eBay vendors trying (successfully) to coax higher bids for the Apex machines that are routinely sold there (for far greater than the $170 that Circuit City charges for them). I just bought one last week from CC and the secret menu works fine.
Alas, with the threatened MPAA suit, the rumor might actually become a reality.
Goom
I understand your obvious hatred of Clinton may have blinded you, but Exon was a Republican, NOT a Democrat, and the only 16 votes against the CDA were cast by Democrats, not one Republican had the backbone to oppose this. I don't mean to be partisan, those are just the facts.
Also, with an 84-16 vote, if Clinton hadn't signed it, his veto would have been easily over-ridden, so, in his ususal, pliant way, he decided not to take a stand. The most you can accuse him of on this issue is cowardice, for malice aforethought and threats to the constitution you need to look at the conservative Republicans who wrote and pushed this through.
To be fair, Sens Byrd and Heflin, two old, Conservative Dems also supported the CDA, but it was Exon, who wrote and introduced it.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
So I was wondering- what the point of region encoding? To capitalize on the market of about two dozen people who happen to buy DVDs in more than one region?
I mean, a lot of the things they're so po'ed about people breaking just seem to be totally worthless to me... does anyone have any reasons?
(Besides the rather obvious "stuck in the old mindset from broadcast TV" that never made much sense anyways)
One more reason to pay cash for this kind of merchandise, and not send in any registration card. How are they gonna locate you then?
I agree, because I am using my VCR in that fashion. When I found out how much an RF modulator would be to drop the DVD AV outputs down to cable, I laughed in his face. The Apex has saved me a nice bundle right there.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
They can have my DVD player when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers...
Besides, while I've owned one of these since the last /. article, I'm not registered. (Though, if they got real insistent, they could track me through Circuit City and my credit card.... Hmmm, time to hole up in Montana.)
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
(When I was shopping for a player I asked this question of one dopey sales person and he looked at me in horror saying "we can't get a player like *that*!!" I took great pleasure in telling him that his competitors were selling just this type of equipment and just walking away from him)
My player happily plays either R1 or R4 disks - it's rated to R4 but I've put many R1 disks in and it's been fine. I've been told not to complain to the manufacturer if it spits on another region disk tho'!
Enjoy The Wall - it's a great transfer from the original film...
Anyone else find this remotely intresting?
--
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on
Ouch, so the Raite (and whatever names it uses) .sig
is a real challenger from the Apex..
Hmm, I was a bit doubting about the Apex, but the functionality and menus looked quite similar..
(SuperVCD, VCD, MP3, CD, DVD etc..)
Ah well, watch my
It's a Chinese company, Waisun Industrial Co.Ltd who produces this beasts goes under multiple names: Apex, Raite , Yamakawa, Kiss, Hoyo and Monyka. So, don't be suprised to see identical beasts, under various names..
Also, this beast plays: *SuperVCD*,*VCD*,MP3,CD & DVD.
Besides Circuit City it is also sold at Fry's (California?) going under the name Raite AVPhile 715 for $149,- (Different casing + optical output)
The Ugeek review of the Apex 600A is over here
A real geek review, can be found over here
Also A good French site
A German one
Some firmwares can be obtained from the next German site
I think a good geek, knows his way to Babelfish, so have fun...
P.s. The European distributor, is ABC Comp in Germany, I'm gonna try to find out, where I can buy this unit in Europe, for a decent price..,
What I should have said was nothing.
I concede that the method of encryption/decryption is a trade secret. We've seen that it is possible to reverse-engineer the method (DeCCS) and that right should be protected, if for nothing else but precedent (eg, IBM PC BIOS). However, why wouldn't the actual keys fall under copyright law?
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
Don't confuse copyrights with trademarks. Any new written material, whether it is software, a book, sheet music, art, or this post, is protected under copyright law.
BTW, although 0x35 0x38 0x36 couldn't be trademarked, 0x50 0x65 0x6E 0x74 0x69 0x75 0x6D has been an Intel trademark for several years now. Put enough numbers together and you can do anything.
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
Yank APEX's CCA license. If they don't have a license for a CCA key, APEX can no longer sell DVD players, since the CSS code within would be unlicensed and therefore infinge on CCA's copyright. In other words, the player becomes hardware DeCSS.
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
It should be noted that Tesco has taken other manufacturers to court (specifically Levi Strauss) to allow Tesco to sell the manufacturers products in their stores at discounted prices.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Who needs a standalon DVD player for this? I have a creative labs 6x DVD, and the install program will let me change the regions 7 times before it locks me out of that, but after that, its prob just a registry edit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\DVD_Region might be a good place to start looking... And why limit watching DVD's on my 19" monitor and speakers when i have 60 ft cables delivering S-Video and Dolby Digital AC-3 to my reciever and then to my TV?
Bypassing DVD region stuff isnt all that uncommon.
Casey Webster
Owner
Trifocus Security, LLC
Co-op pre-prof programmer
IBM Corp
RS/6000 Server Group, APT -- Product test
NT = No Text
You are not me, therefore you are not important
What was that brand name again? Can I get them in Australia? :) bwhahahaha
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
One thing that gets my goat is that a lot of the 'news for nerds' on slashdot is absolutely USA specific.
:) BTW, is there someone out there willing to send me an i-opener COD (plus tip!;-)???
I could not buy one of these around here (Perth, Australia) if my ass was on fire. I've already tried buying a $99 i-opener from circuitcity (when it all happened), but they cant ship outside the USA (due to manufacturer agreements)
Please dont tease us poor foreigners!!!!
Anyway, give a thought to those of us living in backwaters
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Even if Apex decides not to manufacture any more Apex 600As, you can probably always find one on E-bay. A quick search told me that 44 are currently for sale, some of em are even saying they'll include the instructions to access the hidden menu. LOL
my quick ebay search
they say: i-opener is designed to be a compliment to the PC versus a replacement. In order to maintain the simplicity and convenient size there are areas common to a PC that are not supported such as Instant Messaging, video files; downloading files from the Internet (there is no hard drive or other user-managed local storage on i-opener); viewing of Adobe PDF files; web pages that use Flash animation; Shockwave, Java, or DHTML components won't be viewable except for the html on the page; USB ports are not currently enabled, but will be in the future via software download.
SOOOOOO, you can't download files but the USB ports can be activated by a software download???
Hehe seems to be a contradiction...
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Your angle brackets got removed by the HTML parser.
The correct sequence is Step, (back track), (forward track), at the Preferences menu.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
JOhn
to the MPAA... doesnt it suck when one of your MEMBERS (hello sony?) ships something that can play supposedly blocked regions? why not just bite the bullet and do away with region blocking.. i want to be able to watch dodgy HK action films without waiting for your *ahem*members*ahem**cartel* to release it in my region.
im going to buy a dvd player shortly before the hardware locks are enforced at a manufacturer level (1 july) so i can get either get it modded or use a software hack and watch whatever the hell i want.. dvd is a great format..pity about the money/power hungy people driving it.
interesting thing is... while looking around at dvd players.. a good 80% sell pre-modded units.. and mainly pre-modded units.. the region blocking ISNT working
Dms0
the revolution will not be televised, or released in your region..
You should feel guilty if your just watching - ATR
I logged onto /. at 11:30 pm, read the top story and its 33 replies. Grabbed the hack (thanks to the XOOM mirror cuz nerd-out had already crumpled... geez, you folks are lethal;) High-tailed it over to CircuitCity.com. We live in the boonies but there are two Circuit City stores within 50 miles. Each store had one Apex unit available. I reserved one and will pick it up tomorrow. All this plus mp3s thru my killer speakers! Getting a DVD player was in my immediate future... bought copies of The Wall and Blade Runner several weeks ago... didn't exactly plan on doing it tomorrow until today.
Thanks, y'all. Slashdot is The Force.
ixia the impulsive aka Doe #218
No, there is a big difference: region coding is a technical restraint that can be circumvented. Legal or economical restraints, on the other hand, would violate, among other things, anti-trust laws.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
The real-world Slashdot effect. Hrm...
Damm those Japanese. Curse the Euro-swines. No respect for US law....
I hope you're being sarcastic... I certainly *HOPE* that they have no respect for laws like this...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I believe that it's perfectly legal to mod your PSX... Although what a lot of people use that chip for (playing copied games) is illegal, so I think that's brought around a bit of a gray area.
If you're just playing import games on it, everything should be allright.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I wonder if the argument that it's hidden and a 'debugging feature' will hold up in court...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Can you buy this player in the UK? If not is there another one that can play mp3?
There is a very similar player available in Germany badged as a Yamakawa. It is available elsewhere under other names. There is an unofficial FAQ at http://start.at/yamakawa, hoever it is in German.
--
--
Things are only impossible until they are not.
No $#!+? Whereas most other DVD players play the movie whilst it's still encrypted, and let you watch the white noise, I suppose?
This part is a bit misleading. The secret menu allows CSS descrambling to be turned off, so scrambled DVDs won't play. Only really useful for checking if DVDs are scrambled or not.
--
--
Things are only impossible until they are not.
Now I was under the impression that regional codes are illegal. Is this correct? I remember the mod-chip for the PSX was always advertised as legal to use the mod-chip to break the regional coding. Anyone know that legal truth on this?
Soon we'll all be modding our DVD Players.
Here is the link The page is half in German and the rest in English. It tells you how to do mods (playstation modchip like) to avoid region problems and whatnot.
According to the OEM website, OEM pricing starts at 10,000 units. And CircuitCity has run out of 'em nationally at least 3 times that I know of. And there are at least 3 versions of the ROM out there that have the hidden menu. So a safe guess would be AT LEAST 30,000 units.
I've tried them out at a couple of Circuit City stores, and all the ones I've seen have the menu. BTW, all the stores I went to said they don't normally display the Apex (even though they've been running newspaper ads nationally for at least a month) and that you have to ask to see one or buy one.
After the second time they ran out, 2 clerks at one store told me they just got some in, but they had all been re-worked to remove the secret menu. I bet them that it still worked, so they went in back to grab one as they were coming off the truck, we set it up, and I showed them how to access the menu and won the bet. They each bought one for themselves!
There isn't really a lot of difference between PAL and NTSC DVD's. NTSC DVD's are often recorded at 24(ish) frames per second because thats the same speed as 35 mm film. The DVD player converts it to NTSC speed. I think they use different YUV colour separations from NTSC as well. (mainly because NTSC colour separations really suck)
To summarise.... PAL discs will work fine.
Can you buy this player in the UK? If not is there another one that can play mp3? I just like the idea of being able to play my MP3 collection without having to wait for my computer to start.
Regional coding allows the movie companies to enforce price fixing. Is this legal? Could we get a ban on region coding in Europe and/or Australia? (Apparently there already is one in New Zealand). I should think that a lot of the Electrical comapnies and retailers would back this. The UK's biggest supermarket ceratainly would.
Isn't region 0 just a name for regions disabled though rather than an actual region? Or is it that all players play their own region and region 0?
I can see the added benefit of Betamax for in flight movies is that the picture quality is better than VHS (allegedly).
i'm going to buy one in an hour :) Future Shops have it ...for 349$ CAN.. That is still cheap for an mp3 player and a dvd player ...
http://mrhide.pinnesota.org
The Shinco isn't so great. It wouldn't read my CDR's (although would read my MP3 CDRW's - go figure) and doesn't have shuffle for MP3's so you are stuck listening to all your MP3 collections in alphabetical order. It is also more expensive. Grab a "Hiteker" (Apex in Australia) from somewhere like www.cx.com.au - I have two already. I doubt that they will stop being region-free in Australia any time soon since we are not as anal as the US about such things.
The "Apex" goes by the name "Hiteker" in Australia. Exactly the same product - secret menu and all. Many computer type places sell them: eg www.cx.com.au The seem to be good little players. Pitty the exchange-rate has put them up to AU$499 now. (I bought mine for less) See my rant post on the nerd-out.com forums for details on other places to get them - Zilch.
You can buy these in Australia - they are sold under the brand name "Hiteker". I have bought two already and they play MP3's etc and have the secret menu. If you had looked on the nerd-out.com forums you would have seen my post. /. pointed you to nerd-out. Do your research man! One of the many places to buy them in Sydney is www.cx.com.au.
(And yeah, I hate US-centric web sites too)
Zilch
Public contempt? I garuntee (okay, not quite garuntee, but you get the point) you walk into any electronic store in the nation and 4/5 of the people shopping for DVDs will have never heard of this stuff.
In 3010, the potatoes triumphed
where might I be able to find DXR2 Drivers for linux. Creative doesn't have them for Win2k even.
perl -e "print(pack('H37','4d65726b7572795a40676e7572642e6e6574'))"
I just bought mine today at 5pm or so...I was just telling my girlfriend that the MPAA would shut this thing down as soon as they found out about it. I am watching the Abyss now. Man, stock up on these while you can, I repeat, buy it NOW!!!
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
It seems like the Slashdot effect is being felt in the "real world". A couple of my buddies just got back from Circuit City with their new Apex players, and reported that the model is selling like hotcakes. The store clerk told them that people were calling and buying them on the telephone. They're expected to be gone by lunchtime.
Because so many american companies own so many others (I can't remember which one owns RCA) is there a DVD maker out there which manufactures a player with a hack that is OWNED by one of the companies in the MPAA???? I don't know, but I bet there is and guess what, if there is, there goes any defense. IMHO...
How many of these units have been sold?
Hopefully they have sold a lot of these units and the MPAA cannot recall them because at time of purchase they were cleared by the MPAA were they not?
MPAA can go get rooted...
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
>Arrest everyone who bought one? no, but taking it to court could stop the sale of it. It's going to be difficult for them to stop all region hacks in all dvd players. Any software player is pretty easy to hack already. It's seems like a lost cause to me. What we need to do is beat them in court, but I don't know how we are going to do that.
Server: noc.cerf.net
Address: 192.153.156.22
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: nerd-out.dynhost.com
Address: 204.210.11.9
Aliases: www.nerd-out.com
no wonder it went down so easily, they dont even have a dedicated ip for this server?
I just picked one up.. It's great! Better than my ($400) Panasonic in every respect... AND it has DTS and Zoom (a feature I'll never use, but cool to have anyway). It's more responsive as well, with a better remote. Not to mention all the loopholes. No jukebox lightshow when playing music, though... That would have been perfection. I'm selling my old one and keeping this one, definitely.
One question, though... it has a PAL/NTSC switching function. I imagine it's wishful thinking that this allows you to watch PAL discs on a NTSC TV? I don't have any PAL discs, so I can't verify this.
Josh Sisk
$293 for a Receiver/DVD player.. I love it..
now if it only played mp3's life would be good..
jp
I have an Apex, and it is some what useful, I mostly bought it to play mp3's easily (like at a friends house) without a computer. It costs about as much at component mp3 player so why not get the DVD also. The macrovision turn-off will allow you to record DVD to tape, but these devices have been available for years. (some at very low cost) The region override is basically available in most any DVD-ROM player, so nothing new there. The CSS option seems not to work or to do nothing or I do not understand how it works. None the less, there is nothing really new in this box, it basically is a good combination of things in one box at a reasonable cost. You should definitely visit nerd-out web site for the full details. They have a very complete discussion group.
You have no freaking idea what you're talking about, do you? Exon was a Democrat. Period.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
And if you look into region coding a bit more, you will see that it is the content providers indeed who want to enforce that regime.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
I'd buy one, but Circuit City's out of stock again. I have them set to e-mail me when they get them in, though; should I tell Slashdot when they're in?
I'd buy it even without the secret menu, though; it's the least expensive world-friendly DVD player I can find (always a plus for us College Anime Fans On a Tight Budget ^_^ ). Granted, you have to do a bit of a hack to get the world-friendly aspect going, but it's still a great thing.
As for why it's there, MPAA is going to have a hard time proving that it was put in there to promote piracy. Isn't it obvious? It was a debugging feature. That's why it was hidden in the first place, not unlike most video game codes; consumers were never meant to know about it. But it was a necessary feature to put in so that the player could be tested, and it made the player easier to service by facilitating diagnostics. The menu was meant to be kept secret forever, but some Big Bad Hacker Guy found it and spilled the beans.
It's just security through obscurity, folks. But this time there's a real benefit, and we also benefit from it by being able to thwart the unethical practices of the motion-picture industry (namely, regional encoding as a means of artificially raising prices in certain regions) without doing anything illegal.
Therefore, my guess is that the information necessary to enable multi-region is coming from the manufacturers themselves as part of a deliberate strategy.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Check this link for multi-region hacks for loads of different DVD players.
:-)
Enjoy
If I recall, all the keys have been compromised. It sounds like the next generation of DVD players is going to have to include a new feature: support for all the keys. If one key doesn't work, just use a different one.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
from the article:
"Twenty-four manufacturers use the same menu chip as in ours, so they all have
the same capability," said Colton Manley, a spokesman for Apex, in Ontario,
California. Certainly our intention is not to sell anything that will cause any problems."
So what chip is that?
If everyone starts asking for it by name and the manufacturers start realizing that this "mis"-feature sells boxes, maybe there will be more "unintentional" slip-ups like this.
Look around, and choose your own ground. -PF
No $#!+? Whereas most other DVD players play the movie whilst it's still encrypted, and let you watch the white noise, I suppose?
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
The Samsung 709 and 909 are "crackable" via
a special remote code. I would also suspect the Thomson 3600 which looks like a repackaged samsung 909.
What this shows (along with the PSX2) is that members of the DVD consortium aren't taking the (ridiculous) region code rules seriously.
Since anybody in the world can order Region 1 disks from amazon.com and others, and since nearly every player is modifiable (via menus, special remote codes or straight hardware fixes) this region code stuff is never going to be effective. I say just forget about it and start releasing films in theaters at the same time all over the world.
-haffi
Well, I'm sure APEX has signed many NDAs and agreements to be licensed as long as they sell DVD players, and such, so while the secret may no longer be a secret, they would still be breaking contract if they made a unlicensed player.
I posted this on kuro5hin yesterday, on a similar story (about the Playstation2 bypass thing):
Anyway, I didn't realize that some had hidden menus & stuff - that's pretty cool.
Has anyone got one of the Multi-Region Shinco players that play MP3 CDs? How well does the MP3 playback work?
MPAA: Malignant, Pompus, Archaic Assholes.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Besides, if someone is activly re-reading these posts in late 2055, expecting something of value, then they deserve to be disappointed.
and they'll wonder how we could have possibly eaten all those hot grits.
--
+&x
First of all - IANAL, but all this DVD stuff does has me considering law as a career.
Watch your wording - what you said is technically wrong on a few counts. CSS is a <b>trade secret</b>, <i>not</i> a copyright, and as such is suubject to different laws. Because of that, they could go ahead and sell an unlicensed player as long as they can prove that the CSS decryption information is in the open and therefore no longer qualifies as a trade secret.
It's not like some company couldn't go make a DVD player without a CSS license now; it's just that companies are afraid of the DVD CCA's high-paid attorneys. It may seem easy to show that CSS no longer qualifies as a trade secret, but why would any intelligent company take that kind of a risk when they can just pay a small licensing fee?
And just to clarify, the reason that Apex could get in serious trouble for selling unlicensed players is not really the act of doing so, but the act of doing so after having signed an agreement to get this information - despite the fact that it's now in the public domain. If some new company created an unlicensed player, they couldn't really be subject to a fair trade secret infringement suit, as the mere fact that they were able to gain knowledge of the secret shows that it is no longer such (not that anyone would try and go against DVD CCA lawyers to prove that anyway).
So although most companies could probably put out their own, unlicensed DVD players without breaking the law (which would be the case were CSS patented and not a trade secret), the scare tactics keep them from doing so.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Thanks for spotting that broken link - I've fixed it now. :)
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So what is the significance of the numbers 80 101 110 116 105 117 109 to Intel??
Switching to Linux can be an adventure!
What are you talking about? Clinton signed the CDA (a far greater crime, being a direct violation of his oath of office, than those for which he was impeached).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
More importantly, they could revoke Apex's CSS player key. All future DVDs would be mastered without an Apex key, so they could not be played on an Apex player.
That's the way it was supposed to work, anyway. Given all the developments since then (particularly the CSS crack,) I doubt the MPAA would follow through on the "DVD player death penalty."
MSK
BBBBBLLLLLPPPPPHHHHH!!!!!
If they should be so audacious as to try any legal actions against the current owners of these units, I will proudly give them an American reply: You can take my player when you can shove it up your ass and carry it away!
That may not be such a good idea
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Well, it's obvious that in the presence of players where region encoding can be disabled easily (without even opening the player, thus voiding the guarantee) other players stand no chance. It's what people want. The true problem here is with the MPAA which is thinking they can sell a product to the consumers with inbuilt features working against the consumers interests. It didn't work with copyprotected VHS players and it didn't work with DAT Tapes.
Either the product flops or someone comes up with a product where these features are disabled (Yeah, "developer feature", there is really a need to make it accessible via the remote control. And the message "You shouldn't be here" is a really good joke, since it implies that the enduser can read it (or was it meant for the developers?)). So we can assume that, since DVD players without region encoding sell better there'll always be someone to make em, if not in the US then somewhere else. Probably their marketing department even leaks the information to some magazines to ensure a good rating.
It'll be fun watching the MPAA trying to put this genie back into the bottle, since now it's their claimed megadollars of negative income versus that of the DVD player makers who don't want their players sit on the shelves until DVD is an obsolete format. The MPAA really is in a no win situation here, they can't annoy the player manufacturers too much since they might get the idea to come up with a format of their own (this they should hve done from the start, it would have been far less trouble) and less sold players = less sold DVDs, an equation that even the MPAA should understand. So the only thing they can do is looking foolish, but they've practised that well.
This also sheds new light on the DeCSS debate, since the MPAA can't sue the DeCSS folks but leave others who basically do the same thing (remove the copy protection) alone.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Nope, but they could destroy Apex and make other companies who might *wink* mistakenly leave such a devel feature in their product very frightened. I personally don't believe it was a mistake. Rather the ability was an easter-egg. A free prize for those swift/lucky enough to find it.
I personally would like to see more pseudo-illegal/contraversial addons in consumer products. It would be wonderful if my TV would delete my electric bill when I choose channel '999' repeatedly or my toaster gave me the porn channel when I cooked rye bread.
You can't copyright numbers. 586 isn't copyrightable, why should 0xc0 0x00 0x05 0x55.. be??
.sig: Now legally binding!
I'm not. 586 wasn't an Intel reference, I just hit some number keys with my right hand. I was trying to point out that numbers themselves cannot be afforded copyright protection. If the numbers signified the chars in this post, they can be, but the CSS keys are numbers and numbers only. I cannot copyright Pi, no matter how much creative effort went into calculating it out to the 1000^1000000'th digit, I can't copyright it. I can copyright a book on how I did it, or patent the novel time-slice solution I uncovered, but no protection is afforded the number.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Slash doesn't like much of anything these days, em being a notable example. Especially in extrans mode, which is what the author of the parent used.
Besides, if someone is activly re-reading these posts in late 2055, expecting something of value, then they deserve to be disappointed.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Personally, I think they'll be far more interested in the secret society of flap-jack eating nocturnal Ninja frequenting the place. Grits pose no historical mystery; Pouring a warm, grits-like substance down one's clothing has been popular since ancient Greece, where they used warmed mud.
Let's just hope they don't get to see our Karma. Sig 11 may be worshipped as the Oracle of Slash if that happens.. I just hope I end up as one of the demigods..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Take what Mattel did with the Cyber Patrol program. MPAA and the DeCSS program, and now this.
This sort of stuff is going to happen. The big problem is that the (crappy) laws that we have now days overlap each other. Each side trying to show that there side is the correct side. The Digital Millenium Copy Right Act is a really good example. It prevents people from doing what they have traditionaly been entitled to do by law.
Besides, I've noticed that a lot of this stuff is comming from overseas in Sweden and the likes. DeCSS, cp4hack, I think both originated in Sweden? Do the US's laws apply over there? I don't think so.
Since I really don't know anything about laws, and it probably shows, go ahead and take it how you will. But I think that most people will agree with me in saying that these big corps to take things, for the most part, a little to far. They think they can throw a little money at the problem and fix what they screwed up.
In the long run new tech will eventually come out that will allow us to copy a DVD just like you can copy a VHS. It's going to happen and there is nothing they can do to stop it. (I personally never understood the region codes, maybe someone could explain it to me. But, if I buy a DVD should I not be able to play it where ever I want?)
They can send a notice to all regestered owners informing them that they have 'defective' merchandise that may be returned for free exchange. Those regestered owners that do not return them for exchange may find the police and MPAA represenatives knocking on the door. I can just see the headlines,
:-)
"Local Police and MPAA Officials Confiscate Illegal DVD Players!"
Yeah, great publicity for the MPAA. Confiscate those DVD players! Just think of all the good will the MPAA will create doing a house-to-house search for those that didn't register the players. Let's see the MPAA call unknowing consumers Pirates, and take them to court! Of course, that will never happen
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
There are *so* many holes in the DVD players, formats, etc., etc. that it won't be a problem for anyone to get around these "features" the MPAA wants.
And just how legal is this "region-coding" crap, anyhow? I remember they tried the same thing with consoles and audio and failed. (anyone ever played Golden Axe 3 in America? Anyone set the 'copyright bit' on your mp3's?)
A business isn't going to sell a product that have added features that make consumers not buy it. Well, unless they have a monopoly or something. Otherwise, a competing standard without these features will win out. The MPAA will find this out, hopefully the hard way.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I have been wondering for a while just how censored the movies I rent at the video store are.
I've seen a couple of director's cuts of movies, and have then looked at the released version and found that much was lacking.
From many of the comments I have read, I now understand that Region Coding is an attempt by the movie industry to balance the need to sell movies and the need to maintain political capital in the U.S. specifically. That is, explicit content in movies released in the U.S. would rally the puritan special interest groups and their congressional representatives against the movie industry. I suppose that there is some incentive to tailor content to foreign countries as well, in order that the distribution channels maintain political capital in their respective regions. I suppose that this is an issue with movie studios in other countries as well, but the U.S. certainly has political issues regarding sex and nudity.
I would certainly love to see an uncensored version of Eyes Wide Shut. I'm disappointed that in a country like the U.S. that was built on freedom of speech, I cannot obtain uncensored versions of popular movies at my local video store. Perhaps I was naive, but now I'm truly disgusted. I feel like I'm getting ripped off- like I only got a 'lite' version of something, or a half-cup of coffee, or watered down liquor.
Perhaps it is not the threat of unauthorized duplication, or even of there being alternatives to licensed players, but the threat of political confrontation which drives the movie industry to pursue DeCSS, since the open source nature of the product would allow region codes to be easily defeatable without threat of license revocation. God forbid some conservative senator's kid runs Linux and plays an uncensored version of some movie his foreign exchange student brought over from Japan. Unfortunately for the movie industry, 'Region Code Bypassing' doesn't carry the same emotional and PR weight as 'Piracy'.
Perhaps the true purpose of the DMCA and its access control provisions is to introduce a firmer basis for controlling access to pornography and other 'undesirable' content, by giving the content production industry a legal tool that gives them no excuse NOT to control access, and then holding them accountable if they don't control access effectively enough.
This may be a stretch, but since Congress doesn't have a friend in the Executive branch of government for their censorship agenda, they are using a cash rich music and movie industry as a surrogate Executive branch in order to establish a judical bulwark of precedents for their legislation.
I just don't buy the argument that Region Coding is just to prevent people from seeing stuff before it comes out locally. Censorship concerns are the real issue, and the only entity who wants to pursue censorship and has influence is Congress.
The question is, can and would Congress legislate against the movie industry if the movie industry stopped wholeheartedly 'enforcing' censorship through region coding and other means?
Mike
... is to check Google for a cached copy.
In this case...
Google's cached copy of the "hack"
Jay (=
After watching DVDs on my computer for most of a year, I nabbed an Apex AD-600A at the Circuit City in Dearborn, MI about a month ago (I live in Windsor, Ontario). It runs hot and it's obviously a cheap little econobox, but it runs every DVD I've thrown at it, in addition to PAL VCDs on my NTSC television -- including an Episode of a certain movie series which is not scheduled for DVD release for five more years. :-) It played the MP3s I tried, but I think it can only read Mode2 discs; at least one disc caused it to lock up, which I suspect was Mode1. I should also note that the player has locked up a couple of times during regular DVD playback, including one occasion when I was using the Zoom feature. In other words, use at your own risk. What with region hacks, the known Macrovision cheat for Cinemaster 1.028 and so forth, the Apex doesn't give you anything you can't get on the Internet. But for the price it's a honey of a machine, and it freed my from the necessity of watching movies at my computer.
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
Here's one of the lists I mentioned:
http://www.dvd.reviewer.co.uk/info/multiregion/
(This covers only software (menu) hacks.)
--Kevin
=-=-=-=-=-=
"Just take another hit 'cause you don't give a f*ck-
You're a junkie and you're proud!"
The playstation II has been out for so little time in Japan, and I have already seen instructions out there to bypass region codes. Why doesn't the MPAA attack Sony?
...I sincerely hope that Apex brings this bias up in court, and proves that the MPAA is behaving like a corporate hypocrite.
There are larger brand names out there than Apex who are making a laughing stock of the region coding system -- some of these companies are still too big for the MPAA to handle. My guess is that the MPAA is going up against this manufacturer simply because it figures it can throw enough legal red tape in the right places to stop it.
Would the MPAA try to push around Sony? how about Panasonic?
Wow ... they're selling for between $250 and $300.00 on eBay! No wonder you can't find them in the stores ... These decks are so valuable that people are actually making money speculating on them!
... it might have something to do with the MPAA "investigating" Apex, and the implicit threat that these decks will be withdrawn from the market. Better get yours while you can!
Gee
Nothing like a little artificial shortage to create a huge market for an otherwise-obscure product. A month ago, your average novice DVD deck purchaser probably had no idea what a "region code" or "macrovision" was, and could have cared less if his deck couldn't play European DVDs. After all, what is the market for PAL capable VCRs in the US?
With all of this publicity, "defeatable region/macrovision coding" has suddenly become the hottest selling point you can put on a DVD player these days. Apparently, in this case, it adds $100.00 in value to a $180.00 player.
Expect a similar frenzy at the end of April, when it becomes illegal to sell a VCR that allows you to copy a macrovision tape. Thousands of people who would have never even thought of copying a commercial tape will run out and get their macrovision-free recorder, just because the government is about to make them illegal.
The MPAA is it's own worst enemy.
By lobbying for copyright laws, and interpretations of copyright laws that are unenforcable, wildly out of touch with reality, and invasive to the end user, the MPAA and RIAA are eroding public respect and support for copyright law. They are creating an unprecidented level of public contempt for their entire industry.
What the hell do they think they are doing?
The 'secret menu' is hardly unique to the Apex,
:)
I've seen a list of instructions for 'hacking' prolly 30 different brands of player,
including some of the big names.
The Apex just happens to be the most well
publicised because of it's MP3 capability and
the nerds that feature attracts.
--Kevin
(Happy Apex owner)
=-=-=-=-=-=
"Just take another hit 'cause you don't give a f*ck-
You're a junkie and you're proud!"
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I bought one of the last Apex players left in the Bay Area on a trip to San Jose a couple of weeks ago. It is one of the few region-free players that can play a PAL DVD on an NTSC set, although I haven't had a chance to verify PAL playback quality in person.
As far as normal NTSC playback goes, a quick video-quality comparison using S-Video output shows no major differences between the SD-600A and my old Toshiba SD-2006 (a $500 first-generation player with 10-bit video DAC). No playback problems were observed watching The Matrix, a common source of trouble for cheaper players such as this one.
I just ordered a Region 3 (Asian) copy of Eyes Wide Shut from Hong Kong. We'll see how the Apex handles the disc when it arrives, but I don't expect any problems. (Kubrick fans in the US should note that this is an uncensored, unrated NTSC release, which should be compatible with all region-free players in the States. In that sense, it should be preferable to the Europe/UK PAL releases that are starting to show up.)
It seems that the MPAA forgot to ask me, the consumer, if I wanted to participate in their DVD region-coding plan. Not that they're interested in my answer, but for the record, it's "No, thanks." Studios like Warner Brothers are giving DVD fans every reason in the world to look for workarounds.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
really here.
Even with the link broken, enough people seem to have figured out the correct link to bring the site to its knees. The text of the description is:
-------
Press POWER. Turn on the unit with NO DISC in the drive, make sure that the drive is closed.
Wait for "NO DISC" to display
Press SETUP. You will get the setup screen.
Press DOWN until PREFERENCES is highlighted.
Press STEP.
Press track BACK.|>| The "Loopholes" menu is displayed.
Here in the loopholes menu you can change things like Region ID, CSS Encryption, Macrovision, and all those good things. Note, of course, that "you should not be here."
----
The last item refers to a screen shot of the menu, with the very words "YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE" at the bottom of the screen!
I hope they countersue and win. I am, quite literally, a coward when it comes to the MPAA - hence the AC post.
Are they you seriously trying to claim this DVD player is unusual?
A "very large" number of the top selling DVD players in the UK have simple handset hacks to play DVDs from other regions. The hardware reviews in some home cinema magazines actually report the hacks and their ease of use affects the player's rating. Sony players from most of the Far East regions play anything when they arrive at the shop, at least the ones I've used do.
One of the UK's biggest supermarket chains (Tesco) recently went on record, in the national press, as saying the "all regions" capability of the cheap and cheerfull player they sell is the main reason they're selling out.
I've never found a dvd my player won't play. And thats an official UK pioneer model.
Damm those Japanese. Curse the Euro-swines. No respect for US law.... does anyone?
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.