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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.
- A.P.
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"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.
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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!"
So Circuit City, the company that tried to completely control a medium with DiVX, is now selling out of a DVD player that is easily hacked to allow people to circumvent the MPAA's heavy handed region tactics and attempted control of a medium?
Ironic, isn't it?
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:
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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."
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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.
It's a misnomer to call it a "menu chip" the chip in question is an ESS 4308 Videodrive chip. This is a 32bit risc (MipsX) + 64bit SIMD microcoded core. The code that presents the menu in question is risc code and an OSD ciruit in the device that overlays a region of the sdram onto the main display buffer. I would never advise it of course but an inspection of the firmware shows a string -- LOOPHOLES -- in the rom. Interestingly, the feature many like (the 3/2 pulldown PALNTSC) is done totally in microcode. There are many things that chip can do in software that were not contemplated when it was designed (i.e. MP3). Cool part and really well programmed by the ESS engineers.
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.