Slashdot Mirror
Philips vs Unlicensed DVD Players
Kallahar writes "NewScientist is running an article about how Phillips, Sony, and Pioneer have "asked customs officials throughout Europe to seize players made by unlicensed factories."
Philips, Sony and Pioneer have pooled many hundreds of patents covering all aspects of the DVD system. Philips administers the pool, grants licences and collects royalties, which are then shared three ways." This comes
on the heals of philips going after
copy protected CDs. The draw for these DVD players for consumers
is probably both price, and the fact that they are often free of
those pesky region encodings (especially nice for anime junkies)
sissies!
"Contrary to popular belief, UNIX is user friendly. It just happens to be selective on who it makes friendship with"
But with the unlicensed players you also get shoddy manufacturing quality, especially with the rise of counterfeit electronic components from the Shenzhen region of China.
Buyer beware!
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
Unf Unf, Another 3rd post for the Retards!
Rwd 2002
"asked customs officials throughout Europe to seize players made by unlicensed factories."
When reached for comment, spokesmen for Sony said that Phillips and Pioneer were considered unlicensed machines, Phillips spokespeople said Sony and Pioneer were unlicensed, and Pioneer said that Phillips and Sony were unlicensed.
Is it me, or does this seem blatantly illegal?
It also seems like the big guys (Philips, etc.) could hit these things with all sorts of potential incompatibilities.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
fuck man.. it seems like all of NYC has been hit with the cold i got
Get that rats nest off your head, you numbskull -- Wesley Willis
Supply of low-cost DVDs in Europe set to dry up
14:45 12 February 02
Barry Fox
European supermarkets and high street electrical stores could soon see their supply of low-cost DVD players and discs dry up. Philips controls key patents on DVD technology and has grown tired of asking the manufacturers to pay royalties. The Dutch company has now asked customs officials throughout Europe to seize players made by unlicensed factories.
Philips, Sony and Pioneer have pooled many hundreds of patents covering all aspects of the DVD system. Philips administers the pool, grants licences and collects royalties, which are then shared three ways.
Most of the low-cost players come from factories in China. International trade newsletter TV Digest estimates China produces around 10 million DVD decks a year, mainly for export. European and North American importers then slap on Western brand name labels and sell them for under $100.
Legal warning
The DVD Forum, which sets the technical standards for DVD, lists several dozen factories in China. But only four of the factories have so far taken licences.
As a first step towards policing the patent pool worldwide, Philips has asked European Union Customs Authorities to impound unlicensed DVD-Video/ROM players and DVD-Video/ROM discs under the EU Council Regulation that covers goods that infringe patents.
Although there has been no formal announcement, Philips's legal website warns European importers that if they do not want their stocks stuck in Customs they should ask the factory to show them proof of a licence.
Philips says that even if goods get through customs, the company will act against wholesale and retail traders.
"The trade in unlicensed products may expose your company to liability for patent infringement" warn Philips' lawyers.
please grow up people
Anything that helps to prevent Information Property Theft.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Then we will have sector free tenticle forever!
Moo?
My name is Micheal Sims,
The old time great
(I) go censoring around
In New York state!
...Counterfeit electronic parts aren't the only defective thing from Shenzhen region of China, Beware of thier mail-order Brides! They're just dirty money grubbing china-whores who'll suck you dry getting the rest of thier family to america! Import quality mexican whores you'll get more bang for your buck!
Rwd 2002
Is it that difficult to use?
It's "heels".
Will decide to find some arguement that they've licenced the GUI (yes I mean GUI) and get customs to confiscate all other OSes that have any form of GUI..
But seriously yet again the consumer is going lose.
'branded players' -- more expensive but sometimes better quality...
'unbranded' -- cheaper and sometime shoddy.
Let the consumer decide - over time the shoddy players will become history, the cheap but good players will become brand names etc...
Score: Big Corp's 1; public 0; little corps -1
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
I suppose they're doing what (they suppose) is best for them, without caring about others. They're trying to push other manufacturers out of business, or they want them to pay ...
...
It's tough but that's the way how it goes, it's the same in every branch of today's business! *sigh*
- Reality bites, but that's what life is
Life sucks.
To: All E.U. Customs Officers
Subject: New directive
Effective immediately,
All efforts to halt drug contraband, illegal alien smuggling and terrorist infiltration is to be suspended. The biggest threat to EU today are unlicensed DVD players. Me must put a stop to this terrible instrument, and protect the children from the ravages of illegal region code hacking.
- They don't run native code. Most DVD players support a modified
version of the Z-80 instruction set which DVDs can use to render menus,
omit scenes when a ratings limit is lowered, and handle substitution of
audio without mis-synching actors' lips. These bootleg DVD players do not
properly implement all of the instructions and may not work right with many
DVDs.
- Content protection. Macrovision is an unbreakable encryption system
that keeps pirates from copying DVDs onto VHS tapes or video CDs. Many
bootleg players do not implement it so we can expect the rate of piracy to
skyrocket.
- Compatibility with layers. Most bootleg DVD players have serious
trouble handling two-layer discs, meaning that the users' experiences are
affected in a very bad way.
- Hackability. Most bootleg players run an embedded unix operating
system, like linux, and can be tampered with easily by malcontents.
It is for these reasons that we must all stand up and oppose the manufacture and sale of unlicensed DVD players.df
The Fazigu ODK hack renders region coding useless. No soldering either!
thank you
That's why you go to ebay and find an Apex 600a while you still can. Very excellent machine, will play any region disk you throw at it, dolby digital out, and you can disable macrovision. The newer unlicensed dvd players are of pretty shoddy quality.
Is this going to be the top priority for European enforcement? I really doubt it.
I think that from the perspective of deciding how to use their resources, European nations have have bigger concerns than where the DVD players are coming from... and any associated patent issues.
A few might be taken off the streets, but I doubt they are going to expend great resources to rid Europe of "unauthorized" or "unlicensed" machines...
Sam Nitzberg
sam@iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com
That makes you a bioterrorist. Please turn yourself in at the nearest DoJ detainment camp.
The owls are not what they seem
Obviously Philips is going after anything which hurts their hardware sales. This is both good for consumers (no cd copy protection) and bad for consumers (going after other hardware companies)
//m
Where's the incentive to create if it's legal to just steal the invention and pay nothing?
Saying this is contradictory to Phillips's position on copy protected CD's is not correct. Phillips going after illegal DVD manufacturers is very similar to them chafing against copy protected CD's.
Someone is using a format that they invented, have the patent on, and should for a reasonable time, have the ability to apportion the use of that patent(s) out as they will. The difference here is that the folks they are going after are making money "stealing" Phillips's technology, unlike a certain sixteen year old kid from Norway.
While I don't agree with everything they do with their patents (region encoding is complete bullshit theivery....glad I don't live in the UK and have to pay $30 per DVD), this is a relatively new technology and they do hold the patent...this is what patents are for, to keep lazy assholes from making money off you your invention for a certain period of time.
What, was Philips wounded? You mean HEELS, part of the foot, as opposed to HEALS, recovering from an injury.
Stop wasting time on lameness filters and let moderation do that for you. Implement a spellchecker!! (Which, sadly, won't correct this kind of error.)
Mr. Ska
With all of Slashdot's anti-microsoft talk, it seems they have no problem advertising for them. I opened up Slashdot this morning and BAM, there was an ad for Visual Studio.net
Don't believe me? Just follow this link to the banner ad
- Marco
Other than that I think what's going on is perfectly fair, just that it's a little odd to be going after this at the customs level.
Even governments aren't safe anymore. Just look how the president of a sovereign state was kidnapped, extradited and soon judged by an metanational court.
The owls are not what they seem
Look, I know these electronics compaines fronted the money to research DVD technology and they were it's main pioneers.. However as a consumer, I just don't give a damn, to put it bluntly. It's my dollar, I'll spend it how I choose. If I purchase a machine I'll perform whatever hacks or workarounds necessary to make it function the way I would like it to. That's just how it goes. If we just stop buying products from companies we don't care for, they'll get the message or they'll go away..
The link pointing to http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/11/181625 is broken.
I just saw an article on Yahoo that stated that the patent royalties amount to $28 per player. That's over a third of the price for some units, and that's the retail price, not the wholesale price. It's no wonder that companies aren't paying up.
It's just like with other intellectual property--when you price it too high, people will avoid paying.
This is a civil dispute between the manufacturers and those who claim patent rights. Surely it should not be the business of customs to close down manufacturers of DVDs without some kind of civil decision in a court.
Note that the customs officials have not only been asked to impound players thay are also impounding disks. The disks are not being impounded because the content is copyright, they are being impounded because the media is owned by these corporations.
This is an outrage. It's like impounding books because someone claims they own the patent on the printing press. We need some protection against companies claiming to own and control the information medium in common use today.
Sorry. Not that I'm for region encoding or anything... But the "especially nice for anime junkies" parenthetical just doesn't ring true. Any anime DVDs released in the states will play on a Region 1 (?) DVD player. Any DVDs released in Japan... are going to only be in Japanese. So unless you went from just-discovering-anime-isn't-all-porn to fluent-in-Japanese in one year, the "anime junkie" you speak of sure as hell ain't you.
On the other hand, I -do- know people who speak Japanese and appreciate imports. These are the same ones who modded their SNES to play imported Super Famicon games.
The enemies of Democracy are
The typical anime shows weirdos with giant eyes and green/purple/blue hair fighting monsters. That is so stupid!
Buying these DVD players is promoting terrorism!
The US Congress has found that they are always
assembled in muslem contries by young school age children and the profits go to promoting the terrorist camps!
DVD players are dirt cheap already - at least here in California you can get one for $100.
Does anyone know if it would be possible to produce and sell a regionless dvd player while still licensing the necessary technologies, or do the require you to agree to implement region checking in order to give you the licenses?
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
In order of number of patents held:
Matsushita (Panasonic)
Sony
Pioneer
Toshiba
Philips
Hitachi
Thompson
Others (Mitsubishi, JVC, TW/AOL)
(From "DVD Demystified" by Jim Taylor)
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
in that case, that makes you a flaming ass-raping pedophileantric homosexual.. i really hope you stick a 40 ft dildo up your ass and make your asshole bleed.. you 13 year old shithead.. why don't you put your bandwidth to good use and DDoS yourself
Get that rats nest off your head, you numbskull -- Wesley Willis
Ispell does not help you there.
I hear that the problem here is firmly between the keyboard and the chair.
However, only a heel would make fun of Taco's disability which sadly cannot be healed.
There is no solution once we find that their teacher could not help them in their budding youth, they're forever doomed to confuse like-sounding words.
As a home theater enthousiast this means losing the ability to buy a nice player such as the Skyworth 1050p with Faroudja deinterlacer which outputs progressive scan on both PAL and NTSC, something the DVD forum forbids.
Projector and HDTV owners love this feature to get rid of the nasty scan lines on their CRT equipment, without the need for buying an expensive external scaler.
The problem with progressive scan is that they cannot easily apply macrovision to it, so you get a very clean signal without copy protection. As a result they have banned it for PAL.
To my knowledge, there are no VCR's which accept a progressive RGB signal, so I cannot grasp why they are so paranoid when we can make perfect DVD copies on our PC's much more easily ?
So far, from the three companies mentioned in the post we've only seen official progressive scan support on region 1 NTSC through component outputs.
For the videophile, this is really BAD.
I would have to say that the only stupid thing regarding anime is that adults (term being used loosely) watch it. Adults watching anime usually reflects their lack of insight into the real world, and a want for fantasy away from the real world. Perhaps you should go outside and come to grips with the world... it isn't perfect, but it's not all bad. Anime is the last step before becoming a hermit.
Now that Enron is gone, does Microsoft's ownership share of President Bush increase?
Unlike many spurious IP patents, these patents cover actual investments in R&D and the time and capital spent in making it a usuable system. Were it not for these companies we wouldn't have DVD! All they are doing is excersising their legal right to make money from their own inventions.
More power to them!
Rich
I've found it interesting how patents and other `intellectual property' tend to get pooled by a handful of major companies. This, my friends, is how standards really get made these days. Heck, similar practices date back a hundred years or more.
This is really annoying to me, as these companies kind of turn the idea of a patent on it's back. Sure, they defend them from the man on the street til the cows come home, but then they collude with other big companies. Am I the only one that thinks this is backward?
*Ahem*
So much depends
upon
a silver media
disc
burned with anime
movies
inside the black
box
Thank You.
In other words, for those of you less cultured, keep on hacking.
This infuriates me. I'm an anime fan and was intending to get my hands on a regionless player eventually so I'd not be stuck with only US dubbed and subbed releases. I'm currently struggling financially and I can't afford luxury items like DVD's and players, though. So it looks like by the time I do get around to affording them, regionless players will be a thing of the past (I can imagine a conversation with a future child: "Daddy, what was 'Fair Use'?"). None of my friends or family have been able to find regionless players either - one of them got one that was advertised as regionless and it was in fact region 1. Where the hell do you find them??
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Every day on the streets of NYC, you see cops bust street vendors with fake Gucci and DK bags. The pirated video tapes, CDs. The've cracked down on people selling unauthorized FDNY hats. On a larger scale, they break up sweatshops that are pumping out fake Tommy jeans or Nautica jackets.
So why's this news? Countefeiters exist in every market segment, and while they're small, they get away with it. Once they grow to a size where it begins to cut into the profits of the company, the company cracks down.
European Customs officials are already hard at work keeping those fake Nike shoes and cheap Anne Klein knockoffs. It's just another thing they'll watch out for.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I suppose that good things like APEX players couldn't last forever. APEX claims to be the second largest DVD player distributor in the U.S., next to Sony. The APEX product line, of course, is made by companies like Shinco of China. Shinco makes some great products, which include the DVD players that play Megadrive (Genesis) ROMs.
I have an APEX player (ad 660)... Do you?
Its not 'heals' its 'heels'. You know the saying 'on the heels of ...'. We're talking about the body part not something a doctor does.
BlkPanther
I find that most often I end up learning from necessity, rather than for enjoyment.
No one understands the truth behind DVDs outside slashdot and a few other groups. As far as the general public is concerned, DVDs are god, and the best thing since sliced bread. If you try to explain to them that DVD is just a method for large corporations to control you, what you own, and what you have the right to do then they give you a dirty look.
The people need to be educated about region encoding, macrovision and the fact that the producer can even control your fast-forward button. I object to any system that implements an artificial limitation on hardware that you own. If its in my house, then i have access to the circuitry, thus i can make it do what i like - ok so its very hard to mod a player, but its technically possible, therefore the manufacturer shouldn't bother putting in the restrictions in the first place.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It is my impression that the demand for region free DVD players is relatively limited in the states, certainly compared to Europe. Region 1 (North America) has the largest DVD selection, and thus the need (for the general public) to import DVDs is limited. Furthermore, most American TV sets would have difficulties showing PAL (the European TV standard).
Europe is region 1 (together with Japan, and as others have noted, an increasing number of Japanese DVD releases feature English subtitles), and while the DVD market is rapidly growing, we have still a long way to go, before matching the selection found in region 1, especially wrt. special genres, such as anime.
Luckily, region free DVD players are readily available in stores. These are however usually not Apex etc. players, but modified brand players. I personally own a region free Pioneer DVD player, which handles all regions beautifully. A further advantage is that most European TV sets are able to handle NTSC. There is nothing shady about these modifications - most stores will perform them, and many places do not even sell non modified players (in Denmark, that is).
From my perspective, the only attractive feature of the Apex etc. players is that they often handles (XS)VCDs better than ordinary DVD players. As (XS)VCDs never were an item here in Europe, this is not really much of a problem, unless you burn your own.
--- In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro
Yes, I find it amusing that courts are willing to gloss over the technical details and stretch common-sense "real world analogy" reasoning to some aspects of copyright law (eg, linking and framing a copyrighted image that resides on somebody else's public web server constitutes a violation, because it looks like you've displayed the image yourself) while at the same time resorting to the gritty technical details for other aspects (temporary RAM copies, etc.)
Macrovision isn't encryption, it's a simple analog circuit.
Oh, and yet another thing...
My APEX player plays any disk just fine, without a hitch. The first generation of 600a models had some problems, but were fixed with a firmware revisions. For the record, almost all licensed manufacturers had the same problems at one time, especially with multi-layer disks.
Get a fskin' clue.
It does for people who live in Region 2 countries.
I understand that. Obviously I wasn't clear in my post that the US-centricism of the post came solely from the fact that I was responding to a comment made by the Taco-meister. But I was. Even just in the US I was admitting that my statement wasn't universally valid. It only applies to Taco. Of course I appreciate imports, and thus loathe region restrictions! If it wasn't for the imported laserdisc, I never would have gotten my fansubbed Nausicaa!
CmdrTaco lives in Michigan. I myself hail from the same place, so I can be pretty sure that it's not Region 2. And I can be reasonably sure he doesn't speak Japanese. I doubt he's using any dubbing programs to add subtitles to laserdiscs. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say he doesn't even get the imports of those titles that -do- have English subtitles. I was mocking Taco's self-appointed title of "anime junkie", and implication that he, too, suffers from region restrictions and their affect on his "addiction". That's all. Lighten up.
The enemies of Democracy are
I worked at a video store briefly and we had people come in all time saying "This DVD is broke. It won't play in my dvd player." I always would ask what kind of player they had, and it was APEX or ORITRON. Sure enough the DVD was fine but it was dual-layer. It seems like many of the major studio new releases are. The store was in a lower-middle class part of town where the Wal-Mart was very popular so it was no surprise. I kind of felt sorry for those people who spent their hard earned $88 on those things. The most ironic thing is that the district manager had a raffle for a free DVD player, and guess what ... it was a piece of crap, ORITRON. The winners came back a week later and said that many discs didn't work and yep, they were dual-layer. When I finally decided to get one, I got a moderately expensive JVC.
I'm sorry... I must have missed the portion of Taco's blurb where it says "I AM AN ANIME JUNKIE!" Oh wait, that's right, it doesn't. All it says is that it's nice for anime junkies, wherever they might live.
Jeez, hate the guy if you must, but at least be rational about it.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
Actually, all the Region 2 native Japanese discs that have been released so far of Hayao Miyazaki's anime also include the English dub and English subtitles (though they're actually "dubtitles," i.e. captions for the English dub--and, in the case of Kiki's Delivery Service, they're dubtitles for the Streamline dub, which isn't even on the disc!).
A lot of anime which have English dubs, such as Giant Robo, include them on the DVD sets as a matter of course, just because, hey, they have the room, and the Japanese seem to think English is "kewl". (Which would also explain why they commissioned Macek to dub and then Japanese subtitle Macross: Love Do You Remember and Megazone 23 Part II--you can still find copies of those subtitled dubs floating around fansub trading circles to this day--and why the Armitage: Polymatrix movie was done only in English, with Japanese subtitles for the folks at home.) Some companies have even started including genuine English subtitles on their discs, though the names of the series escape me (I want to say Gunbuster, though I can't remember specifically).
That being said, gaijin fans have been importing anime from Japan ever since the days of the laserdisc, which didn't even have a capacity for subtitles. After all, if you're going to do a fansub, you want crystal-clear originals--and hey, DVD is even better than laserdisc. There's even a program out there for Windows that lets people view their unsubtitled DVDs in conjunction with downloaded fansub scripts (though it didn't work very well for me when I tried it). And when it comes right down to it, people watched anime in straight Japanese with synopses, scripts, or best guesses for years before fansubbing was even possible.
So claiming that all-region DVD players are not a boon to anime fans because Japanese discs don't have English is a bit misinformed or downright disingenuous. Better do some more research next time.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
No, but you obviously missed all the previous Taco blurbs where he did say that. When exactly did it become irrational to use someone's past when interpreting their present? Oh right, it didn't.
:)
And I don't hate him, I'm just mocking him.
The enemies of Democracy are
My current understanding of the 'hackable' DVD market indicates that the Daewoo 5700 is the current holy grail model.
http://www.dvd-wizards.com/darrenk/Daewoo_DVD5700
Disable region encoding; diable macrovision; NTSC/PAL/RSC format supported; mp3 supported; component out. Only thing this is missing is progressive scan.
There is a good reason for these players, however. They are clearly easier to manufacture, resulting in a cost savings for the consumer. Instead of maintaining 5 separate product lines with different hardware configurations, there is a single line with a flashable BIOS at the end for each region. So Daewoo isn't courting the after-market hackers, but rather just being a good manufacteurer.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Most of the low-cost players come from factories in China. International trade newsletter TV Digest estimates China produces around 10 million DVD decks a year, mainly for export. European and North American importers then slap on Western brand name labels and sell them for under $100. Sounds like counterfeiting to me.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
But the two go hand-in-hand. New York City saw a remarkable drop in violent crime because of increased enforcement of "quality of life" crimes.
It may seem trivial to bust kids jumping subway turnstiles, but low-grade collars allow the police to hold someone and run checks for outstanding warrants and desk appearance tickets. Often this leads to an arrest for a more serious charge.
Now, this same technique can be abused, but used correctly it gives the cops an opportunity to get "up close and personal" with people who might otherwise be at liberty to commit more crimes.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
My problem isn't with viewing Anime, but with many other Foreign films (namely French or from Hong Kong) that are often already translated with Subtittles in the films. Many of these movies are great (plot/action wise) but because of a lack of interest in most foreign films in the U.S., very rarely do they have domestic DVD distribution. I was actually looking at All-Region playing Players this morning.
Art is not a mirror, art is a hammer.
The real reason it seesm Phillips is going after them is that they are making region-independent DVD players which doesn't hurt Phillips patents but the Motion Picture Industry cartel's efforts to shackle users fari use. Yet another use of the IP infrastructure to squeeze money from consuemr--not by adding value but by limiting choice. Greedy drones.
Please knock it off. I work in the electronics parts industry (Controller of Corp.) and know what I'm talking about. This has been a major problem for years now.
EBN Online has many, many articles on this subject.
Here is a sample. Use their search engine, and you'll find others.
Try The ERAI website for checking the effects this problem has on our industry. It's costing us millions, if not billions.
Before you open up your mouth and spew your "humanitarian" garbage, check facts first.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
I think in 20 or so years school children will be reciting this:
I pledge allegiance to flag of the Incorporated States America, and to the Profit for which it stands, one Corporation under God, indivisible, with avarice and AOL for all.
It's not so much a change in attitude favoring "cheapness over quality".
Instead, it's more of a societal interest in having whatever is the latest and greatest. High-tech electronics go from "cutting edge" to "old tech" in just a few years. Why bother engineering a DVD player to last 30 years when 99.9% of the customers will be using something completely different in half that time?
By contrast, the phonograph record was in use for over 70 years before anything really began to render it obsolete. (Sure, you had "open reel" tape, 8-track tape, and then cassette tape - but people were still buying and using records throughout all of these technologies.)
IF it is possible to get a patent license from Phillips with reasonable terms (e.g. a license that does not include DVDCCA terms, such as the player must not have firewire out, must have additional circuitry to support Macrovision, etc) then there's no problem with this.
But IF Phillips is only licensing their stuff to people who get a DVDCCA license, then that's product tying, corrupt, etc. and I don't want my tax money being used to have customs enforce an illegal policy.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
well considering Taco was constantly promoting animefu for a while, i'd say its pretty safe to say he is an anime junkie.
that and the fact he is usually the one who posts the anime stories to the mainpage
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I just found this advertisement for software that, they claim, can turn any CD burner into a DVD burner. If true, it would make copying DVDs a lot easier and cheaper.
Does this make sense? And does anyone know anything about the product?
If this is true, then Houston, we have a problem.
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
In the US, the large electronics chain, "best buy" had a special in which they were selling players by mintek for 60 bucks back around thanksgiving/christmas. i'm not sure if they were eating part of the cost or not, but if best buy wasn't that 28 dollar licensing fee is half the retail cost of the player!
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Bear in mind this is not some kind of movie industry policing operation but merely an attempt by an inventor of a piece of technology to get paid by other manufacturers of that hardware.
This is the most blatent kind of infringement you could think of - on a par with trying to pass off your copied CD's as originals in a store.
when you pry from my cold, dead, hands!
If they don't have a DVD emblem on the front they don't have to be 100% complient with Philips.
In reading through the comets it appears many are of the belif that the actions philips are taking is a restriction on multi-region and non-region players.
From my experence in replacing a stolen DVD player, The liscenced manufacturers are producing players that don't follow the region restrictions. This might be the market that I am buying in - New Zealand, But I doubt that special versions would be produced for such a small market.
So what it leaves is companys that are producing products without liscencing the techonology they use from the patent owners. This is entirely consistant with philips' position on Non Red-Book CDDA disks - Unliscenced use of their IP and patents.
Then again, this is only my opinion.
Kal
"...the phonograph record was in use for over 70 years before anything really began to render it obsolete."
Plenty of people would disagree that the LP is obsolete. According to RIAA figures, vinyl sales were US$54 million in 2000 with 2.2 million LP/EP sales and 4.8 million in singles sales. From what I hear, vinyl is also more popular in European markets than North America.
Anyway, a good turntable can be as or more sensitive to adjustment as an optical system -- VTA, azimuth, speed stability, anti-skate force, tracking force, cartrige alignment with grooves, and more can have an effect on what you hear, sometimes with changes of as little of 1 arc minute or less in alignment...
If a company uses an propietry custom built in house developed embedded OS that the 'hacker community' has had fuckall experiance with, while no tools or compilers are publically avaliable for it, I'd say odds on, with everything else being equall, it would be more secure than otherwise.
I guess the money from Phillips's patent and royalties paid to the DVD-CCA would be separate (though Phillips is prolly part of the DVD-CCA and would see some of that too).
Interesting though how the DVD-CCA is not going after these folks, too, as it's obviously a violation of the DMCA(as they would have you read it...)...or are the rip-off player manufacturers paying the DVD-CCA and not Phillips? That doesn't sound right to me...
So, if a computer DVD drive might be used to play DVDs with an unlicensed program, can they stop it at the border?
Are we only shipping pre-installed windows boxes again?
This just gives me one more reason to set up a Linux DVD player; then again, I don't have any DVDs because of all this nonsense.
Hey, maybe everyone in the world should ONLY buy region 1 dvd player.
sure, there owuld be a period where some things would be hard to get, but a very short period.
consider:
1)Region 1 gets most titles all ready.
2)The movie industry would drop a brick when they could sell the non region one movies.
3)pretty soon region one would be just as good as regionless, since all titles would be released that way.
Off the top of my head, I figure it would take a year befor everyone was producing only region 1 dvd's
Its hard, but it would work.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is hilarious, because I've had a Philips DVD711 for about the past year and a half. For about the past year and four months, it's been region/code free, done completely without ever even opening up the dang thing.
Check out this site to see how you can make your Philips DVD player region free.
heels damnit!
Real anime junkies don't need RC free players in Europe, because Japan and Europe are both RC2 afaik.
By contrast, the phonograph record was in use for over 70 years before anything really began to render it obsolete.
It wasn't so much "rendered obsolete" as killed off by the manufactures. At least they tried, but club DJ's wouldn't accept the "subsitute" as an alternative.
there's always people unable to see things without examining it thorough applicable laws and regulations. so then there will always be persons or entities using holes that conservative forces don't dare to patch up.
it tells something about complexity of nation's laws when ordinary citizens give up on thinking what's right and what's wrong and resort to law-jargon and prior cases instead.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
If they really want to target only makers of DVD players, they should get their own act together and level the prices of DVDs in different regions or stop this stupid region coding BS altogether.
When somebody drives their own interests on the back of a legitimate (or good) cause, that somebody ought to get punished big time for using people's good will to wrong causes! (hint.hint.gwb, don't let us down)
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.