Consumer Friendly (or Disney Hostile) DVD Players?

solli asks: "After 13 years of relatively faithful service my Mitsubishi(!) VCR has finally kicked the bucket, and I am now thinking of moving on to DVDs. One of the only things preventing me from buying a DVD is the fact that some media companies like to make you watch FBI warnings, trailers, and ads before allowing you to view the actual movie (like Disney's Tarzan). Of course, there is such a large demand for region free players and other specialized needs that niche markets have developed to fill that demand. However, I have seen nothing about players that give you the freedom to navigate through the disk the way you want to, instead of how the content producer wants you to. What DVD players exist that let the viewer take full advantage of the nonlinear properties of the DVD media? Can any of the available players ignore the directives embedded on-disk to disable certain controls at particular times?"

Comments

Apex AD600

[Dystopium]

You can always try picking up one of the old APex AD 600 Players. Macrovision disabled, Region free.

Re:Apex AD600

[Goldberg's Pants]

Actually, a lot of the AD1500's from WalMart are hackable. You need to check the serial number (you can find stuff on the net about it.)

I got an AD1500 in January and it was software moddable (get the wrong serial number on it, and it's a hardware mod unfortunately). Burn the rom to a CD, stick it in the player, it whirrs, flashes the rom, ejects the disk. Bingo. Region free, no Macro etc... Google is your friend.

Best part about Apex? Very cheap, and yet one of the few DVD players on the market that can play PAL DVD's on an NTSC TV. I know, I've done it.

Re:Apex AD600

[13Echo]

I have an Apex AD660, that was "upgradable" with a simple ISO CDR image. I can't complain about the player. It has been running great for over 2 years now. I have firends that have had the AD600A models even longer, and all are running without problems. Wal-Mart stores have the players for about $70 or so for the cheapest models. You really can't beat them. They are truely the best bang-for-buck in a DVD player. They are also the most hackable.

Check out Nerd-Out for all of the info that you could ever want on the Apex and similar players.

I am not sure that there is a DVD player in existance that does what you wnat it to do, but the Apex players are the closest things possible.

Re:Apex AD600

[BRTB]

Apex AD1100-W's are great and $65 at Wal-mart.

If you can find the 1meg-ROM unit you can reflash it to be MV and region free; the more common 512k-ROM just has the region-free hack right now but the MV fix is in the works. [check the Nerd-Out forums - AD1100 section, pinned topic at the top] All the DVD's I've used on it, the thing just skips everything you tell it to. Even the sometimes annoyingly-long intros on play menus - don't have to wait for it to come up, press play and it actually PLAYS.

And it has some other nice features: plays MP3s, VCDs, SVCDs, and it'll even show you a CD full of JPEGs. There have even been reports it'll show you raw MPEG files burned to CD (haven't tried that one yet).

No I don't work for Apex, but a box that'll do all that for cheap is a pretty good deal. (Sorry, no component outputs, progressive scan or optical digital out [does have coax], but what do you want for $65?)

flipbook

[Anonymous Coward]

god i remember the good ol days of flipbooks.....all you had to do was open to the desired page, and start the movie from there.......no ads, no feds, no nothin......course, there was no sound either, but the movies didn't really need it then anyways.

How Lazy do you get?

[raiyu]

Exactly how lazy are you that you cant wait an additional 12 seconds for the FBI warnings to scroll by? Use that valuable time to pick your nose I say.

Well

[Quasar1999]

I hate to say it, but a PC is a lot more flexible than a consumer DVD player... I'd go with the PC on this one... I doubt you will find too many DVD players that will allow you to skip the warnings... heck, even on the PC, you have to get hacked software to do it...

Premodded players

[slug359]

An excellent site for those of us living in the UK is http://www.techtronics.com/.
These guys supply premodded DVD players, I bought my Panasonic from here last Christmas. Apart from the long delivery time, they were perfect.

Mine has the fastforwarding through trailers/warnings, region free, and is demacrovisioned.

They also have the option that (if you're a bit scared of soldiering inside your new £400 gadget like me) you can send them your DVD player and they'll chip it for you, of course if they screw up they pay for it (when I bought mine at least, may have changed now).

Some Sony player can be modified

[tempmpi]

Some sony players can be flased with a modified firmware that disables region coding and the UOPs.
Here is a page with a patch for the firmware of the Sony DVP-S7000 DVD Player.

Disabling DVD Controls

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd tell you, but then the DMCA would require me to kill you.

Re:Use a software player

[coupland]

While I realize this is probably illegal, it drives me up the wall to have to view these things. My solution was to buy a DVD burner and use IFOEDIT to rip my favourite DVDs (which I paid for), remove all annoying crap, and then re-burn them. Most players are fine with the modified disks and it lets me view in peace without those annoying warnings that say "dude, don't even think of doing what you just described..."

Videolan Client

[philovivero]

Go here: Videolan Client.

Works under MacOS X, Windows, and Linux. Does DeCSS automagically. Somehow always starts playing the movie immediately, skipping over the annoying FBI commercials and lame pre-movie commercials.

Does subtitling, plays flawlessly under Linux, is GPL, plays DivX :-) format videos, and is just, in general, a great moving-video playback device.

As another poster pointed out, hardware players are a crapshoot, but VLC is just about guaranteed.

Re:Videolan Client

[Eil]

I just went to the VideoLAN page (this is the first I've heard of it) and noticed this in the ChangeLog:

"This release fixes a bug preventing to read DVDs when the disc's region didn't match the drive's."

Now, I happen to know of one media cartel^H^H^H^H^H^H association that would insist that that was a feature, not a bug. :P

DVDCCA Licensing

[RomSteady]

Unfortunately, there are licensing issues involved here on the media side.

The DVDCCA license states that for region-coded disks, there must be one track that cannot be skipped. Most DVD publishers use that track for "required" legal verbage. Some place this chapter at the end of a movie, and use it to display the DVD authoring houses information. Some, like Disney, used it for advertising, and got quite a PR backlash for it. Newer Disney DVD's still have the ads, but have it as a seperate chapter so that you can skip them.

That information about which track is which is stored as a script file on the DVD. The players simply read and execute that script.

While it would be possible to do something like that (code something to skip required tracks), that same hack would break several of the fancier menu systems (Harry Potter extended DVD, etc.)

Just remember that changes always have consequences you may not be aware of. (The tester's motto)

Even better..

[decaying]

....is a site that has lots of players

Re:Don't Be A Baby.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Look, the "content producer" spent millions upon millions of dollars so that you can enjoy their content in your home for cheap.

Oh, yes, I am sure that Disney spent the millions of dollars for the betterment of all humankind, without any thought for the hundreds of millions they'd make from selling the DVD...

The issue isn't really the FBI warning (though I don't like being lectured every time I play a DVD). The point is, Disney and some others put commercials on that track. I wasn't intending to buy a commercial and I shouldn't be forced to watch it.

"Ah-hah!" say the rabid free marketeers. "Disney spent that money on the expectation that you would watch the commercial. Without the added economic benefit of that commercial, they would have had to raise the price to meet the economic expectation of profit. As it is, they count that 'forced eyeball' time as part of the profit, meaning they can sell it for less cash."

Bull dinky. If that's the case, then the commercial is also a cost (to me) and should be disclosed on the box, before I pay for the thing. Otherwise, it's fraud. In other words, there's a difference between "costs $20" and "costs $20 and two minutes of forced commercial viewing". My time is valuable, at least to me, and I shouldn't be bilked out of it.

It's not the 12 seconds. . .

[MyHair]

It's the fact that hardware I *bought* and the DVD I *bought* artificially limits my ability to use the media as designed. And against my will.

Okay, maybe some warnings are 12 seconds, but how long do you think it will be before there are more trailers and even must-watch commercials on DVDs? I've seen commercials on VHS, why not DVD? (Trailers ARE commercials, anyway.)

I like DVD's ability to pause, skip and jump in a random-access fashion (or I should say on-demand fashion).

Two things I HATE and am getting more and more irritated by daily:

1: Services that I pay for are forcing advertising upon me and/or harvesting my "consumer information" and using it against my desires (email spam, junk mail, telemarketing, etc..). Services include telephone service, internet service, cable TV, my grocery store and my credit cards. (For years I refused to get a store card, but now I moved and the only two close grocery stores have store cards; it's pay up, drive far or give in, and I gave in, put I'm pissed off about it and will switch in a second if something better comes by.) I understand some products and services (such as low cost ISP's , adware and broadcast TV) use these tactics to offer a lower-priced option to the consumer. If there's another reasonably-priced option and the terms are disclosed I'm okay with that. I've always paid more than the minimum for my ISP.

2: Products I legitimately buy intrusively warn me, nag me or inconvenience me with things like legal warnings and anti-piracy measures such as CD keys and copy protection. Frankly it's easier to install free (legitimately) or pirated software than it is to find *my* CD key whenever I reinstall.

Books don't have legal warnings beyond the copyright date. Print art has no warnings on it. My furniture and appliances don't warn me that I'll be sued if I use their design to build copies and sell them. Vinyl records didn't have warnings. Cassette tape (prerecorded or blank) didn't have warnings. My CD-R, CD-RW, VHS, VHS-C, 8mm, Betamax, DAT, TR-1, QIC-80, SanDisk, floppy disk and hard disk media didn't come with warnings. The movies in the theater have no warnings. By video and system BIOS don't have warnings. Why do VHS, DVD and software require intrusive and inconvenient warnings?

Re:It's not the 12 seconds. . .

[harlows_monkeys]

It's the fact that hardware I *bought* and the DVD I *bought* artificially limits my ability to use the media as designed.

Uhm...nope. It is using the media exactly as designed. The ability to place those restrictions on the disc is part of the DVD design.

Re:It's not the 12 seconds. . .

[transiit]

It strikes me that there's basically four groups when dealing with these things:
(Listed in order of paranoia, a bit of description for each.)
1) The wide-eyed "Extended Warranty? How can I lose?" group.
Clearly, this is what the grandparent poster was talking about: Complete and total submission.
You get all the benefits of the Ignorance-is-bliss set, at first. As time goes by, it would certainly become harder not to notice that the only phone calls you get are from telemarketers, the only email you receive is spam, and there is so much noise that it won't even be worth looking for signal anymore (aka, the SETI@home project, har har, only joking). You'll have reached the prime consumer level, but that basically just means "easy mark" in the corporations eyes. It might be easier in the short term, but a society of total consumerism would be a mess. Probably best not to go in this far.
2) People that will occasionally go for an advertised bargain/discount club/etc., but do not think much of it. I would say this is the average person out there right now. There isn't much reason not to join a grocery club with the better prices always listed. They'll usually avoid most telemarketers and throw away their junk mail.
3) People that will sign up for said clubs/memberships, but will minimize their exposure. A large portion of the geek crowd lands here. Why not get the benefits of the grocery club, just under the name of J. Edgar Hoover? I signed up for a grocery club under a not-quite-real name, and they've not cancelled my card (as far as I know). They gave me two keyring tags and one card. I gave away the card and a keytag and have traded the remaining keytag a couple times now. Who knows what sort of information has been attached to that original pseudonym by now?
This is a more cautious group, giving out incomplete or outright fictitious information, but a bit more pragmatic than the others.
4) People that won't sign up for anything where they have to give any personal information.
These are the people that either have so little faith in the system that they won't get anywhere near it, or so against it on principle that they won't lessen themselves by it. I admire the idea, but unless something drastic changes, it's extremely difficult to opt-out entirely. It can be done, but you'd probably have to give up many conveniences, like credit cards or checks (they know where you shop), renting a residence (your rental and credit history is duly noted), insuring a car, health insurance (do you smoke? drink? have any prior ailments?), etc. The more extreme of this group lives in small shanties writing manifestos on their manual typewriters.

This isn't meant an an indictment against any of these groups. It's a matter of how much of your life you're willing to give up for others' profit. Until I feel that those controlling the information can be trusted to ethically posess such knowledge, I would advocate that most people should aim to be in one of the latter two groups (against the system by total disassociation, or against the system by misdirection).

-transiit

Possible solutions.

[Kufat]

All of these work on some discs, but not all discs. Your results may vary, but they've all worked for me on various DVDs.

1. Hit stop twice and then hit play. This may bring you to the beginning of the movie.

2. Some "protected" sequences only protect against "fast forward" or "skip forward" but not both. Try both, and both menu buttons.

3. Some DVD players allow you to skip directly to the title and chapter of your choice. My Toshiba does.

4. Some DVD players allow you to disable the menus entirely (PBC off.) Again, my Toshiba does, and many HK players do too. Look in the config menu.

Hope these help.

Sampo 631 CF is where it's at!

[TheRealBrewer]

The Sampo 631CF is easily made region-free and macrovision/GCMS-free. The problem you mention about navigating past or skipping the warnings etc. is generally called UOP for User OPerations. The Sampo can be easily patched to allow full user navigation control even when the dvd requests a UOP lock.

Plus, the Sampo has many other great features such as the ability to play PAL and NTSC discs to EITHER a PAL or NTSC TV. It can play CDs full of MP3 or jpegs. In fact you can even easily hook up a spare hard disk to store and play your entire CD collection (as MP3s or WAVs). Or just put your jpeg pr0n collection on it. And it even has a compact flash slot on the front so you can pop in your latest photos or MP3s without having to burn a CD. You can also easily replace the default background screens as well.

If you can burn a CDR, then you can hack the Sampo. The Sampo has a small but growing and enthusiastic user group. Everything you need can be found at, or linked from, area450.

Re:why?

[pajor]

Well my DVD player is the Xbox, and every so often it gives me a BSOD. This can get really annoying because it makes me watch the FBI warning over and over again. Most of the time all I get to see is the FBI warning. On most windows applications I tend to work as fast as I can saving every 5-10 seconds so that I can get somewhere, but not being able to bypass the FBI warning makes watching DVDs a real drag on a windowz box.

I called the tech support guy, but all he said was to format and reinstall windows, but my Xbox didn't come with a recovery CD so I don't know what to do. Any help would be hot.

Why not?

[pla]

those 10 seconds of fbi warnings are so costly aren't they.

...And just as necessary. Do we *really* need a reminder, every time we watch a movie, about all the rights we lack with respect to it? I think we all understand the idea fairly well...

How many audio CDs do you have that start each track with "Federal law provides severe penalties..." and won't let you FF through it? Zero? That about sums up *my* count, and yet, I *still* understand that copying CDs to give to all my friends breaks the law. Freaky, eh?

Honestly, though, the FBI warnings don't bother me so much as the damned ads. If I *buy* a movie, why do I have ads on it? Presumeably ads justify our "free" TV reception, so how do they belong on a DVD I purchase? *That* really pisses me off, and I would not even *consider* owning a player that honors a button lockout, forcing me to watch them.


besides there really isn't any "better" way to access content on a dvd.

Yes, actually, better ways *do* exist, which seems to me like exactly what the original poster here requested. I've seen a few comments on players that ignore software button lockouts, ways to rip-and-reburn DVDs to get right to the point, ways to just do it all in software with a DVI-out video card, and a host of other ideas. So yes, "better" ways *do* exist.

Personally, I back-up all my DVDs to MPEG4 (WITHOUT including the FBI warning and ads), then lose them in a drawer somewhere (the same drawer as my obsolete-physical-audio-CD collection, incidentally). They look better on my monitor than my TV anyway, and I have a million choices of players with more features than I could ever use. And, if I want to just watch one scene of a movie, I don't have to actually figure out where I left the disc, if I've loaned it to a friend, if the dog ate it, whatever. I have it on my file server, just waiting for me to watch it at the touch of a button. I pop it open, move the slider to the scene I want, and I've found and finished watching the scene I want in less time than I could have gotten the actual movie playing in a physical player.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

store cards aren't that big a deal

[splorf]

I've always just made up some crap to write on the card (not my real name or address--are you kidding?) and they've given me the card no problem. I told them flat out that the info I was giving them was false and they didn't care. They're store clerks who work for a living and they don't like the corporate idiots trying to collect this personal info any more than you or I do.

Abuse of the must watch bit...

[silentbozo]

Actually, forcing you to watch trailers is an abuse of the must watch bit, which was supposed to be limited to the FBI notice. However, you put the ability in there, and the next thing ya know, some marketdroid exec decides that it should be set on ALL of the promo material before the movie...

No UserProhibitions: Grundig GDV130/TYT/Scan2000

[MicAttAck]

I just yesterday finished with the same problem.
Here is a post I made about this

I have bought a new DVD-Player which
has all the features I need. The Grundig GDV130 (a TYT / Scan2000 Clone).
Read about it here:
German
English
My personal experience with flashing that player: (only in german) here

There is a forum on Yahoo-Groups for the Scan2000/TYT Clones here. You need the latest Firmware and a tool called GSK2 from the files Section.
With that tool you can make the Firmware Macrovision free AND Turn of User Prohibition.
So now you can switch off subtitles which you sometimes aren't allowed, you can go directly to the Title-Menu. It's really neat.

My new Grundig GDV130 DVD Player now has these cool features:

- Regionfree (Remote-Control Code)
- Macrovision Free (thru the new Firmware)
- No User Prohibitions (I can now switch of those subtitles, or go directly
to the title-menu without watching those nasty copyright notices)
- Good SVCD/VCD Playback
- CVD (China VCD Subtitles) with SVCD

Cheers

CodefreeDVD also do FBI disabled....

[murk1e]

I don't work for these people, not did I buy a DVD player from them (I gave my business to a local supplier).

They have been online for several years to my knowledge, and the site seems regularly updated.

They do their own mods, which instead of changing regions on the fly, allows you to select the region with a single keypress. This means that they tend to be slightly more pricey than a vanilla system.

They also do macrovision disabled (a technology which prohibits use in home projection systems) and they do FBI warning disabled (the point of the original question).

Codefreedvd is the site, using Google gets you exactly what you want, for example this 300 dvd sony (for UK power supply). They do ship around the world, you'll have to search for your own specs.

Me too... I want a book

[Overzeetop]

Unfortunately, I have a player which obeys the commands of my discs without fail. Pop in a Disney movie (the worst of the lot) and you can't even press "stop." The only way to stop a Disney ad is to "eject" the disc from the player.

Although I don't like the FBI warnings (why not put them at the end, like VHS?) the ads are awful. You _can_ get 10+ minues worth on Disney discs. Luckily, the movies are short and I do intend on re-burning them before my daughter is old enough to watch. No sense in making her sit through the extra ads.

Copyright IP was explained to me when I was a freshman in college, many years ago, like a book. You buy your original. You can make as many backups as you like. You can have them anywhere you like. You can loan them out. BUT - like your physical book, it may only be used in one place at a time.

If I had a book with 50 pages of ads in the front, I'm allowed to rip them out and throw them away. I can rip out the title page, or blacken the copyright notice. It doesn't change what I'm allowed to do, but I don't have to look at it.

You bought the restrictions, suckers

[puppetluva]

I am baffled by the DVD complaints on slashdot.
(Before you claim I'm a studio exec - you should know that I'm a [Li|U]nix SA in a different industry)

Do people really think that if you pay a measly 18 bucks for a DVD that you own the unlimited usage rights to a $50million movie? You don't, you only own the right to look at it in a really limited way (hence the discount).

Do you know why they include all the forced-usage and adverts on the DVD? BECAUSE YOU STILL BUY IT. Do you remember how much movies used to cost before DVD? A LOT MORE THAN THEY DO NOW. Why? The advertisements you say you don't want but buy anyway. When you buy a DVD folks, you enter into a bad, limited deal. Enter into a deal, live with the deal. (remember Micro$oft?)

Let me recap:
1) The ads serve to make buying the movies cheap enough that you can rewatch them over and over to save from reading books or spending time with your kids.
2) You oppose the ads and the format but lack any real willpower to NOT make this complete leisure purchase.
3) Because of #1 and #2 you are in a really tough spot because you are too cheap and/or lazy to really do anything but whine.
4) The MPAA execs can't hear your whining over the din of your living-room TV and the constant clanging of the Blockbuster cash-registers.

Translation: Until you make the tough decisions to live without constant video-entertainment the MPAA is a 10t more l33t than you and 0wns your fr33 t1me, d011ars, and your /dev/kids. . . get the point?. It really is that simple - and that difficult.

[This space intentionally left burning]