Slashdot Mirror
The Little DVD Driver That Could Change Movies
AnnaBlack writes "DVDSynth is a (currently prerelease) low-level driver tool that can sit between your physical DVD drive and any software that accesses it. So far so what, but the extremely clever thing about this is that it can filter the DVD data on the fly. The example applications included currently allow new subtitle sets to be provided for existing films (which could spawn a whole new activity for movie buffs!) but also a very neat little filter that will remove region codes on the fly from any DVD you play. Supplied with full sourcecode and programmers documentation." Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS.
For changing subtitles, I use DVDsubber. The region code thing is great, though. Couldn't everything be done better in hardware though?
well since that link is /.
here are some cached links
I think it's mainly software based. I know my DVD software (for Windows) allowed you to set the region when you installed it, and then you could only change it a certain number of times. Which is really stupid, because you can just use free software which won't check the region.
Google Cache here. Poor little server.
Anyway, seeing as this little guy can effectively extract all data coming from a copy protected device, I guess Palladium type systems are already in-effective. Contraband code? So what - it's already out there.
I would guess that this is a method for creating what is effectively a wrapper for the DVD driver, perhaps more correctly a shim. This means that it appears to be a DVD drive to the OS, and a DVD player program to the drive. This method can be employed to any hardware device - even embedded DRM methods. It may take a while, but it can be done. If hardware needs software to run, that hardware can be emulated with software, period.
The proponents of DRM might eventually come to realise this - if it's an idea, it's hard to keep it in a can. Good ideas are impossible to keep under wraps. To them I say:
The Genie is out of the bottle boys, but it grants wishes to anyone, not just you. Deal with it.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Do a search for 'DVD Subber' and you'll find that it exists already, with timed scripts for all sorts of things.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Well.. you could try writing down the model number of your DVD drive and go right over to the firmware page and see if you can find some region-free firmware for it.
It's worked for me on 2 different occasions.
Hardware hackers.. god love 'em..
Since the link is /.ed, I can't tell if it addresses this or not, but if it just strips out the region coding from the playback, how does it deal with RPC2 disks (that query the drive for what region it's currently running under, and if it gives the wrong answer, bye bye movie)? If it can't handle RPC2 DVDs (most new ones are like this - if you try to play an RPC2 disc on a player that has been modified and it tells the disc the wrong region, you see the annoying map screen), it's not much use to be honest.
I had a chance to mirror the index.html & the source code and binarys before the site went down..
You can pick them up here. It should be a high enough bandwidth site not to go down.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
you can patch the firmware of your dvd. check on dvdgenies homepage.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Also, enter DVD Tracks.
The source code is licensed under the GPL, which isn't mentioned anywhere on the page.
Also from the README...
Which is kinda nice for those of us who don't have $600+ to blow on visual studio. (Or are a student at a uni with the $5 per license deal.)
(sorry, I didn't bother to grab any other files)
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
The linked site in the article is slashdotted, so I am going to assume that this is software for PC, as opposed to a firmware flash for home theatre DVD players.
You can just get an easily obtainable pioneer 106s slot-loading drive which can be found for less than $70CAD these days and plays damn-well near every type of CD/CD-R/CD-Rw/DVD/etc and is relatively quiet and then flash the firware with an anti-RPC firmware.
You can get hacked firmware for many, MANY PC dvd drives out there to make them region free or allow an infinite number of region change switches.
There are two schemes:
RPC-1 (the old one) - The drive itself physically has no region protection and relys on the software to check the region of the disc and act appropriately. Your average windows DVD playing software has these protections. This is very easy to bypass and usually involves some easily obtainable freeware program. Linux dvd players usually ignore regions to begin with, so an RPC1 drive + linux player = 100% region free. Judging from your comments, this is what you have.
RPC-2 (new age, ubuiquitous today) - The drive itself has region checking so first you have to bypass the hardware protection via firmware patch (often but not always available) and THEN bypass the software protection in whatever DVD playing software you use. So, an RPC-2 drive + correct firmware patch + linux player = 100% region free.
Even if you are using VideoLAN or Ogle for linux which ignore region control, your RPC-2 drive will shut you down unless its firmware is patched.
If you are buying a DVD drive for your PC, you might want to go look around for firmware patches and then make your purchase depending on what's available.
http://www.clearplay.com already offers a pay service/product that allows to put your existing dvd's into your computer and watch an edited version. Of course, they must have made an edit of the DVD, so there's limited selection, at least initally. And it's only available for Windows.
fifth sigma, inc.
They just aren't $40-at-Wally World cheap. .iso is used to flash the player's bios) to not only open all regions, but turn off Macrovision as well.
Almost true...
The Apex line of players (I have the AD-1500) is easily modified (a freely downloadable
That player is currently available for as little as $50. Plays every available video disc format, including (s)vcd,dvd-r(w),dvd+r(w)... even plays mp3 cd's and photo-vcd's.
-- This sig for rent.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
NOT TRUE. I have rpc-2 DVD drives with original shipping firmware (two of them, in fact), and I can tell you from firsthand experience that while rpc-2 does make life more difficult, it is not by any means a roadblock to region-free playing
VideoLAN and ogle both use libdvdcss for CSS authentication and decryption. What saves you in the case of rpc-2 drives is that libdvdcss implements not one, but three different CSS access mechanisms. Two of them (called "key" and "disc") use the drive for authentication and require the drive region and disc region to match. However, the third method (called "title") attacks the algorithm cryptographically, and in most cases works even if the regions don't match.
In fact, the "title" method can even be used in the case where you have an encrypted .vob file on the hard disk and neither the dvd disc nor the dvd drive is available at hand.
See the libdvdcss documentation for more details.
The inner workings of the cryptographic attack on css are actually quite interesting. As I recall, the attack relies on the fact that blank black mpeg video encodes in a very predictable fashion. Most movies which start with blank black video are thus vulnerable to a known-plaintext attack and the movie's CSS key can be guessed in this manner.
Not necessarily.
Depending on the design, it's quite possible you could lobotomize your dvd player with bad firmware.
It all depends on if the loader routines are in firmware or in separate rom, and what measures the engineers took to ensure a clean upgrade.
The simplest way is to buy an ASUS DVD drive: just remove the "test" jumper and it is region free. See drawing