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.

Comments

dead link

[io333]

well since that link is /.

here are some cached links

Yes, it's Free

[ptbrown]

The source code is licensed under the GPL, which isn't mentioned anywhere on the page.

Also from the README...

All DVDSynth components should build with VC++ 6.0. Most components also build with MinGW, except for dvdproxy.mpd, dvdproxy.sys, and MirrorDrive95.kll (and those only because I haven't ported them yet). Be careful about this last, because if you build MirrorDrive95.dll without MirrorDrive95.kll and try to run the result, you will probably get a nasty crash. The MinGW Makefile is kinda broken; in particular it doesn't know anything about the header files. You will also need NASM (a free assembler) to build the one ASM file that's currently in the distribution. You should not need the Windows DDK or any Windows header files beyond what come with VC++ and MinGW.

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)

Re:PC DVD region coding?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Is this a mix of software and hardware? Are some DVD-ROM drives just un-regioned? Does it somehow rely on the software to participate?"

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.

Is Slashdot scooped by EVERYONE?!?!

[philovivero]

I read this story on Friday morning. NTK Now covered it. The submission seems almost a word-for-word copy/paste of NTK Now's coverage. Hell, why not? I'll copy/paste NTK Now's coverage:

TRACKING: sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

DVDSYNC is a low-level Windows filter that can sit between a DVD player and your DVD player software, and mess with data streams and controller commands on the fly. There's not much there yet but what there is demonstrates the great promise of the design. Already You can create your own subtitles (there are already some improved English subs for Gauche the Cellist, and a couple of other anime tracks). In the future, we imagine, you'll be able to perfectly sync-up extra audio tracks or even skin your own DVD menus. There's also, ahem, a filter to take out any DVD zoning information before it gets to the DVD playing software. In other words, a really useful utility for DVD watchers - and anyone who likes improving on the creativity of others - which will have the military- industrial-entertainment complex spitting blood. This is what TCPA, EUCD, DMCA and any anagrams thereof were cynically designed to smack down. Get it while you can. http://www.roundelay.net/dvdsynth/prerelease.html - despoiling our DVDs with homemade content? Who could want such a thing? http://www.yil.com/columns/column.asp?columnist=eb ert&date=020201&page=01 - Ah. And wasn't killing Siskel enough of a warning?

Now, don't you feel better?

rpc-2 can be broken without firmware

[David Jao]

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.

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.