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.
They just aren't $40-at-Wally World cheap. That's the real clincher: if you aren't paying tariffs and exorbitant fees for your international media; then The Powers That Be get pissed off. Maybe, just maybe we should start considering the regulations that make it difficult for us (in any country) to access foreign-produced media; and then the technology itself won't matter quite as much anymore.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
For changing subtitles, I use DVDsubber. The region code thing is great, though. Couldn't everything be done better in hardware though?
Isn't this and example of the achilles heel of any CD-encryption/protection technology? The hardware reader has to decrypt it at some point, and then a program can just capture the unencrypted bits and reroute them as desired, for example to an unencrypted image.
If it's dedicated hardware, you just have to make friends with an Electical Engineer.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Being able to bypass the region code stuff has been avail for a while now. http://www.elby.ch/download/SetupRegKill.exe Also, this still won't help with the dvd drives that have the region checking stuff built into the hardware.
I think it would be lots of fun to rip on some of the "great" movies in the style of MST3K or Rocky Horror. Sure, doing it through subtitles is not ideal, but it could still be a lot of fun! It would sure make the recent Star Wars releases 5000X more watchable.
One could distribute the edits alone online, and someone else could play their DVD filtered through that editset.
So everyone can remove the "dirty bits" of DVDs. For the right-wingers, that's kissing, nipples, evolution. For the test of us - Jar Jar.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
"Wonder how long before this is contraband code like DeCSS."
/., the big guys pick up on it and [Emeril voice]BAM![/Emeril voice] Down it goes, in a fiery ball of death.
Based on the way things are going, I'd say not long at all. It seems once something hits
Folks, the powers that be won't sit idly by while new means of circumventing their devices gets published. the only way to defeat them is to beat them at their own game. Politics, politics, politics.
Sent from your iPad.
well since that link is /.
here are some cached links
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
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.
So that means that we'll finally get the Episode I without Jar-Jar Binks?
True warriors use the Klingon Google
Damn terrorists.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
Region codes are enforced both by the drive firmware and the player software. You'll still need a region-free DVD drive. They're hard to find, but still out there. See here.
I think you're missing something here.
In the future, a Palladium-enabled DRM aware OS could stop you from installing this driver. Or even researching enough to write a similar one. With a DRM OS, Microsoft could specify that only cryptographically signed drivers from approved developers will be allowed on your system. The DRM future is one where you don't control your box. Everything you want to do will have to be approved and accepted. This is not your father's copy protection, and you treat it lightly at your peril.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
You see, Senator? This is a perfect example of why we need Trustworthy Computing(TM) protection like Palladium(TM). Protection at the hardware level is absolutely essential to stop the rampant piracy of intellectual property that threatens to destroy the entertainment industry.
Imagine, if you will, the billions of dollars in lost revenue, the thousands of lost jobs, the dozens of dollars of lost tax revenue (for those of us who don't shelter our money overseas) if this behavior is allowed.
This is more damning that the threat of VCRs and audio tapes that nearly destroyed our industry in the 1980's. Then consumers could watch television whenever they wanted and fast-forward over commercials. They could watch these shows again and again without new revenue being generated with each play. They could make mix tapes of their favorite music to listen whenever they wanted as often as they wanted, without paying more money, and without being forced to listen to the new music and messages we're selling.
See how much money we lost in the 1980's a direct result of the evil Socialist conspiracy? This is why we need perpetual copyright and why we must control every aspect of the consumer experience. We must be rid of choice; it threatens our very existence. And yours. Imagine what would happen if voters had real free choice of who they wanted in office.
</sarcasm>
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.
fifth sigma, inc.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
People here keep going "Well, you can flash the ROM and sidestep region-coding that way."
That's just one of the things it can do.
Unrestrict DVD: This filter removes various usage restrictions from a DVD, including region lockout, APS (Macrovision), and disabled fast-forwarding, menu call, angle change, and so forth.
The ability to remove those stupid control lockouts is what's really great. That it gets rid of region-lockouts is simply a bonus.
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.
When you play a DVD, the first thing the software player does is to ask the DVD drive to return the DVD disc's title key. This key is needed to decrypt a CSS-encrypted movie.
On a Region Protected drive (or RPC-2 drive) before acknowledging this query, the drive first checks that the region of the inserted disc matches the drive's own region.
If they don't match, the drive will simply not return the Title Key. Hence a Region 1 DVD will not play in a Region 2 drive, etc.
Until now, the only way to defeat this scheme was to act upon the drive itself, by flashing a "patched" firmware.
In this firmware, the region check would have been disabled (with other things) so that the Title Key would always be returned, regardless of the disc's region.
Because this region checking was hardware based, it seemed for a long time that no software only solution would ever defeat it, and that the only solution to make your system region free would be to flash your DVD drive.
However, people using DVD-Rippers (DeCSS, etc.)soon noticed that they were able to rip the content of a disc on a region protected drive, regardless of whether the disc region was matching the drive's one or not.
This gave the idea to a few people (this is the 3rd product I know of that makes use of this feature actually) to create "virtual" DVD drives, i.e., fake drives that would rip from the actual DVD drive on one side, and appear like a standard DVD device to the software player on the other side, while feeding it the ripped data.
Of course, as such a software offers complete control on both the (virtual) device and the (unscrambled) data that flows through it, getting rid off all the annoyances like region checks, FBI warnings or Jar Jar Binks characters becomes child's play.
This little tool looks really cool though...
I think you're being a little unfair there... ANY engineer with a screwdriver should be considered armed and dangerous to any electronics nearby.
:)
Myself included.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?