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Vista Won't Play With Old DVD Drives
tlhIngan writes "From a developer's blog, Windows Vista will no longer support DVD-ROM drives that do not handle region coding in hardware (RPC1 drives) - thus preventing playback of DVDs that are region/CSS encoded with those drives. Not a big problem, as RPC1 drives haven't been officially manufactured since 2000 (and Microsoft claims their drives are all broken), but for those with hacked drives (RPC2 with RPC1 firmware), or move the RPC1 drive to new computers, well, no more DVD movies for you!"
Unless I'm misunderstanding something (which is very possible, I don't know much about anything besides Linux and Star Trek), the Windows version of VLC will presumably keep on working, doing all the decoding in software using libdvdcss. So people will still be able to use it to view their legitimately-acquired foreign DVDs.
-Stephen
Ah yes, but region-free encoding still requires encoding in hardware - to say it's region-free. Instead of saying "this drive only plays region 1", you're saying "this drive plays region 1, 2, 3, 4 etc..." - regardless of region, it's still gotta decode it. Region-free does not magically unencode the contents!
The story is a bit misleading - basically Windows Vista will only support drives that do something in hardware, rather than the old style drives that required it to be done in software. It's not a DRM issue, just dropping of support for older drives - and saves them a bunch of problems building a driver layer in for what are legacy devices.
It also doesn't allow RPC2 drives using RPC1, which is an evasive way of saying "drives with hacked region-free firmware."
Take it from me, a very large percentage of the popular drives have this firmware available, and a significant number of users use it. By locking them out, they've just pissed off the end user, and if the end user is a Joe Durr who doesn't know what RPC1 or RPC2 are, they'll start bitching at their nerdy associate for their drive being broken...and, more than likely, just shove it and buy a new drive rather than listening to words like "reflash."
Of course, my personally trained users aren't that stupid...but I know a lot that are.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
You don't get it, do you? The problem is that the drive you can buy at newegg is region-locked, and the region can only be changed 4 times. This means that if I want to watch my American, Japanese and European DVDs, I need to buy three players (and a case big enough to accommodate them).
--
*Art
I don't know why you would want Vista, but for me there is a new networking & audio stacks, XPS & totally cool new printing system, transactional FS, and a lot more interesting stuff. Sure, crawl back under your rock and keep beliving that all what Vista is is Aqua interface AKA MacOS circa 80s ;-P
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
Yeah the floppy drive thing for RAID/SCSI/etc drivers is unbelievably stupid. There is a way to slipstream drivers onto a Windows XP CD but it's quite complex and doesn't work with certain drivers e.g. drivers for Nforce 4 motherbaords.
Of course you need to have a working computer to burn the CD in the first place. Not much good if you're building a computer from scratch!
with a bootable CD-RW of course...
Sigs are for the weak.
Actually, it is a DRM issue. You probably don't know exactly how DVDs work.
The DVD video data itself is encrypted. In order to decrypt it, a DVD player app is supposed to ask the drive for the decryption keys. On older drives, the drive will give the player app those decryption keys regardless of what region the disc is coded for. The drive doesn't know what region the player app thinks it's in, and doesn't care. It simply hands the keys over to the player, which then enforces region encoding. The encryption is separate from the region coding - it's possible to have a region coded disc without CSS encrpyion (although it won't be effective), and it's possible to have a CSS encrypted disc without region coding.
Newer drives refuse to hand over the decryption keys if the disc's region code doesn't match the drive's region code. That is the ONLY difference between older and newer drives. Official DVD player apps will not be able to read the decryption keys if the disc region code doesn't match the drive region code, because the drive won't give up the keys. This was added because some users started finding ways around the software-enforced region coding system (such as registry hacks, tricking the DVD player app into working in region-free mode, or whatever).
Of course, open-source DVD player apps (which are illegal in the US anyway) don't even attempt to grab the decryption key from the drive - they deduce the decryption key by examining the encrypted data, using a known-plaintext attack. They don't enforce region coding either, and are completely unaffected by hardware region coding. That's the only reason I've not bothered reflashing my DVD drive to make it region free - I don't need to.
The ONLY reason Microsoft are doing this is for DRM purposes. There is no other legitimate reason. Older drives do not need extra code (in fact, they need less code than newer drives), they don't need compatability layers, or any that stuff. All current (official) DVD player apps enforce region coding in software anyway, before they even ask the drive for the decryption key. This is only there to prevent people running patched firmware to make their drives region-free.
They'll probably add code to prevent DVD rippers and open-source DVD players from working as well.
Grim Fandango came out in 1998, I bought a 50x CD drive for that. It's been used pretty intensely since and is still in tip top condition...
Give Scribus a try..
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
Theres no official flash player for Windows XP x64 either.
From Microsoft:
Every CSS-licensed DVD-Video playback device must be set to a single region. There are two types of DVD-ROM drives:
RPC Phase 1 (hereafter referred to as RPC1). RPC1 drives do not have built-in hardware support for region management. For these drives, Windows maintains the region change count information, and the region can be set only once.
RPC Phase 2 (RPC2). RPC2 drives maintain the region change count information in hardware, and in general the region of such drives can be changed up to five times by the end user.
If you buy a new drive, it will be RPC2. However, many people flash their drives to RPC1 with unofficial firmware, thus enabling playback of any DVD with current versions of Windows. Windows Vista will not.
The page you linked to is at rpc1.org. RPC1 is the non-region coded firmware which Windows Vista will not be supporting.
What you will need is an RPC2 firmware with the limit on the number of region changes removed.
Try New Zealand - new release DVDs here are $106NZ per DISC under Roadshow's Rental Leasing terms.
They have a monopoly thanks to copyright laws preventing importation of DVDs within 9 months of worldwide theatrical release.
I'm not sure where this whole "region coding illegal in NZ" thing came from, but it hasn't been the case for a long time. I did try and find out if there was any truth to it once, because as far as I knew everything was region locked as elsewhere, but managed to find only one or two outdated official-ish references and a handful of foreign sites which referred to it but which were also old or had since been corrected. Simply put, we suffer under the same region encoding most other places do, particularly because it's often tricky to get stuff in Region 4.
Regards,
Jo Meder
The page you linked to is at rpc1.org. RPC1 is the non-region coded firmware which Windows Vista will not be supporting.
Uhh, yes, that's the domain name. If you spend two minutes browsing the site, you'll see they have plenty of RPC2 firmwares. link
(A bunch of savages in this place, I swear. I'm not even supposed to be here today.)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It isn't even anything as complex as separate keys for each region.
Once decrypted, the stream just contains the equivalent of a bitfield indicating which regions are allowed to play the disc. The difference between RPC1 and RPC2 is that the RPC2 drive decodes and checks this bitfield itself.
The disk actually contains the (unique) key to decrypt each file, but encrypted with about 200 "player keys". The player asks the drive for its key, decrypts it, and uses that to decrypt the stream. An RPC2 drive simply won't give the player the key if the regions don't match.
Originally, the MPAA planned to revoke player keys as players were cracked. As it happens, CSS was so spectacularly insecure that every single key was cracked, and this never happened. Instead, RPC2 drives were introduced to maintain region locking, since they could no longer rely on software players to do it.
...of Vista ever shipping?
New monitors needed, now new DVDs, more memory, more disk space. The costs of upgrading are getting out of hand. OK, over a 3 to 5 year interval, hardware replacement may result in a significant change, but on day one who is going to upgrade?
So, Vista may not be the financial bump that MS will need. You have to wonder if it is time to abandon development until the necessary hardware is already in the field.
It really couldn't be considered for Linux.
As I understand it, if you connect an RPC-1 drive to your system, the cdrom.sys driver will emulate the region control. If you look at the drive's properties, it'll say that you have two or fewer region changes left. The region setting is saved in a fairly well-known location in the registry (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\<random junk>). Vista will remove this emulation, and will probably refuse to pass key exchange messages to the drive. (As an aside, the cdrom.sys driver only checks the RPC level on startup. So, if you change an RPC-2 drive into an RPC-1 drive, Windows no longer shows the drive as being region controlled until the next reboot.)
On the other hand, Linux doesn't have any region control emulation. Since it's not encumbered by any DVD licensing contracts, it can simply pass the key exchange messages to the drive. So, it really wouldn't make sense for it to "be considered for Linux."
Yes, but in an RPC-2 drive the software STILL needs to handle region-coding - specifically, it needs to report which region it is to the drive, which then ensures that this matches with the drive's region. The actual decryption is still done in software.
... DVD doesn't play.
.... DVD plays.
... DVD won't play.
... DVD plays.
Think of it like this:
RPC-1 drive:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-1 drive : OK, here you go.
software: Ooh, this is a region 1 DVD, but I'm in region 2.
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-1 drive : OK, here you go.
software: Good, DVD's from region 2 and I'm in region 2.
RPC-2 drive:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-2 drive : Which region are you?
software : Region 2.
RPC-2 drive: No, go away.
ALTERNATIVE SCENARIO:
software : Please supply decryption keys for the DVD
RPC-2 drive : Which region are you?
software : Region 2.
RPC-2 drive: OK, here you go
ICBW, but it looks to me like there's not much in it in terms of "amount of code required".
Realistically, bearing in mind that most Microsoft OS installs are OEM'd rather than purchased and installed by end users, I don't see it being noticed by the masses. Doesn't make it any more palatable, though.
at first i couldnt get the drivers to sliptream for nforce 4 boards, turns out if you use the latest nlite with the latest nforce drivers, and select TEXTMODE drivers, youll be allright. I made many coasters before realising that the older drivers didnt work, and that you needed to chock all the RAID and SATA drivers in one folder to slipstream from.
Slipstreamed some other drivers and that works well too
Or you can use a program like DVDidle pro that lets you switch to any region anytime you like.If I'm not mistaken anyDVD and DVD43 will also do the same.I personally like dvdidle pro for the fact that it'll load a movie into RAM so your drive doesn't have to spin so much.Great for saving juice and wear on my laptop dvd drive.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
vista isn't enforcing region codes, in fact that is exactly what this decision does, supporting RPC1 would mean vista does enforce region codes, RPC2 leaves region codes up to the drive to enforce or not enforce
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
VLC uses DeCSS to break the encryption. So it doesn't much matter, but WinDVD or any other commercial player will complain because the drive will not hando ver the decryption keys when the region does not match.
Just use VLC
:-)
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
I know because I am in Canada for christmas and we got a couple of european DVD's. Of course no DVD player in the house would play them and the only computers with a DVD-drive were running Windows and would also not play them.
But VLC were installed in a few minutes and worked with a charm.
And a few people realised why I was wearing my "no CSS" thinkgeek T-shirt
Indeed. A buddy of mine from work said he installed the beta version of Vista at home. When he fired it up for the first time, he let it load completely and then checked his system resources. With the system completely idle, 620 megs of ram were being used. Don't ask me how it's even possible for an OS to tie up that amount of ram while doing NOTHING, I couldn't tell you. He said the only real changes he saw with this build was the huge resource hogging, the "eye candy", and things are all (dis)organized differently.
No thanks M$. I pass.
You're nothing; like me.
Yeah, if you absolutely have to watch your DVDs on a computer. There's still the old-fashioned TV set with a region-free player.
Well, then you have to set it based on the regional setting, ensure that it can be modified (if I remember correctly there's a limited number of changes allowed?), and protect it in some way (ho ho ;)).
You don't seem to understand. The driver does *none* of this and never has.
With RPC1 drives the drive doesn't track region codes at all, it's handled by the DVD Player application. The DVD Player app will usually allow you to change it's own region code 5 times before it locks itself. This is handled by the player application itself, internally. RPC1 drives will give up their key to whatever application requests it.
RPC2 drives however are set to a particular region in the drives firmware, and the drives firmware will accept commands from an application on the computer to change it 5 times. The region code is in the drives firmware itself, not handled by the driver. When a DVD Player app tries to play a DVD the drive will querry the app as to what region code the application is set to, if they do not match then it doesn't give up it's key.
In both cases the driver just passes the messages and commands back and forth between the actual drive and the player application. It doesn't handle RPC1 drives differently from RPC2, it just passes whatever messages the drive and player app tells it to. The DVD player applications are what have to handle the two drive types differently.
Because the Japanese anime company may eventually sell the rights to market and redistribute the DVD media to some company in the U.S..
That U.S. company may add value (subs/dubs/easter eggs/inserts, etc) to the Japanese media. The U.S. company that goes through the trouble of establishing distribution channels and pays for advertising the Japanese DVD in the U.S. will want "exclusive" rights to the U.S.-- that is, it wants to be sure its DVD doesn't have to compete with the original media being sold by some importer.
This is why they region-lock movies that are not new; it's not always about the DVD beating the box office release date.
Region-locking is about guaranteeing that the locals to a particular market get exclusive rights.
The Japanese anime company probably has no clue as to what they want to do with the anime now. But it region locks just in case the thing turns into a cult hit somewhere in the world. By region-locking, it can get more $$$ by guaranteeing that that average consumer (with a region-enforcing DVD player) has never seen the content-- even if it's "old" in its original market.
I too own "hacked" (because they're old) DVD and Playstation hardware because I (legitimately) own Japanese and U.S. media.
I hate that they do it. I especially hate it because the American re-distributers of foreign DVDs often TAKE AWAY value-- remove certain subtitles and dubs, offer only full-screen and not widescreen versions, etc. It's not a matter of being unwillig to pay these re-distributers their cut. It's a matter of getting the same media. If they just ADDED value (an English track or subs, etc.), I wouldn't have a problem with it.
But I understand why they do it.
And I doubt they'll listen to me-- because for every one of me, there are 10000 who are fine with region 1 DVDs in region 1 players that will never complain.
The term has always been associated with the WYSIWYG interface that made it practical.
... and then they built the supercollider.