Re: new laptop: DVD or Blu-ray

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

Seeker wrote:
> I don't know what this "DVD cheating" stuff is about.

I mean people who buy stuff of which they know that
the deal is unfair and then take much effort to make
it possible to use it despite.
That's the legal fiction.

In practice i doubt that they paid properly for the deal.
So effectively its cheating on unfair businesses.
Cheaters cheating cheaters.


> RPC-1 [...] It was left up to the software to honor
> the region code or not.
> RPC-2, commonly accessible software is available that does not care about
> region code settings.
> Initialization was changed so software does not have access to the
> decryption functions if the region code does not match taking the
> decision out of the hand of the player software.

I read two narrations in the web:
"RPC-1 has no region code in drive but in software,
 RPC-2 has region code in drive and enforces region
 code match in hardware."
versus
"RPC-1 allows to change region code as often as wanted,
 RPC-2 allows only 5 changes. Special software will read
 and display videos from non-matching regions anyway."

The valid intersection of those is probably sketched
by this warning of program "AnyDVD" (another authorless
one):
  "3. -Your drive is a region locked RPC2 drive, which does not
       allow reading of scrambled sectors from a different
       region and you try to read a DVD from a different region.
       Known drives having this problem are RICOH/PHILIPS DVD
       Writers and Matshita/Panasonic DVD readers and writers.
       You can try to find a RPC1 patched firmware at http://www.rpc1.com";

So some old or manipulated ones will perform the decryption
(which is said to be weak), some new ones will deliver
undecrypted data, and "RICOH/PHILIPS/Matshita/Panasonic"
will not give anything.

This sounds like a clear warning not to buy hardware from
said manufacturers.
Regrettably many manufacturers share their produce in
a shameless way. You never know whose firmware you encounter.

For own data recordings it should not matter, anyway.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas