Universal versus universality

[imomus]

I took delivery of a new Apple iBook 14" on Monday. The baby weighs 5.9 pounds and is quick, bright and healthy, an oblong white chunk of happiness. (Read Man of broken letters for an account of everything that had gone wrong with my old iBook.)

I have only two complaints. Apple changed the Airport architecture, so I can't use my old Airport card in the new machine. And the DVD drive only allows you to switch regions five times in the entire life of the computer. Since I have DVDs from all regions, this means that I'm going to have to decide which to watch and which to turn into paperweights. As far as I can see there is no hack for my DVD drive, the Matshita CD-RW CW-8123.

When DVD was invented, the Hollywood studios devised the region system so that their product roll-outs could continue to be staggered, allowing them to concentrate marketing resources in different countries at different times. Now, I watch very few Hollywood films. I've bought DVDs all over the world, in full legality, and I've bought a player to play them on, at full cost. And yet my DVDs, from Japan, Russia, Europe and America, cannot all be played. Hollywood, not content merely to restrict the view of the world in its own products -- products which I can, and do, choose to avoid -- has restricted the view I can get of the world from all DVDs. Instead of encoding its own products to restrict them, it has encoded the player, which should be universal.

Comments

Universal appeal

[martymartini.livejournal.com]

I bought the same model a few months ago, and I must agree with you, what a shame the DVD drive is not multi-region. Speaking of Hollywood studios twiching and altering things in order to restrict the view of the world with their marketing ploys,
I saw a teaser for Zatoichi, the most recent Kitano movie, and the distribution rights for America are owned by Miramax, and they definitely made it look like some Hollywood movie, with the cheesy voice over and all.Miramax's famous for toying and editing foreign movies in order to make them more "universally appealing"... In my opinion, those changes just take away the whole appeal a foreign film might have, which is due in part to its unformated exotism.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

As someone who has worked on Macintosh computers for over 15 years, I've always found the "burnt bridge" policy imposed by both Mac and Adobe a bit vexing, although I fully recognize the necessity of this practice (my ancient copy of Streamline still works, thank heavens). Over the winter, I finally made the slightly painful hardware/software leap to OSX and a G5 with a full complement of cannon and crew. The flat screen make color preparations in Photoshop a much easier undertaking, at least in my experience. Besides the considerable expense and some minor software and operating system tics (CS Illustrator seems to crash more than earlier versions), I have few complaints--other than finding a doily for my cold, linear CPU has been a challenge, and the galling fact that my recent purchases shall be nearly obsolete in a year or so. Very hard for a small studio to keep up with such changes.

I cannot speak to the DVD problem to which you refer (I do not own any), but it sounds like it certainly requires a long hard look, to put it kindly.

An aside: I would recommend those who still use Quark to give a switch to InDesign serious consideration.

Is it true that 30-inch flat screens shall be available in the near future? Good heavens.

W

DVD Playback

[(Anonymous)]

Nick, try VLC for DVD playback. It's free, will play just about any audio or video format you care to throw at it, and doesn't care what region your DVDs are.

http://www.videolan.org/

rich

Try VLC.

[(Anonymous)]

These guys (http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=19984&highlight=8123) are saying that VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html) overrides the drives firmware region code. Not sure, I haven't tried myself.

HTH,

- Androse Rosewood.

[joopy.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about your financial situation, but I've seen multi-region DVD players at a store for under $250 USD (I think the cheaper of the two might've been about $210). Should be worth it if you want to actually watch your DVDs.

[monocat.livejournal.com]

jealous, moi?



...sigh...


oh - a friend with an ibook did these & I'm jealous of his ibook as well...

http://homepage.mac.com/darryltoon/PhotoAlbum28.html

green, i am.

Re: Try VLC.

[monocat.livejournal.com]

used VLC m'self & it's a good player - plays these divX cds i got from a lad at work no problem - keeping the image & the sound tracking properly - plays DVD's - does full screen

There's also
http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/ to consider...

as we all like choices...

[(Anonymous)]

support paper, kill computers.

Antonin

VLC

[(Anonymous)]

Bonjour,
Use VLC to view any DVD any time. When you insert a region-locked DVD, I can't remember exactly what happens, but just ignore the warnings etc... then launch VLC.

In the Sytsem Preferences/CDs & DVDs pane you can also set it to automatically launch VLS (or MPlayer if you prefer).

For some insight into DRM, copyright etc, a good read is Cory Doctorow's presentation to Microsoft:
http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt
(The tech/legal discussions related to your 13 year old "Pop stars, nein danke" piece are happening now... if you expand it to culture production at large and not just the british music scene of the day, of course... ;)

Prost!

bopuc.

[niten.livejournal.com]

Seconding the comments about VLC, but what you definately want to do is stop the DVD Player app from loading whenever you insert a (movie) dvd.

There is a useful app called DVD Info X or something similar which tells you how many software/hardware changes you've got before the drive goes belly up. The site I found this app on used to have a list of drive cracks but I believe the person who's doing them hasn't been doing so for a while.

And yes, a laptop is a portable device, one I'm going to be taking all over the world. Why the hell shouldn't I be able to play DVDs I've legally purchased from wherever I go?

[kalephunk.livejournal.com]

If a standalone DVD player is desired, I highly recommend the early Apex series (AD-1100w, specifically). It's a cheaply-made player that was sold at Walmart for $48 about 2-3 years ago, and are easily and cheaply found secondhand (also, the rebranded Norcents that Walmart currently sells are also good). What makes these players so great, besides the cost, is that they're verily easily hacked -- burn a rom image to a CD, insert, DVD player hacked. The hacking benefits are many, including region-unlocking (all regions) as well as custom logos and other aesthetic bits. The DVD player supports a number of formats, including VCD, SVCD, MPEGISO (direct playing of unauthored DVDs or CDs containing MPEG2 files), as well as basic mp3 and CD playing. The MPEGISO and multi-region are my main reasons for recommending it -- being able to fit two DVD rips onto a single DVD, 10 half-hour TV shows on a single DVD, and watching a region 1 film followed immediately by a region 2 all demand that I give this DVD player two thumbs up.

</offtopic>

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I tried VLC but it wasn't giving me any sound. Then I downloaded MPlayer

http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/

and that seems to work fine. Not a very elegant interface, but it works!

[theophile.livejournal.com]

VLC rules, but it can't override some firmware problems. the sound problem might very well have been a configuration issue-- but then again, VLC has one of the least-elegant interfaces ever.

if you continue to have problems, the internet is full of entirely legal hacks for disabling your drive's region-checking (http://www.regionfreedvd.net/rom.html). the entertainment industry can continue embedding DRM crap in their products as long as they want, for all I care, just so long as it's this easy to get around.

Hey Nick... eD B^)

[biseinen.livejournal.com]

Idoru!
Congrats on your new iBook Nick. I can't possibly imagine how much more prolific this new machine will make you. ;)
A RPC-1 (region free) DVD drive will play movies from any region. So, I suggest you try that one first. ;)
Just in case, there's this useful utility which saves my DVD collection everytime (I switch DVD drives frequently): DVD ToolKit 2.2
...and here's the d/l link:

http://files.digital-digest.com/downloads/files/mac/dvdtoolkitv22.sit

Hope it helps. Carpe Diem!

PS: oh, BTW, I totally ADORE " Life of the Fields" and can hardly wait for an alternate version on the final release.
..And, does any English version of "A Little Schubert" exist somewhere?
Hasta luego... eD B^)

Hola

[biseinen.livejournal.com]

30-inch flat screens are available right now! Check the Apple website.
eD B^)

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Enjoy the new toy! (Or new right arm, more like.)

Found this, thought of you:
http://www.catandgirl.com/view.cgi?195

[niten.livejournal.com]

The firmware cracks are great and all, but my suggestion is to use them as a last resort as you could void your warranty. I've checked those sources, and it doesn't look like there's a (mac) crack for any of the recent iBooks (mine included), which is a shame.

I say Mac above, as it's probably entirely possible that there's a crack out there in PC land that might do the job, but that would mean taking the drive out, etc, which'd be a bit of a pain.

In short, momus, it might be better to stick with VLC/mplayer for the time being. Mplayer is a pretty decent download in any case, as it's a free media player that handles a whole hoard of encoding formats.

Re: Hey Nick... eD B^)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that advice!

The only English versions of 'A Little Schubert' that exist would be live versions people had bootlegged. I tend to sing it in English when I perform it live.