Consumer Friendly (or Disney Hostile) DVD Players? 590
solli asks: "After 13 years of relatively faithful service my Mitsubishi(!) VCR has finally kicked the bucket, and I am now thinking of moving on to DVDs. One of the only things preventing me from buying a DVD is the fact that some media companies like to make you watch FBI warnings, trailers, and ads before allowing you to view the actual movie (like Disney's Tarzan). Of course, there is such a large demand for region free players and other specialized needs that niche markets have developed to fill that demand. However, I have seen nothing about players that give you the freedom to navigate through the disk the way you want to, instead of how the content producer wants you to. What DVD players exist that let the viewer take full advantage of the nonlinear properties of the DVD media? Can any of the available players ignore the directives embedded on-disk to disable certain controls at particular times?"
Apex AD600 (Score:4, Informative)
Premodded players (Score:5, Informative)
These guys supply premodded DVD players, I bought my Panasonic from here last Christmas. Apart from the long delivery time, they were perfect.
Mine has the fastforwarding through trailers/warnings, region free, and is demacrovisioned.
They also have the option that (if you're a bit scared of soldiering inside your new £400 gadget like me) you can send them your DVD player and they'll chip it for you, of course if they screw up they pay for it (when I bought mine at least, may have changed now).
Re:Apex AD600 (Score:5, Informative)
I got an AD1500 in January and it was software moddable (get the wrong serial number on it, and it's a hardware mod unfortunately). Burn the rom to a CD, stick it in the player, it whirrs, flashes the rom, ejects the disk. Bingo. Region free, no Macro etc... Google is your friend.
Best part about Apex? Very cheap, and yet one of the few DVD players on the market that can play PAL DVD's on an NTSC TV. I know, I've done it.
Some Sony player can be modified (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a page with a patch [brouhaha.com] for the firmware of the Sony DVP-S7000 DVD Player.
Re:Apex AD600 (Score:3, Informative)
Get the lowdown on most DVD players, searchable. (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I have had my player about 2 years at least.
Here [vcdhelp.com]
APEX 3201 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How Lazy do you get? (Score:3, Informative)
I never heard ~10 minutes called 12 seconds. Tarzan has the previews on that unskippable track
Even better.. (Score:5, Informative)
....is a site that has lots [regionfreedvd.net] of players
Re:Videolan Client (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apex AD600 (Score:5, Informative)
Check out Nerd-Out [nerd-out.com] for all of the info that you could ever want on the Apex and similar players.
I am not sure that there is a DVD player in existance that does what you wnat it to do, but the Apex players are the closest things possible.
A solution for the rest of us (Score:3, Informative)
Just go to the chapter menu and start watching from Chapter 1. The FBI warning's usually fixed between the main menu's play option and the first chapter. Skipping direct to the chapter usually skips the warning.
Apex AD1500 (Score:2, Informative)
There is firmware available to make it Macrovision Free, Region Free, and RCE Immune(sp).
I did it to all three players, no problem.
Best part? They all work very well, and are dirt cheap ($60-80).
Philips DVD players (Score:3, Informative)
On the plus side, many of their other DVD players offer the same functionality. If there's a major company out there that's friendlier than most to consumers, it's Philips.
Remote Selector and Xcard (Score:2, Informative)
Possible solutions. (Score:5, Informative)
1. Hit stop twice and then hit play. This may bring you to the beginning of the movie.
2. Some "protected" sequences only protect against "fast forward" or "skip forward" but not both. Try both, and both menu buttons.
3. Some DVD players allow you to skip directly to the title and chapter of your choice. My Toshiba does.
4. Some DVD players allow you to disable the menus entirely (PBC off.) Again, my Toshiba does, and many HK players do too. Look in the config menu.
Hope these help.
Re:Apex AD600 (Score:5, Informative)
If you can find the 1meg-ROM unit you can reflash it to be MV and region free; the more common 512k-ROM just has the region-free hack right now but the MV fix is in the works. [check the Nerd-Out forums [nerd-out.com] - AD1100 section, pinned topic at the top] All the DVD's I've used on it, the thing just skips everything you tell it to. Even the sometimes annoyingly-long intros on play menus - don't have to wait for it to come up, press play and it actually PLAYS.
And it has some other nice features: plays MP3s, VCDs, SVCDs, and it'll even show you a CD full of JPEGs. There have even been reports it'll show you raw MPEG files burned to CD (haven't tried that one yet).
No I don't work for Apex, but a box that'll do all that for cheap is a pretty good deal. (Sorry, no component outputs, progressive scan or optical digital out [does have coax], but what do you want for $65?)
Apex DVD Players - AD-703 Especially (Score:3, Informative)
What puts Apex above the rest is the ability to flash update the BIOS of the player. There are
many [nerd-out.com],
many [yahoo.com] resources for hacking the Apex BIOS. This includes a great utility that's been developed called
EZ Patch [yahoo.com] which allows users to create custom BIOS images for their APEX players. Among the many modules for EX Patch is the ability to make the player region free and the ability to bypass the "locks" on DVDs that keep a user from skipping over the previews and other such items.
Re:Videolan Client (Score:3, Informative)
Why not? (Score:5, Informative)
How many audio CDs do you have that start each track with "Federal law provides severe penalties..." and won't let you FF through it? Zero? That about sums up *my* count, and yet, I *still* understand that copying CDs to give to all my friends breaks the law. Freaky, eh?
Honestly, though, the FBI warnings don't bother me so much as the damned ads. If I *buy* a movie, why do I have ads on it? Presumeably ads justify our "free" TV reception, so how do they belong on a DVD I purchase? *That* really pisses me off, and I would not even *consider* owning a player that honors a button lockout, forcing me to watch them.
besides there really isn't any "better" way to access content on a dvd.
Yes, actually, better ways *do* exist, which seems to me like exactly what the original poster here requested. I've seen a few comments on players that ignore software button lockouts, ways to rip-and-reburn DVDs to get right to the point, ways to just do it all in software with a DVI-out video card, and a host of other ideas. So yes, "better" ways *do* exist.
Personally, I back-up all my DVDs to MPEG4 (WITHOUT including the FBI warning and ads), then lose them in a drawer somewhere (the same drawer as my obsolete-physical-audio-CD collection, incidentally). They look better on my monitor than my TV anyway, and I have a million choices of players with more features than I could ever use. And, if I want to just watch one scene of a movie, I don't have to actually figure out where I left the disc, if I've loaned it to a friend, if the dog ate it, whatever. I have it on my file server, just waiting for me to watch it at the touch of a button. I pop it open, move the slider to the scene I want, and I've found and finished watching the scene I want in less time than I could have gotten the actual movie playing in a physical player.
Re:against federal law (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't be silly (Score:2, Informative)
Regarding your ridiculous pro-Apex claims, I have a 4 year old Pioneer deck that plays VCDs, and has no problem with CD-Rs or CD-RWs. Virtually any desk sold in the past year plays MP3s. I have never, ever had the need to play a non-region 1 DVD (I'm not really a fan of Japanimation : It all seems a tad too pedophilic), so I really don't see the value there. My upcoming purchase of a replacement will be a Toshiba progressive scan player with every feature (including Windows Media playback, though I know that that feature won't go over well on Slashdot) for ~$168 US : I really don't see the value in going with a hack shop.
Re:Yes, but Apex DVD players also blow. Or not. (Score:3, Informative)
Apex, Sampo, and UOP (Score:3, Informative)
And of course, you can disable macrovision, play MP3s (with a much better menu than the original Apex firmware), display JPG images, hook up a hard drive or compact flash unit, play discs from any region, etc. Check out the Nerd-Out forums HERE! [nerd-out.com]
Malata (Score:3, Informative)
I love it. Oh yeah, it's progressive scan too.
Re:Can someone PLEASE explain... (Score:2, Informative)
Other way round - it protects the distribution monopolies out in the non-US regions. If region coding weren't in place those of us in places like Australia would just order new releases from wherever was cheapest, probably through the web from the US, and local distributors would likely collapse.
With region coding in place, the idea is that we're forced to buy DVD's from local distributors, which are released on their schedule and at their price point.
This isn't new - in about '94/'95 my boss at the time ordered laserdiscs from the US. They were stopped at the border because the discs hadn't come through the official release channels and weren't officially available in NZ. (They were just regular Hollywood movies).
Re:Use a software player (Score:3, Informative)
When you consider all this that you can remove, you can almost always fit a single DVD movie onto the 4.7g available to DVD-Rs.
Re:Can someone PLEASE explain... (Score:2, Informative)
Already done it (Score:1, Informative)
2. Buy DVD drive. (I have a pioneer DVD-116, although anything will do)
3.Patch the firmware to make it region-free. http://firmware.inmatrix.com/
4.Install xine, mplayer, ogle, vlc, etc
5.Play!
Totally legal (at least here in New Zealand) and ethical. I don't think that I've read an fbi warning while using xine.
BTW, does anyone know how to get the old xine gui skin? Will grabbing an old xine-ui tarball and taking the skin from that do?
-gunkaaa
Sampo DVE611 (Score:3, Informative)
Onkyo DV-S353 (Score:2, Informative)
Okay, so it is region locked, but you don't have to wait and you get a nice picture and sound without buying too expensive of a player.
(Oh, the bad news is that it doesn't appear to play anything on CDRs, unlike my old Apex.)
store cards aren't that big a deal (Score:4, Informative)
JVC DVD players (Score:3, Informative)
Re:store cards aren't that big a deal (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if this helps a lot... (Score:2, Informative)
But with my Sony, I can get around most of the FBI warnings, "mandatory previews", and other annoying features. Even though you may not be able to hit "next" all of the time, between trying the "title", "next", "menu", and as a last resort, the fast-forward buttons, most of them can be passed up.
Now if they just weren't there at all, now THAT would be nice.
steve
Re:Some Sony player can be modified (Score:2, Informative)
And regarding an earlier post regarding using the nonlinear DVD format better, the player can show all chapters/titles and lets you jump to whichever you want. Thus, even the new fancy RCE protection (that stops region moded players if they are all auto) can be circumvented by just browsing the chapters and choosing the one that starts the movie.
Now, my previous player, a Samsung 990, didn't even allow fastforward at times, and it was modded too (by the same company). The thing is, I don't think the companies selling modded players advertise the facts that I described above.
A shame really...
Re:Don't be silly (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/AS
Due to syndication issues and other Fox f*ckery, god knows when they might be released in the US.......
No UserProhibitions: Grundig GDV130/TYT/Scan2000 (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a post I made about this
I have bought a new DVD-Player which
has all the features I need. The Grundig GDV130 (a TYT / Scan2000 Clone).
Read about it here:
German [t-online.de]
English [t-online.de]
My personal experience with flashing that player: (only in german) here [dv-rec.org]
There is a forum on Yahoo-Groups for the Scan2000/TYT Clones here [yahoo.com]. You need the latest Firmware and a tool called GSK2 from the files Section.
With that tool you can make the Firmware Macrovision free AND Turn of User Prohibition.
So now you can switch off subtitles which you sometimes aren't allowed, you can go directly to the Title-Menu. It's really neat.
My new Grundig GDV130 DVD Player now has these cool features:
- Regionfree (Remote-Control Code)
- Macrovision Free (thru the new Firmware)
- No User Prohibitions (I can now switch of those subtitles, or go directly
to the title-menu without watching those nasty copyright notices)
- Good SVCD/VCD Playback
- CVD (China VCD Subtitles) with SVCD
Cheers
CodefreeDVD also do FBI disabled.... (Score:4, Informative)
They have been online for several years to my knowledge, and the site seems regularly updated.
They do their own mods, which instead of changing regions on the fly, allows you to select the region with a single keypress. This means that they tend to be slightly more pricey than a vanilla system.
They also do macrovision disabled (a technology which prohibits use in home projection systems) and they do FBI warning disabled (the point of the original question).
Codefreedvd [codefreedvd.com] is the site, using Google [google.co.uk] gets you exactly what you want, for example this 300 dvd [codefreedvd.com] sony (for UK power supply). They do ship around the world, you'll have to search for your own specs.
Re:DVDCCA Licensing (Score:3, Informative)
You're quoting a player requirement. The disc is not required to use UOP control, as in the original post.
I have a copy.
Re:Apex AD 1100-W (Score:2, Informative)