[koshercuts]

I'm fiending for some TRIGGER HAPPY TV
DVDs direct from England, but don't want
to invest in them if my iBook won't be able
to play them. Is anyone in the know about
iBook DVD playback limitations?

[KianD]

Its region locked to wherever you bought it. PAL/NTSC/SECAM doesn't matter

However, occasionally third-party DVD players such as VLC or MPlayer-OSX2 can circumvent region coding, as they access the DVD as a block device - data only - and strip the encryption. This lets me play Region 1 discs in my Region 2 HP, I've never tried in my iBook though.

[Randman]

It's not locked. Wrong info above.


You have like 5 times to change the region on a Mac before it "locks" onto that region.

[ghporter]

The real question here is whether the drive/video system will handle PAL/SECAM or not. I live in the U.S., so NTSC is the standard here. I've never poked into whether a PAL or SECAM DVD will play on our iBook, region locked or not-I've never had access to one to try it.

There are ways to deal with region locking. That's not a huge hurdle. Whether the hardware can handle a completely different video standard is quite another.

[Randman]

I've not bought DVDs in the UK, but I've played DVDs from the US, the Middle East, Australia and Asia on my laptops (my old G4 iBook and my PowerBook17). Never had a problem running them.
If there was a problem, could always look into something that rips the video, then reburn it. I would think that would overcome the lock feature and it's legal since you're making a copy of something you own and not distributing it.

[KianD]

Originally posted by Randman:
It's not locked. Wrong info above.


You have like 5 times to change the region on a Mac before it "locks" onto that region.

Thats the same as being locked. Once it has a mechanism to lock it to a region at any time, its a locked drive.

[KianD]

Originally posted by ghporter:
The real question here is whether the drive/video system will handle PAL/SECAM or not. I live in the U.S., so NTSC is the standard here. I've never poked into whether a PAL or SECAM DVD will play on our iBook, region locked or not-I've never had access to one to try it.

There are ways to deal with region locking. That's not a huge hurdle. Whether the hardware can handle a completely different video standard is quite another.

Err, the DVD doesn't know what format it 'is', beyond the number of lines. Its MPEG2 data. In a computer, it plays the data. That is all. A computer doesn't have TV standards...

[koshercuts]

anything conclusive here folks?

doesn't sound like anybody has
experience playing a PAL region 2
DVD in a North American iBook
that has had lots of NTSC region 1
DVD playtime.

i'd hate to be stuck with a set of
worthless discs...

[ghporter]

Originally posted by KianD:
Err, the DVD doesn't know what format it 'is', beyond the number of lines. Its MPEG2 data. In a computer, it plays the data. That is all. A computer doesn't have TV standards...

The software that reconstructs the data into video does indeed care about what format the data is in. There are differences well beyond simply the number of scan lines, including horizontal and vertical refresh rates and the structure of the signal itself. Most DVDs not only tell you what region they're built for, but their video coding as well-look on the label. Unless the DVD player is built to handle PAL and NTSC, you'll only be able to view one or the other.

I still don't know if the software that comes with a Mac in North America can handle PAL DVDs. I just want to point out that there's more to it than just scan lines.

[KianD]

Originally posted by ghporter:
The software that reconstructs the data into video does indeed care about what format the data is in. There are differences well beyond simply the number of scan lines, including horizontal and vertical refresh rates and the structure of the signal itself. Most DVDs not only tell you what region they're built for, but their video coding as well-look on the label. Unless the DVD player is built to handle PAL and NTSC, you'll only be able to view one or the other.

I still don't know if the software that comes with a Mac in North America can handle PAL DVDs. I just want to point out that there's more to it than just scan lines.

Err, I'm an electrical engineer. I understand the differences involved here

The DVD player does not give a DAMN about what 'format' the DVD is when the output is not a television. Couldn't give a toss. Because its MPEG DATA. It doesn't contain the signal structure. It doesn't contain the refresh rate. MPEG data doesn't concern itself with the messy, analogue world. When you consider the majority of DVD players (hardware) send their signal in RBG over a SCART lead, its not as if the colour coding matters anyway.

The only issue is the refresh rate - the movie may run 1/24th faster or 1/25th slower than you'd expect. That will be the only issue.

Region coding is only connected to the CSS keys or the drive's firmware being narky. You can circumvent the first one with alternate software - Videolan or MPlayer OSX on the Macintosh.

Please research an issue before commenting on it.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by KianD:
Err, I'm an electrical engineer. I understand the differences involved here

You are not the only person reading this thread, and it is not appropriate to assume that everything is aimed at you. Even though I posted in response to your statements, I had intended to give my impressions, based on experience with several software players, to whomever was reading the thread.

It has also been my experience that when a DVD has been set up for PAL that it will not play properly on software that is set up for NTSC. This has been true of all sorts of video recording media ever since the BetaMax came out, and I saw no reason to think that software would be implemented any different. On a computer that provides a TV-out signal, why would it ignore the video format the TV-out card is built for?

Let's remember here that this whole subject is entirely centered on Hollywood's intention to closely control who can watch what disc; I KNOW that MPEG data is standardized, but I also KNOW that the marketing weasles DO NOT WANT YOU TO WATCH DISCS THAT WERE NOT 'MEANT' FOR YOU. They have a lot of power over the companies that make DVD software, a fact that's not lost on those software houses.

Please research an issue before commenting on it.

See above. Not very nice of you to say this. Did you consider that there might be other factors involved beyond the relatively simple encoding of MPEG data?

[tooki]

Glenn, you're totally wrong here, since the question is about an iBook, not a standalone DVD player. The limitations of standalone players plain and simply do not apply.

Any iBook sold anywhere in the world is capable of playing any DVD ever made, because all the region-coding is done at the data level -- the discs and drives are physically identical. BUT the first time you play a DVD, the drive is set to the region code of that disc (NTSC or PAL doesn't matter, to the computer it IS just encrypted MPEG data). You can change this region 5 times.

For many drives, region-free firmware is available, which doesn't actually turn it region-free, but rather locks the number of remaining changes at 5, so you can change as much as you like.

Alternatively, VLC plays discs from any region, regardless of the drive's setting. (VLC has its own way of circumventing the region coding.)

Another way around it is to use MacTheRipper to rip the DVD to the hard disk. MTR is capable of stripping the region coding so that it'll play in Apple DVD Player regardless of region.

tooki

[sgb]

hi

i bought my ibook in the states and took it back to europe. playing dvds of either region is no problem at all, i set the dvd drive region to rc1 (us) since i actually have more US dvd s and the US region coding can be nastier with rc1 rce (as far as i know, there is no rce version of rc2). anyway, whenever i pop a rc2 dvd into the drive, a window will open telling me that the dvd will can not be played unless i change the region of the drive, the whole spiel with like "you have 4 more times, ....).

the easiest thing is to ignore that window and start either vlc for watching the dvd or mactheripper for ripping the dvd. works beautifully. only "drawback" is that i can only use the apple dvd player for region code1 dvds and *have* to use vlc for rc2 dvds.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by tooki:
Glenn, you're totally wrong here, since the question is about an iBook, not a standalone DVD player.
...
Any iBook sold anywhere in the world is capable of playing any DVD ever made, tooki

I was not aware of this. Everything else I've ever seen has been so MPAA-influenced that I assumed they'd pushed the same thing on Apple. The fact that the video system was effectively off the shelf sort of cemented that thought. I haven't seen anything that told me the video card would handle both NTSC and PAL.

All of my research into DVD software has come up with a plethora of warnings about "you need PAL software to play PAL discs" and the like. I must have just found the wrong software.

I'll point out that all the PC DVD players I've seen appear to worry about PAL vs NTSC; I made an invalid assumption about that being a problem on all platforms.

[tooki]

Originally posted by ghporter:
I was not aware of this. Everything else I've ever seen has been so MPAA-influenced that I assumed they'd pushed the same thing on Apple. The fact that the video system was effectively off the shelf sort of cemented that thought. I haven't seen anything that told me the video card would handle both NTSC and PAL.

The graphics card (Mac or PC) isn't seeing NTSC or PAL, it's seeing an MPEG2 stream. On a computer, it's decoded to a YUV video stream, then converted to RGB, and displayed on whatever display you have hooked up -- it's scarcely different from a QuickTime movie.

There's no direct (or even indirect) correlation between the scan lines in the MPEG stream and those output by a graphics card. (The only relation, in fact, is that during DVD playback of Macrovision-protected discs, Apple DVD Player signals the graphics card to turn on Macrovision on the NTSC/PAL output to prevent tape recording.)

PCs are, to my best knowledge, no different -- any limitations are deliberately-inserted software limitations.

And in fact, standalone DVD players aren't that different, either -- they're just programmed to not play a different region. All of the DVD chipsets can handle PAL/NTSC conversion, etc., they just refuse to do so because they've been programmed not to! (Note that many DVD players can be unlocked with a simple unlock code -- ostensibly for "test mode", hehe -- that will let the player play any DVD, regardless of region or video system.)

tooki

[ghporter]

Originally posted by tooki:
any limitations are deliberately-inserted software limitations.

This was my major thought; that the MPAA would have seen to it that such limitations were required by law in the U.S. All DVD drive makers now region lock their drives because of a law the MPAA pushed through Congress; I felt that they would have also ensured that other region and/or market limitations should be enforced as well. I am VERY glad to find out that the marketing weasels have not managed to do that!

[tooki]

I don't see how this is in any contradiction with the movie industry and DVD Forum's requirements.

DVD drives aren't locked to any one region (just a maximum number of region changes is enforced), and this was never a law, it was a requirement under the DVD licensing agreement. If you want to build DVD drives, you have to purchase usage rights to the DVD patents, and in doing that, you have to agree to the region coding system, among other things.

In acknowledgment of the fact that (unlike most standalone players) a single computer model may be sold all over the world (and are not tied to video systems), computer DVD drives were given the ability to function anywhere in the world, but all the same not be feasible for someone who wants to watch discs from various regions.

And the limitations of which I spoke, that is NTSC- or PAL-only operation, or single-region operation, are purely artificial, because on a computer the video standard is entirely irrelevant, and the DVD drive itself is already taking care of the region coding enforcement.

Region-free DVD players like VLC get around this by providing their own CSS decryption keys, rather than relying on the DVD drive to provide one off the disc, which the drive will only do for discs of the correct region. All the licensed DVD players, like Apple DVD Player, require the decryption key to be given to it by the drive.

tooki

[ghporter]

Obviously the way DVDs work is far more complex than it has to be. I had been informed (erroneously, obviously) by somebody at Toshiba that it was a U.S. law that region locking be enforced on drives built after some time in 2000 or 2001 (I was buying a replacement drive in mid-2000 at the time), so I put two and two together and pinned such acts on the MPAA and Senator Hatch. Not that they aren't culpable in a large part for how messed up this whole thing is, but that's beside the point.

I have also been under the impression that TV-out hardware was generally built for the video standard of the area it was marketed to, so in North America video cards would support NTSC but not PAL or SECAM. I must have either been overgeneralizing or basing my impression on earlier, less capable hardware. So whether or not the computer itself would play a particular DVD, I had thought that the TV-out connection might not support DVDs encoded for a different video standard.

After some research I've learned that the conversion (at least between PAL and NTSC) is as simple as adjusting playback speed and compensating for any associated change in the audio. With broadcast signals the two systems are wholely incompatible, but since the source here is effectively just raw video, the conversion isn't a big deal. Shows how much I had known about PAL video before, huh?