[yoshiTA]

can someone here please let me in on a mystery: how come Apple's DVD player is restricted to one regioncode whereas the VLC player has no restrictions whatsoever??? The main reason I ask is because I still prefer Apple's player...unfortunately there are no more patches for Apple's newer hardware around (like Region X back in the days). The problem is that I have a quite large amount of DVDs in RC1 and RC2 (purchased every single one!)but no time to play around with rip-software to strip out the regioncode altogether. Hell, I would even be prepared to pay more for the DVDs to get them sans RC.

cheers

[Cold Warrior]

Apple's player has to be legit -- approved by the media powers -- or else they'd get sued for breaking the DMCA. So it plays by the region-encoding rules. VLC, thankfully, doesn't give a crap about the DMCA or getting sued, so they use known decryption methods to play the DVDs and ignore their region encoding.

[yoshiTA]

Okay, sounds like a valid point. Still, VLC isn't really an underground app; matter of fact, I don't believe I've ever seen a setup w/o it. So, how come no one goes after the VLC folks then? Also, how come there are no regioncode patchers for current Apple hardware around anymore? Anyway, I just feel ripped off by an industry who thinks it's okay that I pay for their movies but denies me the right to watch them.

[Cold Warrior]

VLC isn't a company or an entity that lends itself to being sued. This may be in part because it's outside the United States, where law enforcement goes where the MPAA tells them to when it comes to the DMCA.

Some recent firmware region links:
http://forums.macnn.com/69/macbook-p...ware-c2d-mbps/
http://forums.macnn.com/73/mac-modif...free-firmware/

I haven't read them, but the first is fairly recent and might be worth your time.

[P]

Not quite.

To play DVDs, you need a key. The common way to get a key is to request one from the DVD CCA, which will let you have one for the low low price of 1 million $ and your signature on a piece of paper that specifies what you get to do with that key. Things you have to do include respecting region code rules and the ROPs (like when you can't press ff to skip the FBI warning). Apple signed this license way back in the mid-ninties when the first Powerbooks could decode DVDs with the help of a special hardware chip.

VLC did it another way. They never signed a license. They got the key from decss, which lets them decode anyway they like. Decss may or may not be legal, depending on geography, but using VLC to display a movie on the screen is fine. You're not making a copy - you're viewing it. Region codes and ROPs have no base in law, they're just the studios yanking our chains a bit because they can.