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Date:      Mon, 22 Jan 2001 09:26:10 -0500
From:      "Andresen,Jason R." <jandrese@mitre.org>
To:        Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com>
Cc:        freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: DVD playback
Message-ID:  <3A6C4302.432CF0D7@mitre.org>
References:  <200101210556.f0L5u1F73910@medusa.kfu.com>

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Nick Sayer wrote:
> 
> I got xine running and have tested it out with a couple of unencrypted DVDs
> (pr0n seems to be mostly unencrypted. Once again, adult entertainment leads
> the traditional industry in understanding technology). It seems to work
> pretty well modulo some bugs, although it takes most of an Athlon 600
> to do it, and I can't get it really to do anything except play the individual
> vob files (dvd://vts_nn_m.vob).

Playing with it over the weekend, I got the same results, unfortunatly 
only have a PII 400, so the playback was SLOWWW.  All in all, I seemed
to get approximatly 1/2 normal speed out of xine (which xine will do
sometimes just for fun), and I couldn't figure out any way to turn on
the subtitles.  I think this is a feature of xine itself, as software
windows players seem to work on machines as slow as a PII 300, and X
doesn't appear to be taking a lot of CPU time.

> It would be naughty to suggest that I have done anything more than this.
> However, speaking in a purely hypothetical vane, I can suggest one thing
> that would be something someone would have to overcome.
> 
> Pioneer used to make a drive called a 303. They currently make a drive
> that is model 305. The major difference between the two is that the 305
> has region locking in the drive itself. The 303 did not. The wrinkle is
> that the 305 must be told at least once (and no more than 5 times) which
> region to accept. If you never tell it, it will petulently refuse to play
> any region locked media at all. If someone were to wish to be naughty,
> one would have to plug their DVD drive into a Windows box and set the
> region once before attempting to use DeCSS or other naughty software
> to playback encrypted media. Of course, this would not be required on a
> drive without region locking, but all drives now come with it, unfortunately.
> 
> I have not read the DMCA. I hope it dies in the courts. Fair use would suggest
> that it would be legal to set up a decrypting service for people's DVDs.
> Mail in a region 2 DVD and $20 and get back your DVD and a copy of it as an
> MPEG-4 CD-R. So long as the conversion house doesn't preserve a copy of
> it, this would be as legal as PAL-to-NTSC conversion for personal use (which
> I believe *is* legal, isn't it?).

Well IANAL, but from what I've seen, the MPAA is actively trying to
outlaw
a lot of things most people consider "fair use" including making backup
copies, taking a DVD player you own apart, or even playing movies from 
outside of your own country (this one really burns me up).  Even more 
unfortunate, they seem to be succeeding.

Dang now I'm off on a tangent, I'll stop now.

-- 
   _  _    _  ___  ____  ___   ______________________________________
  / \/ \  | ||_ _||  _ \|___| | Jason Andresen -- jandrese@mitre.org
 / /\/\ \ | | | | | |/ /|_|_  | Views expressed may not reflect those 
/_/    \_\|_| |_| |_|\_\|___| | of the Mitre Corporation.


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