[ltp] Matsushita DVD drives and region lock

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Thu, 08 May 2008, Ben Pearre wrote:
> 4) I have the 8x dual-layer DVD-burner.  I can't play DVDs.  Do I need
>    to set the region code on the drive first?  Does that mean that the
>    bastards won, and I can't play DVDs from anywhere but Region X even
>    with libdvdcss?  Or will setting the region code advance me to the
>    state of the art achieved 4 years ago when my player could play any
>    DVD?

Matsushita DVDs have the most complete RPC-2 firmware in existence, the
drive effectively DENIES ACCESS to RPC data outside of the allowed
region(s).  You can't get the data to CSS-decript it, the drive refuses
to read the sectors from disk.

This is NOT new.  They've been doing that since forever.  But not all
thinkpads ship with Matsushita drives... but all ridiculously thin DVD
drives are Matsushita.

Back to the RPC-2 firmware in these drives: nothing can get past THAT
kind of blocking using software alone, you need to mess with the drive
firmware to get past it.  And firmware for Matsushita drives are *rare*
and RPC-1 hacked versions are almost unheard of.

Unless your disks are NOT region-locked, you *will* have to set the
region to be able to use the player on region-encoded discs.  You have a
(very) limited number of region changes before the drive locks it
forever.

If you need a region-free DVD reader, get yourself an external drive
that you have verified you will be ablt to strip of the region lock
beforehand.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh