Dvd Region

[raven]

some players are already designed to be region free. that ps2 dvd is fully legal, they sell it in places like argos, and my dvd player plays ntsc and pal ones anyway

​

Mine plays ntsc and pal too, but I still had to remove the region protection. Doesn't matter much, it works like a charm. It just seems a bit silly (to me) to have protection for regions but at the same time offer support for stolen movies (DivX).

Standalone players aren't even that tough to deal with, using a DVD-drive with WindowsXP you have to flash the drive, bypass the region protection in the software player and remove the registry-settings XP uses (or use a program that does all this for you). Not hard to do but quite annoying.

I know this isn't about the region-codes themselves annymore, I'm not discussing anything, just venting my 'anger' (not real anger, I just love to hate things like this )

 

[finty]

I remember first getting a DVD drive, and you could only change the region eight times, I got it locked on North America .

 

[raven]

I remember first getting a DVD drive, and you could only change the region eight times, I got it locked on North America .

​

I could change it 5 times, but if you can find the right firmware you can make it regionfree (doesn't work with all drives)

 

[generalnmx]

Mine plays ntsc and pal too, but I still had to remove the region protection. Doesn't matter much, it works like a charm. It just seems a bit silly (to me) to have protection for regions but at the same time offer support for stolen movies (DivX).

That's like saying it's silly to allow closed-source emulators for older systems (think the original Galaga on your PS2) to be published by the same companies that publically debase open-source emulators as ruining their economy. Wait, that IS silly.

Seriously, I would have to say around half of the DivX, Xvid, OGM, etc. movies out there are legal. I understand what you are trying to say with how they discourage BUYING from another region while seemingly encourage STEALING with DivX support, but I don't like the inference that DivX is just for illegally ripped movies. That gets back into the same argument alongside emulators and ROMs...

 

[raven]

Mine plays ntsc and pal too, but I still had to remove the region protection. Doesn't matter much, it works like a charm. It just seems a bit silly (to me) to have protection for regions but at the same time offer support for stolen movies (DivX).

That's like saying it's silly to allow closed-source emulators for older systems (think the original Galaga on your PS2) to be published by the same companies that publically debase open-source emulators as ruining their economy. Wait, that IS silly.

Seriously, I would have to say around half of the DivX, Xvid, OGM, etc. movies out there are legal. I understand what you are trying to say with how they discourage BUYING from another region while seemingly encourage STEALING with DivX support, but I don't like the inference that DivX is just for illegally ripped movies. That gets back into the same argument alongside emulators and ROMs...

​

Hmm, I don't really agree with half of the movies being legal. The people behind DivX were quite proud to announce Blizzard using DivX to compress movies and announced that on their website. That was one of the first legal uses of DivX by a major company and that wasn't very long ago.

For home use I think DivX has it's uses to compress movies so you can play them on a handheld (like the GP32) or to compress your home-made videos and maybe even for backup purposes but I don't think that any of these purposes have made DivX what it is today.

I think more legal DivX files will appear but the codec got big because of piracy and I still think that is it's main use at the moment (although I can't prove it)

 

[finty]

I can prove it, look on the eDonkey network, every movie is either DivX or XviD.

 

[EvilDragon]

I can prove it, look on the eDonkey network, every movie is either DivX or XviD.

​

That's no prove.
You could say the same about MP3: Before OGG, every music at Kazaa or Napster was MP3 - and still it's not illegal. You can even buy MP3s.

I have all my Original CDs encoded to MP3.
Not a single stolen one there.

For commercial movies, I buy the DVD, for
a) After half a year, most DVDs drop below 10$
B) I want to have good quality, not ugly blocks
c) I watch my movies Dolby Digital.

I work for a TV and film production company.
For creating Previews to watch at home or demos of our stuff, I often create a DivX (with 3MBit, that's DVD quality) and burn them on a CD to watch on my standalone player at home.

I could also create DVDs, but they're more expensive and I have to author them - not just burn a file.

And I can put many different DivX files onto one CD.

That's perfectly legal.

 

[generalnmx]

I encode TV shows directly to DivX to save a ton of space, and because my computer is powerful enough to do so without huge loss of quality. Nothing illegal about that. DivX has a ton of legal uses, just because people use it for illegal things doesn't mean it's synonmous with illegal activity. Like I said, same as the emulator and ROM argument.

 

[raven]

I encode TV shows directly to DivX to save a ton of space, and because my computer is powerful enough to do so without huge loss of quality. Nothing illegal about that. DivX has a ton of legal uses, just because people use it for illegal things doesn't mean it's synonmous with illegal activity. Like I said, same as the emulator and ROM argument.

​

I never said there are no legal uses for DivX (or MP3). I also don't think enabling hardware playback of DivX means people will use it for illegal purposes if that's what you mean by the emulator and ROM argument (I assume you mean making it possible does not mean that people will use it for illegal purposes per se). This argument has been thrown out of a million courts (concerning emulators, mp3, file-sharing, vcr's practically everything that can copy and spread copyrighted material) already and I would not be bringing that up.

I use DivX and MP3 for legal purposes too (I have all my CD's encoded to MP3 on my computer and I have used my PC as a "VCR" too). But both DivX and MP3 are major codecs thanks to piracy. You can buy legal MP3's now but only after the industry saw there was huge market for it because of piracy. Hardware support for both codecs have been built into components before files could be obtained legally (except for encoding yourself) simply because there is a huge demand for it.

I don't think the hardware manufactures give a **** if you play illegal files on their hardware or not, they may include copy-protection because the music/movie industry demands it (and is quite powerfull) but they just want to sell their products.

Most people I know (except for the few that 'understand computers') do not even know how they could create their own DivX files (you even get questions on this forum about converting movies and even MP3 files) but they do know how to download them and all people I know that have broadband connections do. IMO people using their PC's to record TV are the early adapters not the big group of people hardware manufacturers are aiming for when they include support for different codecs in their hardware.