|
 |
Films with accurate French subtitles | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 9 of 20 27 March 2007 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
There is real money behind this marketing strategy, so I suspect the situation is not quite so benign. The movie companies still in many cases negotiate distribution rights within individual countries, they like to delay releasing a DVD in some countries while the movie is still in the movie theaters there, American movies often seem to be more expensive in Europe than in the US, etc. It's also quite some marketing strategy to lock the region on computer DVD drives after 5 region switches. The regional encoding policy has some dubious aspects, which could well fail in courts when challenged on "fair use", say by someone who bought a DVD on a trip to France and can't play it at home without buying and bringing home a player as well. I am inclined to think the recording companies don't want this tested in court, otherwise they would stop us from being able to buy and play foreign DVD's in a heartbeat. Edited by frenkeld on 27 March 2007 at 3:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 10 of 20 27 March 2007 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
It was my understanding, after researching the issue some time ago, that, because the region-encoding is simply part of a marketing strategy, there are no legal ramifications involved in buying and using DVD players or discs outside the region in which they are intended to be sold and used. Edited by Linguamor on 27 March 2007 at 5:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 11 of 20 27 March 2007 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Oh, one can bring DVD's and DVD players from abroad, but that may not be the whole story. I remember reading somewhere once that the body licensing the DVD logo at one point toyed with the idea of denying the rights to its use to the manufacturers putting in remote control codes, that somehow become known to everyone, which easily change the region of the device. It's things like that which make me suspect that there is a somewhat ambiguous situation out there that everyone has simply learned to live with. It will be interesting to see how this will play out with the Blue-Ray and the HDDVD disks and players. P.S. On a more technical note, as far as I know, VLC software player can play DVD's from various regions on a personal computer. Edited by frenkeld on 27 March 2007 at 5:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7013 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 12 of 20 27 March 2007 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
|
It's a little more complicated than that. Basically, DVDs are encrypted with the Content Scrambling System, and in order to read these you must license the algorithm from the DVDCCA. Thus, the DVDCCA can choose to not license the algorithm to companies who produce products they don't like -- for example region-free drives.
VLC contains an implementation of the CSS algorithm which allows it to play encrypted DVDs. However, the drive must still be able to read the encrypted contents, and that means satisfying the region codes. For more information, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video#Restrictions 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 13 of 20 27 March 2007 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
|
My understanding is that a computer can treat a DVD disk as simply a data disk with a bunch of files, whatever the region. Then a purely software player like VLC will read the files and play the movie using the computer processor only. What you may lose is hardware acceleration inside the DVD player itself, if there is such a thing, but on fast modern machines you should be able to do without it.
All in all, unlike for VHS tapes, playing foreign DVD's is a very inexpensive proposition - it's just a matter of knowing what's out there. I wish one could say the same of shipping costs from Europe to North America, but sometimes there is no alternative. Edited by frenkeld on 27 March 2007 at 10:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7013 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 14 of 20 27 March 2007 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yes ..
No. Even an attempt to read the disc key (not the actual dvd contents) can fail to set the Authentication Success Flag if the DVD drive detects a region mismatch.
Yes, assuming the regions match and CSS has been broken.
Your DVD drive wouldn't do hardware acceleration. That would be offloaded to the video card instead. Your video card is not encumbered by CSS or region codes.
Yes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6945 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 15 of 20 27 March 2007 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
And is it up to the software to do something with that flag or does the drive itlsef lock up? Edited by frenkeld on 27 March 2007 at 10:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| dmg Diglot Senior Member Canada dgryski.blogspot.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7013 days ago 555 posts - 605 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Dutch, Esperanto | Message 16 of 20 27 March 2007 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The firmware will generally not allow raw access to the drive if the region codes mismatch. VLC requires raw access to the drive to extract the keys needed to decrypt the streams with CSS. So, yes, the drive basically locks up. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
