Looking for Japanese DVDs

[brianca]

Re: Looking for Japanese DVDs

I'm not a big fan of watching movies on a computer, and the work to build a decent htpc are not at all worth it, imo. That said, a computer and the right software = a region free player.

[Bard]

Re: Looking for Japanese DVDs

Ehh, you need the right hardware to play other region DVDs on a PC too, unless something has changed since I last looked into it. Ever since they came up with RPC-2 drives (I think that was the acronym) which actually enforce the region in firmware, it's been a problem.

There are some drives you can buy which are meant to be installed by OEMs and region-set before being shipped to a customer, but you can just leave it in region-free mode and get proper operation most of the time. I've got one of those from a loooong time ago that's going out on me...

[brianca]

Re: Looking for Japanese DVDs

There are still plenty of drives that use firmware that can be flashed to set the region. Even for those that don't have that ability, there are apps that will intercept the region code from the DVD and tell the software that it's playing a disc from its home region.

[Jonah K]

Re: Looking for Japanese DVDs

There are still plenty of drives that use firmware that can be flashed to set the region. Even for those that don't have that ability, there are apps that will intercept the region code from the DVD and tell the software that it's playing a disc from its home region.

Some of that software does a little more than intercept the region code.

[Bard]

Re: Looking for Japanese DVDs

Interesting. Yeah I didn't think about the firmware flashing, that would open up quite a few more drives, though you'd still need to make sure you got a drive with region-free firmware available.

Anyway, it's good to know the methods are out there still.

[brianca]

Re: Looking for Japanese DVDs

you start getting into a gray area legally when you do much more. of course, defeating region is gray as well until someone decides to define fair use in that area, but defeating CSS is a much darker shade of gray.