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Philips vs Unlicensed DVD Players 325

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'm-taking-my-toys-and-going-home dept.
Kallahar writes "NewScientist is running an article about how Phillips, Sony, and Pioneer have "asked customs officials throughout Europe to seize players made by unlicensed factories." Philips, Sony and Pioneer have pooled many hundreds of patents covering all aspects of the DVD system. Philips administers the pool, grants licences and collects royalties, which are then shared three ways." This comes on the heals of philips going after copy protected CDs. The draw for these DVD players for consumers is probably both price, and the fact that they are often free of those pesky region encodings (especially nice for anime junkies)
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Philips vs Unlicensed DVD Players More

Philips vs Unlicensed DVD Players

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  • Which Ones? (Score:3, Funny)

    by govtcheez ( 524087 ) <govtcheez03@hotmail.com> on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:15PM (#3000354) Homepage
    "asked customs officials throughout Europe to seize players made by unlicensed factories."

    When reached for comment, spokesmen for Sony said that Phillips and Pioneer were considered unlicensed machines, Phillips spokespeople said Sony and Pioneer were unlicensed, and Pioneer said that Phillips and Sony were unlicensed.

  • Memo to Customs Officers (Score:4, Funny)

    by Stavr0 ( 35032 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:20PM (#3000402) Homepage Journal
    From: European Union Border Enforcement Agency
    To: All E.U. Customs Officers
    Subject: New directive

    Effective immediately,
    All efforts to halt drug contraband, illegal alien smuggling and terrorist infiltration is to be suspended. The biggest threat to EU today are unlicensed DVD players. Me must put a stop to this terrible instrument, and protect the children from the ravages of illegal region code hacking.

    • All efforts to halt drug contraband, illegal alien smuggling and terrorist infiltration is to be suspended. The biggest threat to EU today are unlicensed DVD players. Me must put a stop to this terrible instrument, and protect the children from the ravages of illegal region code hacking

      Why does someone always bring this sort of thing up? Are you the sort of person who tells a police officer giving you a traffic ticket that he should be out solving murders rather than worrying about your broken taillight?
      Customs Officials are responsible for screening everything that comes into the country. It's not a zero sum game, they don't have to let an opium shipment go by to impound a DVD player. They're inspecting that shipment of DVD players anyway. Impounding it is hardly an allocation of resources beyond extra warhouse workers to move and store them.
      • It's not a zero sum game, they don't have to let an opium shipment go by to impound a DVD player.


        Actually, it is a zero sum game. Time spent by customs officials maintaining & checking a list of 'official' DVD players, rejecting & filing paperwork for noncompliant players, etc. is time that can't be spent checking for goods that are (presumably) more threatening to our national well-being.

      • Are you the sort of person who tells a police officer giving you a traffic ticket that he should be out solving murders rather than worrying about your broken taillight?

        Um, Yes? A cop doing radar is a cop wasting everybody's time and money, indeed there are much more severe crimes to be identified and punished than someone doing 30 over on a deserted highway at 5 a.m. Most police organisations have become fund raisers, instead of security agents. They will sit in their car and watch you get jumped by 3 guys, and then they arrest YOU for being a troublemaker. Police agents should inspire trust and safety in citizens, not fear.

  • Apex 600a (Score:5, Informative)

    by happycat64 ( 558599 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:23PM (#3000424)
    That's why you go to ebay and find an Apex 600a while you still can. Very excellent machine, will play any region disk you throw at it, dolby digital out, and you can disable macrovision. The newer unlicensed dvd players are of pretty shoddy quality.

    • Re:Apex 600a (Score:5, Interesting)

      by puck01 ( 207782 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:33PM (#3000498)
      From what I've read over at the Apex Forums [nerd-out.com] Phillips is stopping the sale of Apex600a players on Ebay. Here is a link [nerd-out.com] to that thread.

      Here is a copy of the letter sent to people trying to sell the Apex600a on Ebay:

      Dear Sir:

      Sorry for your frustration. As our previous message states, as the patent holder, we have a right to stop ANY sale of an unlicensed product, and at this writing, the manufacturer of Oritron and Apex DVD players is chosing to be unlicensed. It is the Manufacturer of the player who is unlicensed, and therefore ANY sale of the product infringes our patents (NOT trademarks). The patents are on the DVD technology.

      We are sorry for this inconvenience to you, but at this time you cannot sell this DVD player on eBay. Please be assured that we are working on this at many levels and we hope the manufacturer becomes licensed soon.

      Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

      Regards,
      Ginger Affolter
      IP Assistant

      Philips Intellectual Property & Standards
      PHILIPS ELECTRONICS NORTH AMERICA CORP.
      1000 W. Maude Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94085-2810

      E-mail: ginger.affolter@philips.com
      Web-site: www.licensing.philips.com


      I just did a couple quick seaches for 'apex600a' and 'apex 600'. I got no results. So, you can legally buy an Apex600a in the US, like I did from Best Buy, but it is now not allowed to resell it on Ebay. That makes sense.

      puck

      • So, you can legally buy an Apex600a in the US, like I did from Best Buy, but it is now not allowed to resell it on Ebay.
        I found one [ebay.com].

      • Re:Apex 600a (Score:2, Interesting)

        by 13Echo ( 209846 )
        The 660 is a suitable substitute. Out of the box, it doesn't have the compatibility problems of the non-upgraded 600a.

        The only thing that it really lacks it TOSlink and component video. Those can be added into the machines with mods.

        What is really nice about the 660 is that many of them can be software upgraded. Just burn a bootable image to a disk and put it in... Region 0/1 switchability and a few other "enhancements."
      • sure it makes sense. if u sell your player, the buyer buys your old one, and u buy a new one.

        if u can't sell your player, the one who would have bought it buys a new one, and u buy a new one.

  • Is this going to be the top priority for European enforcement? I really doubt it.

    I think that from the perspective of deciding how to use their resources, European nations have have bigger concerns than where the DVD players are coming from... and any associated patent issues.

    A few might be taken off the streets, but I doubt they are going to expend great resources to rid Europe of "unauthorized" or "unlicensed" machines...

    Sam Nitzberg
    sam@iamsam.com
    http://www.iamsam.com

  • Okay, so what's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:24PM (#3000436) Homepage
    I fail to see the issue. Some companies which created some great technologies are enforcing their legal right to get license fees for those technologies. This is how patents are SUPPOSED to work!

    Where's the incentive to create if it's legal to just steal the invention and pay nothing?

  • Ummm...we need to strike a balance here... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joshamania ( 32599 ) <jggramlich.yahoo@com> on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:24PM (#3000440) Homepage
    Saying this is contradictory to Phillips's position on copy protected CD's is not correct. Phillips going after illegal DVD manufacturers is very similar to them chafing against copy protected CD's.

    Someone is using a format that they invented, have the patent on, and should for a reasonable time, have the ability to apportion the use of that patent(s) out as they will. The difference here is that the folks they are going after are making money "stealing" Phillips's technology, unlike a certain sixteen year old kid from Norway.

    While I don't agree with everything they do with their patents (region encoding is complete bullshit theivery....glad I don't live in the UK and have to pay $30 per DVD), this is a relatively new technology and they do hold the patent...this is what patents are for, to keep lazy assholes from making money off you your invention for a certain period of time.

    • I do live in the UK, and a bit over half of my DVDs are imported from the USA. Partly because of the cost, but mostly because I'm not prepared to wait for six months for them to release a film here, assuming they bother at all.

      Almost all of my videos are imported, simply because I can't buy them here.

      I don't know if it made it to slashdot - probably not - but a week or two ago there was a High Court judge over here who declared that playing an imported PS2 game infringed the copyright because it was licenced for another region and kept a temporary copy in memory. (I'm getting sick of this temporary copy rubbish - it's really a bit of a stretch). Many people pointed out that the same logic applies to DVDs, so it's apparently illegal for me to watch my imported DVDs now.

      Is it just me, or does anyone else find their respect for the law lessens every day? I'm going home shortly and will probably infringe copyright. Do I care? Yes. Do I think I'm doing anything even slightly immoral? No. Will the law make a difference? No. Will it make a difference to customs for future imports? I hope not.

      Where do I sign up for the revolution?

      • I'm getting sick of this temporary copy rubbish - it's really a bit of a stretch

        Yes, I find it amusing that courts are willing to gloss over the technical details and stretch common-sense "real world analogy" reasoning to some aspects of copyright law (eg, linking and framing a copyrighted image that resides on somebody else's public web server constitutes a violation, because it looks like you've displayed the image yourself) while at the same time resorting to the gritty technical details for other aspects (temporary RAM copies, etc.)

      • I do live in the UK, and a bit over half of my DVDs are imported from the USA. Partly because of the cost, but mostly because I'm not prepared to wait for six months for them to release a film here, assuming they bother at all.

        Probably most DVD players sold throughout the EU are or can be altered to be region free. The irony is that Phillips isn't a US company, their head office is in Amsterdam.

        I don't know if it made it to slashdot - probably not - but a week or two ago there was a High Court judge over here who declared that playing an imported PS2 game infringed the copyright because it was licenced for another region and kept a temporary copy in memory. (I'm getting sick of this temporary copy rubbish - it's really a bit of a stretch).

        The "temporary copy" argument does appear to convince legal professionals. The world over, in the UK it actually made it into statute. In other parts of the world it is actual case law.

        Is it just me, or does anyone else find their respect for the law lessens every day? I'm going home shortly and will probably infringe copyright.

        The way the law is actually written it's virtually impossible not to infringe it. IIRC there is an interview with a law lord who more or less says this...
  • Hmm... you know, if Philips, Sony, and Paramount didn't insist on having those stupid reigon lockouts, than this wouldn't be a problem.

    Other than that I think what's going on is perfectly fair, just that it's a little odd to be going after this at the customs level.

    • not really odd, it happens all the time.
      Some company thats is a country that does not have patents can't really be touched be Sony, whoever. So they tell the esports that these people are shipping some illegally, it goes into there database, and when the shiper sends them there data that says what there shipping, they just stamp reject, as it were. the real proble is that the ship may be allready on its way BEFORE the paper work is filed!

  • $28/player (Score:5, Informative)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:27PM (#3000461) Homepage Journal
    I just saw an article on Yahoo that stated that the patent royalties amount to $28 per player. That's over a third of the price for some units, and that's the retail price, not the wholesale price. It's no wonder that companies aren't paying up.

    It's just like with other intellectual property--when you price it too high, people will avoid paying.
    • I'm always wondering about those cheap DVD players. I now checked some half a dozen stores in Finland, and the cheapest player I found was about 200€ - far more than the 150€+/-50 I've seen noted as "low-price" players by some.

      Anyway, of that 200€, $28 would be about 16%, not one third. And, the one person I know who wanted just a cheap player bought one for about 350€, which I consider pretty cheap.

      Mostly what I look for is Pioneer and Sony, which have models in the 350-600€ range - midprice players that look OK, play about anything, and have good warranties. And the most expensive player any of my friends has bought was 998£ (~1450€ at the time). That because he replaced his LD at the same time, buying a player that plays LD, DVD and CD formats.

      So, do I know people who'd think that the $28 (~32€) price difference matters? One.

      Think about it - it's the cost of one or two discs - depending on what You buy.

      And, of course You might sometimes wonder how come there were engineers and scientists not producing stuff but doing research. It's because the corps expect the R&D to be a money sink that produces IP that can be sold to consumers in the form of nifty stuff that does things nobody knew they needed before. The R&D has to be covered by royalties and such later.

  • This should be a civil matter. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Performer Guy ( 69820 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:28PM (#3000464)
    This is a civil dispute between the manufacturers and those who claim patent rights. Surely it should not be the business of customs to close down manufacturers of DVDs without some kind of civil decision in a court.

    Note that the customs officials have not only been asked to impound players thay are also impounding disks. The disks are not being impounded because the content is copyright, they are being impounded because the media is owned by these corporations.

    This is an outrage. It's like impounding books because someone claims they own the patent on the printing press. We need some protection against companies claiming to own and control the information medium in common use today.
  • Sorry. Not that I'm for region encoding or anything... But the "especially nice for anime junkies" parenthetical just doesn't ring true. Any anime DVDs released in the states will play on a Region 1 (?) DVD player. Any DVDs released in Japan... are going to only be in Japanese. So unless you went from just-discovering-anime-isn't-all-porn to fluent-in-Japanese in one year, the "anime junkie" you speak of sure as hell ain't you.

    On the other hand, I -do- know people who speak Japanese and appreciate imports. These are the same ones who modded their SNES to play imported Super Famicon games.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • It does for people who live in Region 2 countries.

        I understand that. Obviously I wasn't clear in my post that the US-centricism of the post came solely from the fact that I was responding to a comment made by the Taco-meister. But I was. Even just in the US I was admitting that my statement wasn't universally valid. It only applies to Taco. Of course I appreciate imports, and thus loathe region restrictions! If it wasn't for the imported laserdisc, I never would have gotten my fansubbed Nausicaa!

        CmdrTaco lives in Michigan. I myself hail from the same place, so I can be pretty sure that it's not Region 2. And I can be reasonably sure he doesn't speak Japanese. I doubt he's using any dubbing programs to add subtitles to laserdiscs. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say he doesn't even get the imports of those titles that -do- have English subtitles. I was mocking Taco's self-appointed title of "anime junkie", and implication that he, too, suffers from region restrictions and their affect on his "addiction". That's all. Lighten up.

    • You forget about the increasing number of DVDs released in Japan (region 2) with English subtitles already included. Example: the last 5 FLCL DVDs.
      • How can there be five FLCL DVD's? There were only six episodes in the series. Were they released one per disc? Have there been multiple releases? Am I wrong in how many FuriKuri episodes were made (if so , woohoo - time to find the rest for me!)

    • Why yes, import anime DVD's generally do come with a Japanese language track. They also often come with several subtitle streams, English included. This allows one to watch shows that would never be ported over to the U.S., or works that certain American corporations are camping on [amazon.com].

      Do not speak Japanese, do appreciate imports, never owned a SNES. Loath the typical English dubs with a passion.

    • Ehm, wops. I think you just made a little misstake ^_^ But enough wisecracks (sp?). What people can do is to buy the original japanese DVD (which is usuall of pretty nice quality) and then when they play it they use homemade subtitles. I won't go into the techniques, the anime junkies knows it well enough and probably better than me. But unless I have missunderstood something, it is illegal to do a translation and then spread it.

      The Japanese production companies would without a question make a profit if they added English subtitles (but nothing more) and sold them region free, but that is another story.
    • And don't forget that lovely piece of software, DVD Subber. Not that it applies to set tops, but does, in fact, apply to DVD-ROMS, which are now adays hard-regioncoded. Although you can still follow along with a paper translation.
    • We're talking about enforcement within Europe, which is region 2, not 1. And, there really aren't all that many anime releases in Europe, so the choices for a European anime collector are:
      1) Buy US releases and get a modded DVD player
      2) Buy Japanese releases (which are R2) and learn some Japanese while at it. Rest assured, after a couple of hundred titles You will recognize many phrases.
      3) Buy Taiwanese and Hong Kong releases. Mostly bootlegs, but cheap, regionless, and often with English subtitles. The quality is crap, though, both with video and translation. Perhaps the Cantonese subtitles are better translated, but I don't understand any dialect of Chinese.

      There are some Japanese releases with English subtitles. However, it takes some time to work out whether some release has English subtitles or not. And, Japanese releases are pretty much more expensive than US releases.

      So, most opt for modded player and US releases.

      However, I don't really care much about "unlicensed players". I'm pretty sure my Pioneer is fully licensed, and the fact that it just happens to have some repair shop ROM (used by technicians to fix the players and so on) in it is the reason I bought it. From a normal HiFi store. I heard they had some without this nifty ROM, but I've never heard of anyone who'd bought an unmodded player.
    • Many anime fans, in the states, speak Japanese. So region coding is a problem.
    • It is my impression that the demand for region free DVD players is relatively limited in the states, certainly compared to Europe. Region 1 (North America) has the largest DVD selection, and thus the need (for the general public) to import DVDs is limited. Furthermore, most American TV sets would have difficulties showing PAL (the European TV standard).

      Europe is region 1 (together with Japan, and as others have noted, an increasing number of Japanese DVD releases feature English subtitles), and while the DVD market is rapidly growing, we have still a long way to go, before matching the selection found in region 1, especially wrt. special genres, such as anime.

      Luckily, region free DVD players are readily available in stores. These are however usually not Apex etc. players, but modified brand players. I personally own a region free Pioneer DVD player, which handles all regions beautifully. A further advantage is that most European TV sets are able to handle NTSC. There is nothing shady about these modifications - most stores will perform them, and many places do not even sell non modified players (in Denmark, that is).

      From my perspective, the only attractive feature of the Apex etc. players is that they often handles (XS)VCDs better than ordinary DVD players. As (XS)VCDs never were an item here in Europe, this is not really much of a problem, unless you burn your own.

    • R2 Anime DVDs & English Options (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @01:46PM (#3001034) Homepage Journal
      Actually, all the Region 2 native Japanese discs that have been released so far of Hayao Miyazaki's anime [nausicaa.net] also include the English dub and English subtitles (though they're actually "dubtitles," i.e. captions for the English dub--and, in the case of Kiki's Delivery Service, they're dubtitles for the Streamline dub, which isn't even on the disc!).

      A lot of anime which have English dubs, such as Giant Robo, include them on the DVD sets as a matter of course, just because, hey, they have the room, and the Japanese seem to think English is "kewl". (Which would also explain why they commissioned Macek to dub and then Japanese subtitle Macross: Love Do You Remember and Megazone 23 Part II--you can still find copies of those subtitled dubs floating around fansub trading circles to this day--and why the Armitage: Polymatrix movie was done only in English, with Japanese subtitles for the folks at home.) Some companies have even started including genuine English subtitles on their discs, though the names of the series escape me (I want to say Gunbuster, though I can't remember specifically).

      That being said, gaijin fans have been importing anime from Japan ever since the days of the laserdisc, which didn't even have a capacity for subtitles. After all, if you're going to do a fansub, you want crystal-clear originals--and hey, DVD is even better than laserdisc. There's even a program out there for Windows that lets people view their unsubtitled DVDs in conjunction with downloaded fansub scripts (though it didn't work very well for me when I tried it). And when it comes right down to it, people watched anime in straight Japanese with synopses, scripts, or best guesses for years before fansubbing was even possible.

      So claiming that all-region DVD players are not a boon to anime fans because Japanese discs don't have English is a bit misinformed or downright disingenuous. Better do some more research next time.
      • So claiming that all-region DVD players are not a boon to anime fans because Japanese discs don't have English is a bit misinformed or downright disingenuous.

        Well, I avoid your accusation of disingeniosity because I didn't claim all-region DVD players are not a boon to anime fans.

        And sure, I wasn't aware of the number of Japanese-released DVD's with english, but I'm hardly going to feel bad about not doing research in order to mock CmdrTaco. It's not like I was ranting about fandom in general!
      • Um, LDs can hold subtitles in the form of closed captions, BUT, the Japanese didn't use such a system. A good share of my US-made bilingual anime LDs used closed captions for subtitles.

        Also there are a few players and LDs that supported an LD-G standard for removable / selectable subtitles. Needless to say, the LD format died before it could have been implemented in the US.

  • goodbye progressive scan on PAL (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a home theater enthousiast this means losing the ability to buy a nice player such as the Skyworth 1050p with Faroudja deinterlacer which outputs progressive scan on both PAL and NTSC, something the DVD forum forbids.

    Projector and HDTV owners love this feature to get rid of the nasty scan lines on their CRT equipment, without the need for buying an expensive external scaler.

    The problem with progressive scan is that they cannot easily apply macrovision to it, so you get a very clean signal without copy protection. As a result they have banned it for PAL.

    To my knowledge, there are no VCR's which accept a progressive RGB signal, so I cannot grasp why they are so paranoid when we can make perfect DVD copies on our PC's much more easily ?

    So far, from the three companies mentioned in the post we've only seen official progressive scan support on region 1 NTSC through component outputs.

    For the videophile, this is really BAD.
  • They probably won't succeed in this.. Europe and the US don't want to start a trade war with the Asian countries that make these things, especially China. The movies companies love the way the waves of cheap DVD players that have sped the adoption of the format. Likewise, the big discount stores such as Walmart sell tons of them and don't want the price to go up. Finally the licensing costs are unrealistic, as high as $28, NYT [nytimes.com]

    Now that Enron is gone, does Microsoft's ownership share of President Bush increase?

  • Interesting how patents get `pooled' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mike Hicks ( 244 ) <hick0088@tc.umn.edu> on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @12:40PM (#3000546) Homepage Journal
    I've found it interesting how patents and other `intellectual property' tend to get pooled by a handful of major companies. This, my friends, is how standards really get made these days. Heck, similar practices date back a hundred years or more.

    This is really annoying to me, as these companies kind of turn the idea of a patent on it's back. Sure, they defend them from the man on the street til the cows come home, but then they collude with other big companies. Am I the only one that thinks this is backward?
    • If one man has the tools, a second has the land, and a third has the seeds, then it only makes sense for them to put all three together, and feed themselves well. They can't be blamed for wanting to sell what they have at a somewhat reasonable price; they put in the work, after all.
      • I think a better analogy would be a man who knows how to use tools, a man who knows how to clear land, and a man who knows how to plant seeds all collaborating so that they can sell us the food they make. And then making sure to knock any food out of our hands that may have been made by anyone else.

        There's a huge difference between physical tools and knowledge. These companies have pooled their knowledge of making products, not the tools used to make the products. Your analogy isn't very good.
    • I've found it interesting how patents and other `intellectual property' tend to get pooled by a handful of major companies.... This is really annoying to me, as these companies kind of turn the idea of a patent on it's back.

      On the contrary, patent pooling can be just the thing to get a good technology into the mainstream.

      Even though this is slashdot, let's assume that Patents are a good thing, because it gives patent holders the right to make money for a limited time off of a truly novel invention (i.e. NOT one-click or hyperlinking) while the Public eventually gets the invention in the Public Domain when the patent expires. It's a stretch, I know, but bear with me.

      It just makes sense that if different companies are in the same business, they may obtain different patents on different aspects of a particular product. They're simply looking at different aspects of the problem at the same time. Without patent pooling, anyone that wanted to build that widget would have to negotiate with each patent holder individually. With patent pooling, you just fork over the money once, and the patent holders worry about how to divvy it up. This way, it becomes much easier for a technically-superior, non-free technology to become widely used. (Firewire/iLink/1394 is a good example, at least for DV camcorders).

      Of course, this only works then the patent holders come up with a reasonable formula for payment. Go back a few stories in the Queue [slashdot.org] to see what I mean.

  • Every day on the streets of NYC, you see cops bust street vendors with fake Gucci and DK bags. The pirated video tapes, CDs. The've cracked down on people selling unauthorized FDNY hats. On a larger scale, they break up sweatshops that are pumping out fake Tommy jeans or Nautica jackets.

    So why's this news? Countefeiters exist in every market segment, and while they're small, they get away with it. Once they grow to a size where it begins to cut into the profits of the company, the company cracks down.

    European Customs officials are already hard at work keeping those fake Nike shoes and cheap Anne Klein knockoffs. It's just another thing they'll watch out for.


    • But it's not counterfeit moron - the DVD player does play DVD's, and it doesn't claim to be made by someone who it wasn't made by. Sure the company haven't paid the tax to Philips, but that does not make it counterfeit.
      • Most of the low-cost players come from factories in China. International trade newsletter TV Digest estimates China produces around 10 million DVD decks a year, mainly for export. European and North American importers then slap on Western brand name labels and sell them for under $100. Sounds like counterfeiting to me.

        • Not convinced. You don't see Sony/Philips whoever suing for counterfeiting. What you do see is stacks of cheap players with brands you've never heard of, often with western sounding names. Could that be what they mean? Don't know. But I've never heard of fake brand name electronics.
  • I suppose that good things like APEX players couldn't last forever. APEX claims to be the second largest DVD player distributor in the U.S., next to Sony. The APEX product line, of course, is made by companies like Shinco of China. Shinco makes some great products, which include the DVD players that play Megadrive (Genesis) ROMs.

    I have an APEX player (ad 660)... Do you?
    • Bleah.... I sold my 600a recently, because it's inferior in a number of ways. Sure, the secret menu in the BIOS was way cool, but it can't output Dolby Surround component audio, which I need for my "Surround ready" receiver that doesn't do internal decoding of the signal.

      The Apex also choked on a number of commercial DVD titles, due to bugs in their firmware. The MP3 player freaked out on some of my MP3 songs I burned to CDR that used a variable bit-rate. (They'd start playing at the wrong speed, and sounded like the Chipmunks.)

  • No one understands the truth behind DVDs outside slashdot and a few other groups. As far as the general public is concerned, DVDs are god, and the best thing since sliced bread. If you try to explain to them that DVD is just a method for large corporations to control you, what you own, and what you have the right to do then they give you a dirty look.

    The people need to be educated about region encoding, macrovision and the fact that the producer can even control your fast-forward button. I object to any system that implements an artificial limitation on hardware that you own. If its in my house, then i have access to the circuitry, thus i can make it do what i like - ok so its very hard to mod a player, but its technically possible, therefore the manufacturer shouldn't bother putting in the restrictions in the first place.

    • Sadly, most people don't want to be educated about complex issues. The reason rights erode is because the average sheeple doesn't care and doesn't want to care.

      Cynical? Not really; I'm being realistic based on years of experience in activism. People only care about issues that directly affect them; it is very difficult to get people interested in anything that might inconvenience them. People watch DvDs, but don't exercise their rights to free speech -- so guess which one they care about more?

  • The best place.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @01:30PM (#3000921) Homepage Journal
    ..To hide an unlicensed DVD player as you cross the border, is in your 40 pound bundle of cocaine. They'll never find it in there.

  • Why we see this as a problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @01:30PM (#3000923)
    Several people have already posted on here about how enforcing Philips' patents is a good thing. I would agree with you if that is all this is.

    The issue at hand in many of these "unlicensed" players is whether or not Philips would let them have a license to begin with. Philips et al choose to go along with the DVD Consortium and will refuse anybody a license if they intend to make region-independent DVD players.

    If it were a matter of anybody being able to use the patented technology so long as they payed the licensing fees then I'd be with Philips. But for the most part these patents are being used not to enforce the IP rights of the hardware's creator but the bogus (if not illegal) IP rights of the movie studios.

    Unlicensed DVD players in the EU woudln't be such a problem if licensed DVD players in the EU could play Region 1 disks.

  • hackable holy grail? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Wednesday February 13, 2002 @02:00PM (#3001136) Journal


    My current understanding of the 'hackable' DVD market indicates that the Daewoo 5700 is the current holy grail model.

    http://www.dvd-wizards.com/darrenk/Daewoo_DVD5700/ DVD-5700patch.htm

    Disable region encoding; diable macrovision; NTSC/PAL/RSC format supported; mp3 supported; component out. Only thing this is missing is progressive scan.
    There is a good reason for these players, however. They are clearly easier to manufacture, resulting in a cost savings for the consumer. Instead of maintaining 5 separate product lines with different hardware configurations, there is a single line with a flashable BIOS at the end for each region. So Daewoo isn't courting the after-market hackers, but rather just being a good manufacteurer.
    • I'd probably place $50 that Daewoo players are POS, regardless of whether their firmware can be swapped around.

      Incidentally, most Philips DVD players can be hacked using a certain aftermarket universal remote. No firmware swaps. No CD-R burns. You don't even open the case!

      The problem is that Philip's DVD players are pretty substandard in quality, their newest flagship, the Q50, was shipped with fundementally flawed firmware.

  • New Pledge (Score:2, Funny)

    by mrseth ( 69273 )
    I think in 20 or so years school children will be reciting this:

    I pledge allegiance to flag of the Incorporated States America, and to the Profit for which it stands, one Corporation under God, indivisible, with avarice and AOL for all.
  • Hey, maybe everyone in the world should ONLY buy region 1 dvd player.
    sure, there owuld be a period where some things would be hard to get, but a very short period.
    consider:
    1)Region 1 gets most titles all ready.
    2)The movie industry would drop a brick when they could sell the non region one movies.
    3)pretty soon region one would be just as good as regionless, since all titles would be released that way.

    Off the top of my head, I figure it would take a year befor everyone was producing only region 1 dvd's

    Its hard, but it would work.
    • Region 1 gets most titles all ready.

      When it comes to films. With things such as US produced television programmes things appear to work differently.

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