[geeks] .uk DVD-ROM drives?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 12:50:45PM -0600, Bill Bradford wrote:
> I've got a need to watch/rip some DVDs that are only available in
> the UK; anybody over there know where I can get a cheap region-2
> IDE/ATAPI DVD-ROM drive via mailorder, or have someone over there 
> pick one up and ship it to me?
> 
> (Tried the region-free hack for my Mac Cube's DVD-ROM, but it didnt
>  want to play nice with the Apple DVD player after that..)

Have you checked out video lan, does it care if the drive was hacked?  You
probably don't really want videolan anyway, it seems to lack menus, and I keep
getting reports of other funkiness.

It is interesting.  I have a DVD-Rom that will read DVDs (I can drop a DVD in
and ls /mnt/dvd and see the files), and it will read DVD-Roms (I can drop in
my .NET beta and ls /mnt/dvd and see files), but I can't actually play movies
on it everysince the powerstrip the machine was connected to blew up, and the 
errors I get (from more programs than just videolan) are authorization related
ones.  What's up with this?  Does the DVD-Rom actually check the region itself?
If I can read the data on the disk, then why can't the OSS software just play 
it.  Mighty strange if you ask me.  I solve the problem by dropping another 
DVD Rom in, but this new, despite supposedly being faster (which I haven't 
generally noticed, and it certainly isn't for doing CDDA rips) drops a lot
more frames (and not just with Videolan, but also with my hardware decoder 
card).  Well, I supposed technically it isn't the drive that is dropping the 
frames, it just fails to deliver them to the software in a timely manner 
sometimes.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd