[mythtv-users] Many new dvd's not working

Simon Hobson linux at thehobsons.co.uk
Sat Jul 10 14:37:48 UTC 2010


Brian J. Murrell wrote:

>  > I
>>  suspect it's some new stupid copy protection scheme that simply makes
>>  life miserable for people legitimately renting or buying movies...
>
>Indeed.  FWUI, they master the DVDs in violation of the DVD standards
>just enough to trip up DVD-ROM drives (and software) but not enough to
>trip up bona fide DVD players.  If my understanding is correct, I'm not
>sure why DVD-ROM drives/software can't just be more like DVD players,
>but TBH, I don't really understand the details.


>  > Is there a workaround?
>
>The only workaround I know of (which I am not advocating) is to stop
>renting/buying DVDs and obtain your material elsewhere where it's not
>encumbered by this stupidity.

Better still, take it back as faulty and demand a refund.

Is there any "test suite" available that we could run against a disk 
to verify it conforms to the rule book for DVDs ? If so, then run 
that, and if it's non-compliant I'd also complain to Trading 
Standards that the supposed DVDs are not "as described" - a key 
requirement in UK consumer law.

The key thing is that "just not buying them" won't hurt anyone 
because the volumes we'd not buy wouldn't even be a rounding error in 
the statistics. But returns cost the whole chain dear, and if we 
could get just one prosecution under consumer protection law for 
mislabelled "DVD"s then it would raise the profile of what's going 
on. Especially if there was a concerted effort to target one large 
chain (such as Walmart in the US) such that they decided it wasn't 
profitable to stock the output from one studio - now that would get 
the studio's attention.

Silence is easy to ignore, even a tiny stone in your shoe can be 
really irritating and you want to deal with it. Do you want to be the 
silence, or the tiny stone ?

-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
Christmas stocking fillers. Some available as e-books.


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