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

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Sat Jul 10 14:58:14 UTC 2010


On Saturday, July 10, 2010 08:37:48 am Simon Hobson wrote:
> 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.

A problem with some of these recent "protection" schemes is that they have significant "collateral damage", many 
"legitimate" DVD players won't play the new disks. They count on the fact that most people won't figure out what's 
happening, and perhaps blame their "old" player.

If people started to return players to the store, complaining that they won't play certain disks, that might get 
"Walmart's" attention even more than disk returns.

But handling a return on a disk that has a profit margin of pennies is a losing proposition for a retailer, a great "stone 
in the shoe". Good idea.



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