[mythtv-users] Court rules commercial-skipping in recordings covered under Fair Use

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2013 11:52:32 +0200, you wrote:

>On 25/07/13 04:51, Stephen Worthington wrote:
>> On Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:48:34 -0400, you wrote:
>>
>>> Tom Dexter wrote:
>>>> DVDs??...that you MUST watch all copyrighted content only in it's
>>>> entirety, in order?
>>>
>>> Don't they do this with DVDs now?  I played 'One' DVD on a player, many
>>> years ago, and it refused to allow me to skip forward past the coming
>>> attractions. To date, I haven't bought a DVD or BD player.  I rip 'em to
>>> MythVideo instead and skip when I please.
>>>
>>> Doug
>>
>> You can do that to DVDs in various ways.  The first is PUOs =
>> Prohibited User Operations, where the DVD is programmed not to allow
>> the skip buttons or menu buttons to work.  That is easy to fix -
>> either use a DVD player that ignores PUOs or rip the DVD and run a
>> program such as PGCEdit on it to remove the PUOs and add navigation
>> options.  That is easy as PGCEdit has a menu option to remove PUOs
>> automatically.
>>
>> The worse way that turns up on some DVDs is to make the "first play"
>> menu ie VIDEO_TS.VOB into a real bit of video, rather than a null file
>> or just a few seconds of menu.   If you look at the contents of a DVD
>> and VIDEO_TS.VOB is of any substantial size, then it probably has this
>> problem.  MythTV and an awful lot of DVD players and player software
>> do not do skipping inside a menu (as far as I can tell, the DVD
>> standard does not allow it).  So the fix for that is to rip the DVD
>
>It depends on how you define 'menu'.  Being in a certain domain or 
>having buttons defined?
>
>The upcoming 0.27 release has changed the definition to 'having buttons 
>defined'.  This should make it easier to skip over the stuff at the 
>beginning of a DVD (among other things).  Be aware though, that it's 
>possible to define fully transparent buttons (i.e. invisible), which 
>could have you scratching your head wondering why you can skip on that 
>DVD but not on this one.

That certainly sounds like a useful change.  I think PGCEdit has the
ability to find invisible buttons for me, so I can just eliminate them
if necessary.

>Also, you can usually jump directly to one of the menus without needing 
>to skip through anything.

That does not seem to work while playing VIDEO_TS.VOB with 0.26-fixes.
I have tried all the commands I can think of while playing a long
VIDEO_TS.VOB and none have ever worked except to make it start playing
again from the beginning.

>Having said that, a lot depends on the way the DVD has been authored. 
>The entry points for 'title', 'root', 'chapter' menus etc. are really 
>nothing more than markers.  There is no necessity to actually have a 
>menu there.  It's feasible for the DVD author to put some code in there 
>that checks whether a certain point has been passed on the DVD (e.g. all 
>the trailers have been watched) and jump on to the real menu if so, or 
>back to the beginning of the trailers if not.

I don't think I have met one that was that bad yet - but if I do I can
step through the code in PGCEdit or DVD Remake Pro and figure out what
is going on.  All the while cursing the publisher.

>Myth currently ignores the prohibited user operation flags, which allows 
>the user a lot more freedom.  That *can* come at a price, though.  A DVD 
>is effectively run in a small virtual machine, which executes code found 
>on the DVD.  There are a number of variables available which can be used 
>to store values.  Jumps can be performed conditionally (like the example 
>I gave about trailers) based on the value stored in one of these 
>variables.  By skipping parts that can't (according to the prohibited 
>user operations) be skipped over, it's possible to miss some of these 
>instructions that may be important later.  This could lead to odd 
>playback behaviour.  A bit like arriving in the middle of a conversation 
>and getting the wrong end of the stick because you missed the beginning.
>
>Most of the time, this doesn't happen, but it is possible.
>
>Richard.

I had thought that MythTV was ignoring PUOs, but I have very few disks
with them on so I had not done any proper testing to be sure.  It is
welcome news that it really does ignore them.

What I do not understand in all this is why DVD publishers inflict all
this stupidity on us.  Forcing people to watch things they do not want
to watch is about the dumbest bit of marketing I can think of.  All it
does for me is to make me never want to buy a DVD from such
publishers.  I do often watch trailers on DVDs that are sensibly
placed on a menu, usually after I have watched the movie.  I refuse to
be forced to watch them, or any of the other stuff they do this trick
on.