[mythtv-users] Re:DVD playback

[Jeff Monks]

> RPC2 drives only check the region during the title-key request, which
> normally happens during the CSS authentication phase.  libdvdcss
> has the magical feature of being able to crack title keys directly 
> via a known-plaintext attack on the VOB, which means you never have to
> request the title-key from the drive, and therefore you can bypass the
> region encoding entirely.  It's all automatic; it'll be used if
> necessary.

Okay, I'm going to veer off-topic for a second:

Cool feature; do you have to do anything to enable it, either at runtime 
or compile-time?  I ask because I have a Pioneer DVD drive (on a machine 
running Mandrake 9.1) that simply wouldn't play DVDs with MPlayer, Ogle, 
or Xine until I flashed it region-free.  

It may have been that my install of libdvdcss wasn't quite right, or 
perhaps an oddity of that drive, but I banged my head against that one 
for a few hours before flashing the drive in a fit of desperation, and 
damn if it didn't work.