[ILUG] Re: [ILUG-Social] Hackin' DVD Regions

[Dunphy Richard-rdunph01]

> On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Ross Lynch wrote:
> 
> > Hey,
> > 
> > What's the story with deregionalizing a DVD player? Is it a standard
> > operation or does it vary from model to model? I'm looking 
> at one which is
> > Region2...
> > 
for this check out http://www.firmware.com.bi which has region free firmware
fixes for most DVD drives. And also updates for quite a few CDROMs, and CD
writers.

> 
> speaking of which.. what's the status of DVD on linux? i need to buy
> a CDROM, so i was thinking i might as well buy a DVD - will i be able
> to watch DVD's? (and which DVD's will play any region, or is it a
> software thing?)

DVD drives are supported under linux for quite some time. Movie playback on
the other hand is a different story. You can get Livid from www.opendvd.org
which is reported to work, but takes quite a lot of CPU horsepower...

A better bet is with a creative Dxr2 or Dxr3. The Dxr2 support works (from
http://opensource.creative.com ) very well, but the cards are difficult to
get you hands on. And to make matters worse there are two version, CT7120
and CT7160. The 7160 isn't supported yet. The Dxr3 is being supported. Can't
remember the site address, but there is some work going on there, and it is
reputed to work quite well.
 
> i have a matrox G200 graphics card, athlon 600 CPU, XF4.01. Is DVD
> playing possible? and if so, is there hardware accell for G200? (or
> does it need that little 'rainbow something' daughter board?)

For the G200 look at Intervideo (writers of WinDVD) at
http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Products.jsp?mode=LinDVD 

It's not released just yet, but hopefully soon...

RikD.