PIRACY ENABLING DEVICE, GO NOW!

[chronovore]

I just bought a ¥5600 dealy from the local electronics district. It plays MP3, JPEG, MPEG4, WMV, and a mess of other formats off of USB keychain drives or SD flash media (which it navigates by directory, through a browser), and appears to ignore region coding on DVDs. I am as pleased as punch.

So far it doesn't like the .MP4 files that can be downloaded from Google Video, so I am not sure what's up with that. It's hard to dislike a machine that lets me play all the DVDs I own, and not just the ones from a given region. Golly, gosh, darn it, I fucking hate region coding.

Correction: It, and most units like it, appear to support WMA, not WMV. Audio, not video. Crapx0r!

Comments

[imlac.livejournal.com]

Getting around region coding isn't that hard. One easy way to do it is just make a copy and remove the coding. But there are other ways as well, such as region-free players, and software hacks that get around the coding.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I watch DVDs using VLC on my PC and my PowerBook. However, rather than trying to attach my PowerBook to a S-VHS cable and then set up the multiple monitor thing to deal with full screen when I display a QuickTime Player on it... yeah, just kind of a pain in the ass that a dedicated appliance (with a remote, no less!) neatly sidesteps.

I've got a number of my DVDs backed up without the region code, and with the FBI warning and mandatory-preview "do not skip" horseshit removed, but I don't want to back up my whole library, and viewing Region 1 discs on my PlayStation 2, and trying to control it with my PS2 controller was bumming me out.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

I should also note that I've been unwilling to de-region my PowerBook's DVD drive by altering the firmware, because I don't want to brick my DVD drive.

"Golly, gosh, darn it, I fucking hate region coding."

[hedr-goblin.livejournal.com]

yeay!
You just gave me my favorite quote of the day.

Re: "Golly, gosh, darn it, I fucking hate region coding."

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

GO, ME!

[nattotastic.livejournal.com]

>It plays MP3, JPEG, MPEG4
>So far it doesn't like the .MP4 files
Does this mean it can handle .m4a files and such, but doesn't handle .mp4 or .mp4v files? Yo, disambigue me.

What is the model/make of this dream device?

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

I'll let you know when I figure it out.

The DivX encoded .AVI of "Old School" I watched last night played fine. The .MP4s of Dave Chappelle show returned an "UNSUPPORTED FORMAT" error, though they are the MPEG4 format that Google uses for their PSP/iPod downloads.

I'll try changing the file suffix to see if it gets a clue, and to confirm that it is using file suffix rather than data headers as a clue of what to do with each file. It is possible that the manufacturer has labeled a DivX player as MPEG4 compatible, due to its common origin. That would be sad.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Just noted that I hadn't answered the second question. It's a no-brand thing, most likely from some mainland-Asia factory. The casing bolts were screwed in /through/ the plastic covering that protects the paint job, so it has little ghostly wisps of stretched out plastic around each of the bolt-heads. The unit's LED timer has a red-orange-yellow light that swirls and illuminated circle when the DVD is played; just the right kind of non-ambient distraction you need in your AV rack when you're trying to watch a movie - WTF is that? "feng shui"?

The name appears to be one of those German double-s things, ßpiele or something, but the furigana it has accompanying it don't read that way. I'll double check from home and post that when I get more details about the format stuff. But there appeared to be a number of these kind of things with varying feature sets.

My biggest concern is that I may have inadvertently funded a prison-industrial complex through my impulse purchase.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

OK, so a couple more details:
The brand name is ピエディ, though it's spelled "Spiede," with the inital "S" with a line through it, looking like one of those Old English typography bits.

It doesn't play .mp4, and if it only has one thing that it recognizes on inserted media, it autoplays it. Unfortunately, the .WMV support may be audio only, which is not happymaking. I'm unfamiliar with the nuanced differences between MPEG4 formats, though I am guessing those are the other formats you listed. Wikipedia helps a little (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4a), though it's not clear why the apparently more predictably formatted .MP4 is not played.

It likes DivX .AVI just fine.