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.