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Region-free but won't play

ivanX

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Hello,

This is the first time I've encountered this sort of situation so I am quite eager to resolve the problem :agree:

First things first. A couple of Region 5 (so it says on the packaging and the discs) DVDs came into my possession recently. Being a curious guy, I've decided to see what kind of protection they have. Imagine the look on my face when I saw the status windows of those respective titles. According to AnyDVD they have no CSS protection and neither they have any region encoding. "Great", I thought, because there would be no need for me to back it up since I would be able to stick it straight into my DVD player (Region 2) :)

Nothing is this easy in life! I put both of those discs into the player and they were both rejected due to regional limitations. The mystery continues...I swapped the DVD player for another one and the same thing happened!!! :(

I was able to use CloneDVD2 to make a backup of both and now they play without any problems, but I'm still puzzled. I hope some of you are able to offer a suggestion or 2 why this occurred :confused:

Thank you for your help.

P.S. I attach the screenshots of AnyDVD status windows of those titles
 

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the discs if they have region 5 on them and they are genuine manufactured dvd's wont play on a region 2 player (but should play on a region free dvd player).
so it looks like anydvd may have made an error(?) when it scanned the disc.
also what it the make and model of your dvd player-you can try doing a google to see if there is a button pressing 'hack' to make it region free.
 
Thanks for the reply Mike.

Knowing a thing or 2 about DVDs, I knew that there was no way a genuine (and those 2 discs are, I know for sure) R5 discs would play in a R2 DVD player. The 2 DVD players are: Toshiba SD-260E and Sony DVP-NS305. The region-free "hacks" I have tried were unsuccessful.

However, this does not change the fact that an error might have occurred with AnyDVD because it seems clear that those 2 discs are not region-free.

How can we resolve this please? :D
 
Thanks again.

Never, personally, encountered any bugs in Slysoft's CD and DVD products (excluding GJ). I'm glad to help make these products better :agree:
 
Hello,

This is the first time I've encountered this sort of situation so I am quite eager to resolve the problem :agree:

First things first. A couple of Region 5 (so it says on the packaging and the discs) DVDs came into my possession recently. Being a curious guy, I've decided to see what kind of protection they have. Imagine the look on my face when I saw the status windows of those respective titles. According to AnyDVD they have no CSS protection and neither they have any region encoding. "Great", I thought, because there would be no need for me to back it up since I would be able to stick it straight into my DVD player (Region 2) :)

Nothing is this easy in life! I put both of those discs into the player and they were both rejected due to regional limitations. The mystery continues...I swapped the DVD player for another one and the same thing happened!!! :(

I was able to use CloneDVD2 to make a backup of both and now they play without any problems, but I'm still puzzled. I hope some of you are able to offer a suggestion or 2 why this occurred :confused:

Thank you for your help.

P.S. I attach the screenshots of AnyDVD status windows of those titles

Interesting. Please post the file VIDEO_TS.IFO from both files. Important: Before copying the files from the discs, you *MUST* disable AnyDVD!

Another note: If you want to post the AnyDVD status window, don't create screenshots. It is much easier to right-click the status window, tick "select all", then click "copy". You can paste the text anywhere you want.
 
Thanks again.

Never, personally, encountered any bugs in Slysoft's CD and DVD products (excluding GJ). I'm glad to help make these products better :agree:

I am not convinced this to be a bug. It is possible, that the region marking in the lead in (this is what AnyDVD reports) differs from the region marking in VIDEO_TS.IFO (the files I ask you to send).
If there is a discrepancy, this is an authoring error.
 
Hello James,

I'm attaching the archive with IFO files as requested.
I hope they would be able to shed some light on the matter :)
 

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Hello James,

I'm attaching the archive with IFO files as requested.
I hope they would be able to shed some light on the matter :)

Thanks. It is just as I thought: The IFOs are locked to region 5. So your Region 2 player is right. But the leadin of the DVD is marked as region free. AnyDVD is right, too. :D

As the region is still removed correctly, I consider this a "cosmetic glitch". And the DVD is violating the specs (region marking in lead in and VIDEO_TS.IFO shall be the same).
 
Thanks. It is just as I thought: The IFOs are locked to region 5. So your Region 2 player is right. But the leadin of the DVD is marked as region free. AnyDVD is right, too. :D

As the region is still removed correctly, I consider this a "cosmetic glitch". And the DVD is violating the specs (region marking in lead in and VIDEO_TS.IFO shall be the same).

Is it possible to make Anydvd analyze the .ifo on the fly to check the region?
 
Yes, but why?

So Anydvd can report accurate region information (compare the lead-in to the .ifo) in the status screen. For example, what if companies start doing this sort of thing in combination with another protection to confuse/exploit Anydvd?

The .ifos make the disc effectively region 5, even though the lead-in lies; it would be nice for Anydvd to report the disc as being region 5.
 
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Thanks. It is just as I thought: The IFOs are locked to region 5. So your Region 2 player is right. But the leadin of the DVD is marked as region free. AnyDVD is right, too. :D

As the region is still removed correctly, I consider this a "cosmetic glitch". And the DVD is violating the specs (region marking in lead in and VIDEO_TS.IFO shall be the same).

Thank you for helping me solve this issue. I was wondering if "violating the specs" is illegal while manufacturing DVDs? I think it should be...:agree:
 
Thank you for helping me solve this issue. I was wondering if "violating the specs" is illegal while manufacturing DVDs? I think it should be...:agree:
They have been breaching standards for awhile now. It's not illegal.
 
What's the point in breaching these standards? And if they are called standards then why aren't they suitably enforced...:mad:
 
What's the point in breaching these standards? And if they are called standards then why aren't they suitably enforced...:mad:
I am having a hard time remembering but I believe they inserted dummy sectors before too. It's all to prevent copying. The standard I think is from the DVD Forum. It's not a law.
 
it does however become rather unfair when a purchased dvd wont play in a dvd player (standalone or computer) because it has so much copy protection crap.
 
So Anydvd can report accurate region information (compare the lead-in to the .ifo) in the status screen. For example, what if companies start doing this sort of thing in combination with another protection to confuse/exploit Anydvd?
They won't. They would loose an additional layer of protection, RPC2 wouldn't work anymore. I believe this was just a mistake during the authoring.

The .ifos make the disc effectively region 5, even though the lead-in lies; it would be nice for Anydvd to report the disc as being region 5.
Yes, it would be nice, but from AnyDVD's point of view the disc is treated as region free and right so. For example, on CSS protected discs it doesn't need to brute force attack, as the region code *does* match. AnyDVD gives a damn on the region code in the IFO, it removes it anyway.
And imagine that: Leadin says regions 2&4, IFOs say region 5. Now what?
(Okay, such a disc would probably not play in any standalone...)
I could add an information message like .ifo region is....
 
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