Cheat DVD Regional Encoding
You might think a DVD is just a DVD, and that it will play in any DVD player. Unfortunately, you’re wrong. The film industry has segregated the world into seven “regions,” and DVDs are generally encoded for playback in only one region.
The studios do this because feature films are rarely released on the same date in different regions of the world.
If a DVD comes out in the U.S. before the same movie is released to theaters in France, DVDs of the movie imported from the U.S. could hurt ticket sales of the movie in French theaters.
In other words, DVD region encoding exists primarily to protect the movie studios’ physical distribution system.
What’s more, there have been accusations that region encoding creates an illegal price-fixing structure that can be enforced by region.
So far, this argument hasn’t made it in front of a court, but New Zealand has been lobbying heavily to eliminate region codes on price fixing grounds.
As it stands, if you’re on holiday in Paris and you pick up a copy of the new Harry Potter movie, you’ll have yourself a nice $20 coaster when you get home.
Luckily, region encoding isn’t a complex process. In fact, it’s just a single bit at the beginning of the disc, which means it isn’t hard to get around.
Regions
Before we get started here’s a quick overview of the regions that Hollywood has come up with:
- REGION 1 - USA, Canada
- REGION 2 - Japan, Europe, South Africa, Middle East, Greenland
- REGION 3 - S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and parts of Southeast Asia
- REGION 4 - Australia, New Zealand, Latin America
- REGION 5 - Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa
- REGION 6 - China
- REGION 7 - Reserved for Unspecified Special Use
- REGION 8 - Reserved for cruise ships, airplanes and the like
- REGION ALL - Uncoded discs that will work anywhere
Hardware solutions
Perhaps the easiest way around region encodings is to just buy a region-free player.
A quick web search will turn up a number of manufacturers that have declined to accept Hollywood’s region plans.
But what if you’ve already got a nice DVD player or you want to use the disc on your PC?
Well there are a number of hacks that you can use to turn off the region encoding in your DVD player.
For a complete list check out Video Help or use the site to search for your DVD model to see if there’s a solution available.
Note that hacking your DVD player to circumvent region encoding technology is a violation of the DMCA, which means it’s illegal if you’re living in the United States.
Those living in the free world shouldn’t have too much trouble.
Software
If you live in the U.S. or if you simply want a solution that will work on any DVD player — even those which haven’t been hacked — your best solution is to burn a copy of the movie.
You must understand that this is currently illegal in the United States, though Fair Use provisions may be used to argue that consumers can make backup copies of media they own in the future.
With that in mind, what you’ll want to do is rip a copy of your DVD using one of the many popular ripping programs on the market.
I suggest ImgBurn on Windows and Mac The Ripper for Mac.
Make sure that you set the ripping software to produce a “region all” file and then, when you’ve got a copy on your hard drive, burn a new DVD using software like Toast (Mac) or Nero (Windows).
The result will be a DVD that works as you would expect — in any player, anywhere.
Well, almost any player. There’s one gotcha that might be a problem for some users, but there’s little you can do about since it involves video playback.
NTSC versus PAL
There are two major formats for video playback in use today: PAL, which is popular in Europe and parts of Asia, and NTSC, which is used in North America, Japan and some other markets.
Keep in mind that PAL discs must be played in a PAL-compatible DVD players and NTSC discs must be played in a NTSC-compatible DVD players.
There are some DVD players that can handle both, and there are some software applications which can convert a PAL DVD to NTSC (or the other way around) during the ripping process.
But if you don’t want to spend a lot of time ripping your DVDs, it might be worth spending some extra money to get a DVD player that can handle both formats.
How To Make Your Own Ghetto Stun Gun
Buy $10.00 USD worth of household goods, follow these simple instructions, and you’ll be zapping your pals in no time thanks to this video I found while searching the web:
Disclaimer: This is not a commercial strength Stun Gun. It’s for “fun” only; but still dangerous if misused. Be safe.
Replace Your Apple iPod’s Battery
One of the biggest complaints about the Apple iPod is the device’s poor battery performance.
An iPod holds a charge just fine when it’s new, but after a year or so of regular use, the operating time of the stock battery starts to shorten drastically.
When your iPod’s battery goes South, you’re left with a few replacement options.
You can send the unit to Apple and pay $66.00 USD, or you can buy a replacement kit for about $20.00 - 30.00 USD and perform the iPod surgery yourself.
I’ve done a few iPod battery replacements for friends and would highly recommend that you use a 3rd generation iPod battery kit from a company called Blue Raven.
Here’s a YouTube video of someone demonstrating how to replace an iPod battery:
Remember that any damage you do to your Apple iPod during the battery replacement is your own responsibility.
Also, cracking open your iPod and messing with its guts will void your warranty.
Ameritrade Notifies Customers Of Data Breach
Online brokerage TD Ameritrade is warning customers today that some of their personal information, notably e-mail addresses, may have been accessed by an external source.
Its handling of the situation shows there’s some progress being made toward more proactive disclosure of security breaches.
In a letter to account holders (full disclosure: I received the letter), CEO Joe Moglia explains:
While investigating client reports about the industry-wide issue of investment-related SPAM, we recently discovered and eliminated unauthorized code from our systems. This code allowed certain information stored in one of our databases, including e-mail addresses, to be retrieved by an external source.
Please be assured that UserIDs and passwords are not included in this database, and we can confirm that your assets remain secure at TD AMERITRADE.
He goes on to say the code was quickly eliminated and customer assets are protected in the event of any loss.
Of course, if someone’s identity gets stolen as a result of this, that’s another matter. The letter also says:
While Social Security numbers are stored in this particular database, we have no evidence to establish they were retrieved or used to commit identity theft.
I’ll take the liberty of appending “yet” to that final sentence.
As a potential identity theft victim, this explanation doesn’t give me much comfort. It makes me even more uneasy about sharing personal data or using online financial services.
Obviously there was a significant security hole that allowed the “unauthorized code” to get in. I just hope that gap has been closed permanently.
Although User IDs and passwords apparently weren’t breached, I’d still like to see TD Ameritrade put tougher account access requirements in place.
This will be the third time Ameritrade has made it onto the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s list of data breaches.
The first two were small in comparison with many of the higher-profile breaches that have occurred.
Yet I appreciate what appears to be a proactive stance by Ameritrade to make this notification. Let’s just hope it results in nothing more than some additional spam.
iPhoneSIMfree Is Now Available For Purchase
Looks like you can now begin unlocking Apple iPhones at your earliest convenience.
Engadget claims that iPhoneSIMfree’s software is now available for purchase online from four online retailers.
Here is a look at iPhoneSIMfree’s commercial launch:
Wireless Imports in the US, iPhoneWorldwideUnlock in Australia, 1digitalphone in Germany, and iPhone4arab in Saudi Arabia (currently down) have all purchased bulk licenses from the iPhoneSIMfree team and are selling individual unlocks for around $100
How long do you think it will take until users start distributing iPhoneSIMfree’s code across the Web? And how many of you have actually tried this unlock tool yet?
Apple iPhone Software Unlock Now (Almost) Available
I guess it’s now more than official that an Apple iPhone software unlock is (almost) available to the public.
According to CNN, they’ve confirmed that the guys at iPhoneSIMfree have developed a software that unlocks the Apple iPhone.
Not only that, but the developers at iPhoneSIMfree have released a FAQ for their highly anticipated unlock solution. How long until we can get our hands on it?
Here’s a look at how CNN confirmed that the unlocking software actually works:
Los Angeles software consultant Brett Schulte, who is not affiliated with the developers, demonstrated the software for CNN Friday evening.
An Apple iPhone that had the new software appeared to work on the T-Mobile system just seconds after Schulte replaced the AT&T SIM card with a T-Mobile SIM card.
“It’s completely software hacked,” Schulte said. “There’s no case opening required. It’s not required to do any kind of disassembly.” It took Schulte about two minutes to unlock the iPhone.
So the software hack works and it does not require any physical alteration to the iPhone hardware aside from changing the SIM card.
Despite the confirmation, iPhoneSIMfree.com has yet to say exactly when anyone will actually be able to buy the software.
The site does offer a pretty detailed FAQ page which says that the developers “are hoping to release in the next 48-72 hours.”
While the developers remain confident in their solution, there will be no money back guarantee for those who actually buy it and use it on their iPhones.
I can only imagine that lawyers at both Apple and AT&T are working overdrive this Labor Day weekend preparing for the appearance of this software.