Playing DVDs - setting region

Using applications, configuring, problems
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Walt H
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Playing DVDs - setting region

#1 Post by Walt H »

I recently bought a new desktop machine that came with Xandros Standard Edition 3.0 preinstalled. However, after trying Feather Linux and Puppy on my older machine, this new machine (presumably much faster) seems to bog down running Xandros with version 3.0. So I will likely be back to Puppy and soon.

I do have a couple of questions, though. My new machine has a SmartLink modem installed. I have Puppy 1.0.3 and wondered whether it would be able to recognize that modem or if I would be better off waiting for 1.0.4 to be released.

Also, I would like to be able to play DVD movies I already own (I don't want to make copies or upload them to the Web or anything like that - why should someone else get free what I paid for? :)), something I have not been able to get working in Xandros. Has anyone had success doing this in Puppy? If so, what would I need to do to make it work? Thanks in advance. You guys are the best. :D
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

Jesse
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#2 Post by Jesse »

I watch DVDs on my puppy all the time
start -> Multimedia -> gxine media player
Put the DVD in the computer,
File -> DVD
and away it goes :)

Jesse

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Walt H
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#3 Post by Walt H »

Including the "Hollywood" kinds?
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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mouldy
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#4 Post by mouldy »

Yes, gxine works fine on genuine Hollywood silver screen masterpieces.... Probably not great on really old computers. Little notchy playing on my 366mhz with 256mb ram. The Ogle dvd player that early versions of Puppy had plays dvd smoother on more limited computers.

Edit: I had played around trying to copy early Puppy version of Ogle (and its varied dependencies) to my present 1.0.1 version. Hadnt remembered getting it to work, but just tried it with "Smilla's Sense of Snow". Started Ogle, then hit the "start disk" under "file". Screen popped up and Smilla started playing. Does play movies much better on my old computer than gxine. No slowness/nochiness. Now I may try adding the Goggles gui front end for Ogle. Its suppose to be quite nice.

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Walt H
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#5 Post by Walt H »

I couldn't get it to work. I have a DVD-RW machine and am wondering if that makes a difference. I also noticed that while in Xandros, xine points to /dev/dvd and the Warning message plays before xine stops with an error message, the KDE Control Center points to /dev/cdroms/hdc when I click on CDROM under Hardware Detection. (There is no corresponding listing for DVD in the Contro Center.) I tried it both with and without SCSI-emulation set up.

CDs play fine, but I'd like to watch my Region 1 DVDs, if possible. Arrggh :x

Any help is, as always, greatly appreciated.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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klhrevolutionist
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I think

#6 Post by klhrevolutionist »

Now since I don't know how to do this someone else will
so here is something I found:
cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/
www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/
there is instructions on the first one but not enough for me I think???
Heaven is on the way, until then let's get the truth out!

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mouldy
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#7 Post by mouldy »

You want SCSI-emulation off. Insert your movie, click on gxine, click file, click dvd. It should start playing. I suspect the reason you cant play movie dvd under Xandros is due to it maybe not having necessary codecs installed. But dont know that for sure. I only played with Xandros briefly quite some time ago.

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Walt H
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#8 Post by Walt H »

I tried it both ways, with and without SCSI-emulation and no luck. I had downloaded and installed libdvdread3 and libdvdnav and libdvdcss for Xandros and still could not get them to work. :? Between this and the problem getting the SmartLink modem working in Puppy, it's enough to make me wish I had stuck with my six-year old laptop. Silly me for wanting more capability. :x

If my dialup wasn't so slow (pages seem to render even more slowly in Xandros than in other distributions), perhaps I could have found an answer in my searches by now or at least have reached this point sooner.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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Walt H
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#9 Post by Walt H »

Okay. Here's where things now stand. I popped a couple of cheapo DVDs of old movies produced by second-tier distributors (i.e., not the studios themselves)., and they seem to work just fine in Gxine.

When I try a DVD put out by a Hollywood studio (for instance, "The Big Chill"), the drive scans the DVD for a few seconds, Gxine tries to open and play it, then the drive stops scanning and Gxine exits. In one instance, the Warning message played before the application exited, otherwise nothing. In another case, I got the following error message:

Code: Select all

xine engine error:
Read error from: Error reading NAV packet.
I then got the following:

Code: Select all

xine engine failed to start.
No demuxer found. Stream format not recognized.
Any ideas other than sticking with cheap DVDs of really old movies? :)
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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mouldy
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#10 Post by mouldy »

Do you have any older versions of Puppy that you can try by booting it just from cd? I am running murga's opera puppy 1.0.1. Dont think anything has changed since then, but might be worth a try. Until I got ogle player to work on present installation, if I really wanted to watch a movie on computer, I tended to boot Puppy 0.9.3 since it had ogle built in and ogle plays much smoother on my old hardware. But no problem getting either gxine or ogleto play a commercial movie dvd. And their is a gpl player called VLC that I have installed on XP. It can be installed in linux also. Works much better than windows media player though anything played on windows on my old computer is kinda slow and notchy, just cause windows itself is bloatware.

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Walt H
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Update

#11 Post by Walt H »

Well, I solved this problem (apparently) in Xandros by running a Debian utility called regionset. Turns out the region had not been set on my DVD drive. (I'm now watching one of my Region 1 DVDs, "12 Angry Men.") Does anyone know if 1) having run regionset in Xandros will also set the drive for Puppy? 2) if not, is there a way to set the region of the DVD in Puppy? Thanks.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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mouldy
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#12 Post by mouldy »

Hmm, just boot puppy and try it. I never heard of the utility, but would guess maybe it sets something in firmware on dvd player so should carry over to Puppy.

Who knows, I have a Chinese dvd of "The African Queen" (Bogart/Hepburn) that wont play on my stand alone dvd player, but plays fine on Puppy or Windows. Supposedly legit copy. Dont know if its set for different region or what.

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Flash
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#13 Post by Flash »

I vaguely recall something about being limited to changing 4 times the region my DVD player is in. Maybe it's a Windows thing, or maybe I saw it in the installation instructions of my DVD drive.

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Walt H
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#14 Post by Walt H »

I'll give it a try to see whether the setting carries over into Puppy. The drive turns out to be an RPC-2 DVD drive (post-2000), which means the drive has to be set to a specific region and can only be set five times by the user (and another five by the vendor) without a firmware upgrade. It's apparently independent of OS.

There's a tar.gz file available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... e_id=87121 and it's only about 10K in size (6K download). Plus, it's platform independent. It looks like maybe only the one version was ever released, but it worked fine for me. I'll let you know whether DVDs now work in Puppy once I've taken the dog back out for a walk. :) I'm having to swap between it and Xandros until I get a modem working in Puppy.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

Rich
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#15 Post by Rich »

Most domestic DVD players are region specific.
This is especially apparent over in England, mainly so we have to buy the overpriced DVD's here rather than the cheaper way, from America over the internet.

However, do an internet search for DVD Hacks. Just about every home system has a hack to set it to any region ( as many times as you like too ). They are all basically the same chassis and built usually in the far east, they are then configured to comply to the required market/country.
As far as I know the PC DVD drives can be hacked, coded, modified in the same way.

There was talk about the music business doing a similar thing with CDs. Some coding or encryption so they couldn't be played on a PC ( and subsequently copied ).............yet they keep promoting enhanced CDs with videos on them - very PC specific. You really have to admire the knee-jerk reactions of these people. :D

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Walt H
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DVD playback problem solved with 'regionset' utility

#16 Post by Walt H »

Apparently, that was the problem; the region had not yet been set on the DVD drive. Now DVDs (Region 1 and regionless) play fine in both Xandros and Puppy. Now, if I could get the SmartLink modem working, I could come back to Puppy full-time (KDE is too slow, installing another WM may break it, I'm told - even web pages seem to load slower :shock: ).
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

GuestToo
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#17 Post by GuestToo »

Icewm should run ok on any distro
all you basically need is the icewm binary file
it's better if you have the config files and themes too
icewmbg lets you set the background

icewm does not have desktop icons, but there are programs that do ... rox filer, for example

running icewm should not break any distro

there's a Ubantu-based distro called Ubantu-lite that uses Icewm as it's wm

also, there's a project called KDE-lite, for older computers

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Walt H
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#18 Post by Walt H »

GuestToo wrote:Icewm should run ok on any distro
[snip]
GuestToo wrote:running icewm should not break any distro
Up until now, that has always been my understanding, but apparently some of the "experts" on the Xandros forum (the label them as "Gold Level," "Silver Level," and "Bronze Level," like it's the Olympics :lol: ) say that installing other WMs (especially Gnome) could break something in the way Xandros is installed and set up. Since my modem does not work under Puppy at the moment and does work under Xandros, I am a bit hesitant to put this to the test just yet.

Besides, I'd rather use Puppy if I can get it working with what I now have, although DSL or Feather are possibilities as there does appear to be a .deb of the modem driver.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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