When DVD-ROM drives first hit the market in 1998, the DVD specification required that software measures would be put in place to enforce the region coding and checking measure. However, from January 1st 2000, this has changed by requiring the drives themselves to enforce the region code change remaining count and checking. As a result, the original drives were known as RPC1 drives and the 'newer' drives are known as RPC2 drives.
Due to the complexity of adding software region coding support, issues with certain early DVD-ROM drives and the difficulty in obtaining old working DVD-ROM drives for testing, Microsoft has decided to drop the support for RPC1 drives in its upcoming operating system by refusing to allow the playback of region coded or encrypted DVDs placed in an RPC1 drive.
While this is unlikely to affect anyone who has a DVD-ROM drive purchased within the past five years, this will pose a problem for those who flash their drive with modified firmware to make the drive act as an RPC1 (region free) drive. Other issues include the use of tweaked firmware in DVD writers, since many of these firmware modifications also include the modification to turn the drive into an RPC1 drive.
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When PC DVD drives first came out in 1998, the drives themselves did not have support for region codes but instead relied on (and in fact the DVD specification required) the operating system to enforce region coding, with the further understanding that starting on January 1, 2000 all newly-manufactured drives would support region coding in hardware rather than relying on software enforcement. For the purpose of this discussion, I will call the two types of drives "old" (manufactured before 2000) and "new" (manufactured on or after January 1, 2000). The full article can be read here. |
It will be interesting to see if DVD region free tools work with RPC1 drives in Vista, considering that many simply reset Windows' own region count, something that will be removed in Vista. Then again, chances are that the drop of RPC1 drive support will not affect those who use RPC2 'auto-resetting' firmware where the region change remaining count is reset to 5 each time the PC is powered up.
In my opinion, if Microsoft is actually aiming
to kill off the support for region-free drives altogether,
this may be a bad mistake for Microsoft, considering that most
standalone DVD players are either region free, such as the NeoDigits HD upscaling
player we reviewed or can easily be made region-free with a secret remote control key sequence. If Microsoft's aims to try and enforce region code checking, then they can expect an even tougher time trying to take over home entertainment in the living room.
Source: Slashdot.org
