Beating RCE on DVDs?

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2005/06/17 @ 12:19 am
Category General

Sharon writes- Hi. I’m an American, living in Europe. I like to buy my DVD’s from America because they are in my language. I made sure that my DVD player is codefree so that I wouldn’t have a problem. Suddenly the American producers have added a new technology called RCE, whose sole purpose is to make it impossible to play American DVD’s outside of America. Anybody know how to modify a DVD player to get around that little bit of corporational nastiness? Any advice for Sharon while I research this?

In the Maker Shed

5 Responses to Beating RCE on DVDs?

kirkmc on June 17th, 2005 at 1:32 am said:

Not true. I’m an American in France, and any American movie I buy on DVD has an English version on it, together with the French version (and perhaps other languages).

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jxn on June 17th, 2005 at 5:50 am said:

We also have a codefree DVD player and have started to see a number of region 1 dvds with RCE. (kirkkmc: the problem is not if they are in VO, they are, it is that they are encoded to only work with region 1 dvd players and not regionless DVD players).

I have been able to mess with my player menu settings, and not entering at the root menu but via a chapter (sorry I have not been able to codify the process yet) to get the DVD to work. But this has only worked twice for me and still haven’t a clear idea how to make this systematic.

Otherwise, I’ve resorted to ripping and reburning. Quality is lost and is time consuming, but that is the only replicable answer I’ve been able to find.

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Felixe on June 17th, 2005 at 10:37 am said:

I think a computer DVD shouldn’t have that problem, give Movix a try. It’s a Linux live CD that allows you to boot up a fully functional DVD player. Possibly the biggest requirement is that you need a video card with TV output.

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gswitter on June 17th, 2005 at 11:22 am said:

The region-free players I’ve used still allow you to change the region code (they’re just set to region 0 by default), so you should be able to change your player to region 1, allowing your RCE-enabled discs to play. Try VideoHelp for details about your player.

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KalleKanin on June 18th, 2005 at 7:13 am said:

It’s mind-boggling what these executive types manage to come up with in order to decrease their sales and encourage piracy. This is good news for all the DVD player manufacturers who can now add a small unlocking chip to their old player technology and launch it as a completely new product. Personally I can’t fit another DVD into these shelves anyway so I guess I’ll have to revert to reading library books in the near future.

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