[mythtv-users] Many new dvd's not working

[jedi]

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 10:15:00AM -0400, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-07-09 at 23:50 -0700, Neil Salstrom wrote: 
> > I've been having a horrible time playing new(er) DVD's in mythtv.
> 
> Yup.
> 
> > I
> > suspect it's some new stupid copy protection scheme that simply makes
> > life miserable for people legitimately renting or buying movies...
> 
> Indeed.  FWUI, they master the DVDs in violation of the DVD standards
> just enough to trip up DVD-ROM drives (and software) but not enough to
> trip up bona fide DVD players.  If my understanding is correct, I'm not
> sure why DVD-ROM drives/software can't just be more like DVD players,
> but TBH, I don't really understand the details.
> 
> > Has anyone else been having this issue with new disks?
> 
> Yup.
> 
> > Is there a workaround?
> 
> The only workaround I know of (which I am not advocating) is to stop
> renting/buying DVDs and obtain your material elsewhere where it's not
> encumbered by this stupidity.

    mplayer's dumpstream option works pretty good for most disks. I've
worked with a large number of disks and had show stopper problems with
only a few. 

[deletia]

    I use AnyDVD for the few oddballs that don't work with Linux tools.
I've found that to be a small proportion of the disks I've tried though.
Although it is true that publishers try a number of tricks to make disks
unusable on a computer based DVD player or DVD drive.