DVD playback issue. (3 Viewers)

[Simius]

Another problem with DVD playback

Hi,

I was looking through this thread and I found one person that is having the same problem I'm having here, but I didn't see any other comments about it. The problem is when I put a DVD into the player try to watch it, all I receive is a "Did you insert a disc?" message. Well, let me show the informations that I have:

My System:

MediaPortal 0.2.3.0 with latest SVN
Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB 128bits (latest drivers)
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 (recently installed)
DVD RW LG GSA-H20N (recently upgraded to firmware 1.02)
ffdshow
AC3Filter
MatrixMixer

I reinstalled the MediaPortal after I buy the Hauppauge card, I was using the MediaPortal 0.2.3.0 RC2 with no problems with the DVD playback (even with the new firmware in my DVD RW, so I think we could discard this kind of problem). The problem started after I install the latest version.

DVDs are playing fine with Windows Media Player and PowerDVD

I've tried to change codecs, disable DVD speed settings, disable DxVA, well, almost everything I saw in this thread, but no results.

If there is any other information that helps, please tell me and I'll try to get it

Thanks a lot!!!

 

[DBeck]

I found the problem with mine.
It was that the DVD was playing only upto the DVD Warning / FBI Warning screen, then black screen and no sound.

I went into
"MP Configuration > DirectShow Filter Control > DScaler Video Decoder >" and unticked "Hardcode for PAL With FFshow"

This fixed the problem for me.

Hope it helps.

 

[allanp81]

I would say my problem is definitely a region protection issue. My HTPC in my lounge played back quite a few region 2 discs in a row no problem, soon as I put in a region 1 disc it doesn't want to know. Looks like I'm stuck as well as there's no region free firmware for my drives yet.

 

[DBeck]

I would say my problem is definitely a region protection issue. My HTPC in my lounge played back quite a few region 2 discs in a row no problem, soon as I put in a region 1 disc it doesn't want to know. Looks like I'm stuck as well as there's no region free firmware for my drives yet.

Only until the other day i had the belief i needed to update my DVD Drive firmware (which i did but didn't work), after reading the statement below i realised i didn't need a firmware update to my DVD drive or even for any future DVD drives i will buy.

A region-locked (or RPC-2) drive has the following restrictions:

1. it must be ‘set’ to a region, that is, it is instructed to be member of one and only one region.
2. it will read movies according to the movie’s authorization flag corresponding to the drive’s region. If the movie’s flags disallow playing for the drive’s region, the drive won’t transmit some movie’s data required to decrypt the movie, and instead will report an error. The missing data is a decryption key for the infamous CSS encryption.
3. its region may be changed only a very limited number of time. After all these changes, your drive will be definetely locked on one region, meaning you won’t be anymore able to play movies from other regions.
4. even when powered off, the drive’s region and switch counter are remembered.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050320091202/xvi.rpc1.org/rpc1regions.html

I use to think software like "AnyDVD & DVD Region+CSS Free" was for making DVD's Region free in certain software players but it makes any DVD you put in the drive Region Free and watchable without doing a DVD Firmware update.

I am currently trying out "DVD Region+CSS Free", before i tried Region 1 disk

DVD Region+CSS Free reported the status of my DVD drive as

Drive region code: 2
User changes left: 4
Vendor resets left: 4

It reports the same every time i change a disk for ether region 1 or 2

 

[allanp81]

Are you then able to play all region discs in MP without problem though? I'll give this a try once I'm home later and see if it sorts my problem. Thanks.

 

[DBeck]

I only have/own region 1 & 2 disks but i can play both in MP.

Since i installed DVD Region+CSS Free & unticked "Hardcode for PAL With FFshow" (you might not have "Hardcode for PAL With FFshow" problem) since i am using "DScaler 5 - version 0.0.8".

I moved from using "MPV Decoder Filter" to "DScaler 5 - version 0.0.8" because i was getting very small black bars to the left and right wile watching The Patriot in 16:9 and some other movies.

Good luck let me know how you get on.

 

[allanp81]

You've only gone and done it! My DVD playback now works perfectly with all regions!!! Thankyou so much!

 

[DBeck]

Hehe that's made my day helping someone out

Did you need to use the "Hardcode for PAL With FFshow" option ?

 

[allanp81]

Nope, just using the any dvd thing worked a treat.

 

[okellyro]

3 Problems all causing similar/same problem

I had all of the same problems following the install of powerDVD 7.x… This is what I found (using ATI Cat. 7.11 and MP RC3)

1- pDVD when installed the screen went blank for DVD and DIVX playback – Switchd off VMR9 and Divx play back came back but not DVD, then realized that the GPU was Maxed out; reset all CCC setting to default and DVD’s starting playing…
2- The DVD playback was OK but I was seeing some screen ripping, but could not switch on VMR9 in MP as it broke DVD playback. So I reinstalled CCC 7.11 and media portal, reset all settings to default and got DVD Playback to work for a short period of time…
3- Looked into using alternate Players, reset the MP back to default and got blank screen… double checked all setting ware OK and the MP was indeed set to use the inbuilt player (it was) – still no playback but I got sound….. Took a look at the “mediaportal.xml” file and found that under DVDplayer the “path” setting had and entry after it (next line) which looked like this
<entry name="path" >
</entry>
<entry name="arguments" >
</entry>

I manually changed this to
<entry name="path" />
<entry name="arguments" />

And all started working again