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DVD copy protection fail: codecs and you
Gaslight
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I just got a brand new copy of the two-disc edition of Blade Runner: The Final Cut. I had planned to watch it for the first time this evening to set the mood for playing Deus Ex 3 when it unlocks later tonight. I popped the disc in my DVD drive, started up Media Player Classic Home Cinema, aaaaaaand...
Copy protection fail. The movie won't play.
Unsurprisingly, Windows Media Player is no better.
This isn't the first time I've experienced problems like this, but it was always with older DVDs, like late 90's to 2000-ish, which is the era where I thought obtuse, overkill copy protection on DVDs (like requiring a shitty included proprietary media application to play them and such as a lot of them did back in the day) was more the norm. But this edition of Blade Runner TFC came out in 2007. I thought we had moved beyond such nonsense by then.
My knowledge of media copy protection and codecs and all of that is basically nil. You put the disc in, hit "play" or "open" or whatever in your media player weapon-of-choice, and away you go; that's all I understand, and it works out fine for me about 99% of the time, but tonight I'm annoyed enough to actually want to try to find out what's going on here and how to fix it. If somebody could give me a quick primer on the way this stuff works and direct me where to go or what to do to allow me to play my brand new movie on my PC like I want to, whether its installing some specific codecs or whatever, I'd really appreciate it.
Warning/Disclaimer: I'm not sure it's even necessary to say this, but I'm going to anyway just for paranoia's sake: This thread is not about piracy and I don't want to hear about piracy in anybody's advice/suggestions. I don't want to get anybody infracted, I just want to watch my damn movie that I legally bought without whatever copy protection scheme it's using preventing me, if there's any safe/legal way to do so.
I can list my video card and any other system specs if they're relevant, but even with what little knowledge of these things I have I suspect this is not just an issue of updating my video card drivers.
Copy protection fail. The movie won't play.
Unsurprisingly, Windows Media Player is no better.
Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card.
This isn't the first time I've experienced problems like this, but it was always with older DVDs, like late 90's to 2000-ish, which is the era where I thought obtuse, overkill copy protection on DVDs (like requiring a shitty included proprietary media application to play them and such as a lot of them did back in the day) was more the norm. But this edition of Blade Runner TFC came out in 2007. I thought we had moved beyond such nonsense by then.
My knowledge of media copy protection and codecs and all of that is basically nil. You put the disc in, hit "play" or "open" or whatever in your media player weapon-of-choice, and away you go; that's all I understand, and it works out fine for me about 99% of the time, but tonight I'm annoyed enough to actually want to try to find out what's going on here and how to fix it. If somebody could give me a quick primer on the way this stuff works and direct me where to go or what to do to allow me to play my brand new movie on my PC like I want to, whether its installing some specific codecs or whatever, I'd really appreciate it.
Warning/Disclaimer: I'm not sure it's even necessary to say this, but I'm going to anyway just for paranoia's sake: This thread is not about piracy and I don't want to hear about piracy in anybody's advice/suggestions. I don't want to get anybody infracted, I just want to watch my damn movie that I legally bought without whatever copy protection scheme it's using preventing me, if there's any safe/legal way to do so.
I can list my video card and any other system specs if they're relevant, but even with what little knowledge of these things I have I suspect this is not just an issue of updating my video card drivers.
Gaslight on
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I do have some other possible advice, but the only thing I can think of at the moment would take enough time and effort to go through that I'll wait until other people have given advice to even TRY mentioning it.
or you could just rip the dvd to your computer with makemkv: http://www.makemkv.com/ only takes about 15mins and that would strip any protection.
Just downloaded and installed. No change, DVD still won't play. I had already tried the K-Lite codec pack before. Is there anything in particular I need to do with these things except run the installers?
Yeah, I googled the error message and I found a lot of threads of full of frustrated people. Not a lot of solutions aside from people saying to download various codec packs (see above), and then the occasional flame war about which codec pack was the bestest.
I don't have Windows' default drivers, I have the AMD drivers appropriate for my video card. Haven't considered looking for any new drivers for my DVD tray itself.
I could just play the DVD on the DVD player connected to my TV but due to lack of access to the TV because other family members are usually watching stuff I do about 90% of my watching on my PC and have actually come to prefer it. I realize I could rip the DVD and there's a reasonable case to be made that it's a better option for me all-around, and I've experimented with doing that on the rare occasions when I've encountered problems like this before. But I really don't want to go down that road if I don't have to. As much as possible, I like to have all of my media of a single type stored in one place. I don't want half my movies sitting in DVD cases on my shelf and half ripped into a folder on my hard drive, and to have to remember and keep track of of which is where, and which I can play where and using what. And I don't have the time, drive space, or gumption to rip my entire library.
This is so damn frustrating.
Have you tried it on VLC Player or Media Player Classic?
I assume so. How do I even tell? How would it get set to any other region?
My OP mentions that Media Player Classic was what I tried first, it's my preferred player. I haven't tried VLC yet, I really find MPC much more pleasant to use.
Device manager> right click your dvd drive> choose properties> DVD region tab
edit:
I admit to skimming the OP, but you could try seeing if MPC is using a codec that interferes with it. Switch it to the default one which I think is MPEG2. See if that works. If not try the cyberlink codec.
They should have come in the K-Lite pack.
I have no such tab. :?
If you have a pure DVD drive installed and you don't have it in your device manager then that might be a problem.
edit:
I may have misunderstood you. You have the DVD drive listing, and have went into the properties menu, but you have no DVD Region Tab?
Like this
No, what I'm saying is that after that, when I go to the properties of my DVD drive, there is no "DVD region" tab. Nor is there anything on any of the other tabs I do have which refers to region that I can see.
Fuck it, screenshot coming, one moment.
Here.
Maybe uninstall and re-install beforehand to see if it fixes itself.
I've never experienced it myself. Push comes to shove you could drop 20 on a new drive.
I do play DVDs on it routinely. Since I built this system in January and installed the drive, there are a total of three DVDs that have ever caused this problem: an old copy of Spy Game, the first volume of the Batman animated series, and now this. I've never had any trouble playing anything else.
Satans..... hints.....