El Reg reports
Blu-ray players [...] use an antiquated digital rights management scheme to control the distribution of movies, meaning some films could only be played in the geographic regions in which they were purchased.
Matthew Garrett (mjg59) [...] told the Kiwicon hacker conference in Wellington, New Zealand, [December 11] how firmware designed by Taiwanese firm MediaTech could be popped to enable the region encoding to be changed.
[...]The hole [flaw], since crudely-patched on units made in 2014, closed off the ability to gain authenticated access where the DMCA controls could be changed. The pop is possible because the firmware checked for and permitted arbitrary code to run on USB devices ahead of running from internal flash storage.
Garrett's (alcohol-fueled) research could likely be advanced by more sober punters to mitigate the latest fixes, he said.
OK. You folks who delayed buying one of these things because of the DRM can now start your search for a pre-2014 unit.
(Score: 2) by emg on Friday December 12 2014, @06:21PM
I bought a $60 no-name Chinese Blu-Ray player from Walmart, and it came with a region selection screen built in, for DVD and Blu-Ray.
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Friday December 12 2014, @06:56PM
I realize you said a no-name player, but even non-name players have a name, just not a famous one. So what's the name of the company who made this player?
As far as I knoiw, region-free players, especially ones that come like that out of the box, are very rare. Especially for Blu-ray; most Panasonic players have a region-free code, but *only* for DVD and not for Blu-ray. I bet there's some kind of licensing requirement that they not do that, specifically for Blu-ray.
(Score: 3, Informative) by nitehawk214 on Friday December 12 2014, @07:11PM
I thought those region-selector players only let you select it a low number of times before it gets stuck that way forever.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @09:22PM
> I thought those region-selector players only let you select it a low number of times before it gets stuck that way forever.
Possibly, but in general the chinese manufacturers have not licensed the bluray patent portfolio (because the typical cost is in excess of $10 per player) so they have no obligation to follow the "rules" for bluray access control. Commercially importing the players is probably some sort of patent violation but enforcement is pretty minimal so walmart gets away with it.
(Score: 2) by emg on Friday December 12 2014, @08:14PM
Seiki, I think? I believe they're less of a no-name than they were a couple of years ago when I bought the player, I'm sure I've seen other hardware with their name on it since then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @08:45PM
> even non-name players have a name
Kno-Nayme is a well respected brand, please don't make fun of them.
(Score: 1) by Ninlilizi on Friday December 12 2014, @07:30PM
Also confused by this.
Bought a top of the line Panasonic model back in 2011 purely for 3D content, and a patched firmware to remove region restrictions was a single google search away.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday December 12 2014, @06:47PM
Bravo to the crackers. But it doesn't matter much.
Delayed buying one? I have a few blu-ray drives in my computers which I have not used much and never for blu-ray, no blu-ray player, no blu-ray discs, and no plans to ever get any. I have a small collection of DVDs that mostly just take up space on a shelf.
Spinning optical media is on the way out. If idiots want to make it even harder to use, with DRM and the like, they'll only kill it faster. The future is big hard drives for now, and streaming now and later. There would be no need to keep a private personal collection if our laws were current with our technology. Just download whatever you want, whenever, at the high speed we should have but don't because ISPs don't have enough competition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @07:12PM
For an interesting substitute, check out http://lib-ray.org/ [lib-ray.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @06:55PM
Bullshit like region locking is why I stopped buying media around the time DVDs came out. I have an 8x3TB NAS so I've got more than enough storage for Blueray rips that download in just a few hours. Bandwidth is cheap, storage is cheap, movies are free. I still go to the cinema a couple times a year, but region locking is something they'd just have to give up if they want me back as a customer. Other things that would have to change: DRM, HDCP, and previews that can't be skipped.
And I know the industry is capable of changing, because the music industry largely has. They completely gave up on DRM. Prices dropped. You can buy individual songs. Files are delivered in a variety of compatible formats. The movie industry is more stubborn, because the money and time invested in making their products is a couple orders of magnitude greater than with music. There's more at stake, and that leads to a more conservative mindset. Slowly they're getting better, so I'm hopeful. I might actually start buying movies again one day. But they're competing with Bittorrent and completely unlocked files. They've got to do better than that, at a minimum.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday December 12 2014, @07:19PM
but region locking is something they'd just have to give up if they want me back as a customer.
Are you saying that region-locking is something they'd have to change for ethical reasons? Because I don't immediately see how region-locking inconveniences you (assuming you're in the U.S. somewhere). Bittorrent etc. isn't something that people exclusively rip copies from other regions, is it?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by tynin on Friday December 12 2014, @07:42PM
It inconveniences you by not allowing you to enjoy films from other cultures. As an example, the Chinese triad series of movies, Young and Dangerous, is fantastic and hasn't been available to the US market until just recently (I think I saw one on netflix recently). Their are these amazing pieces of work that are being denied to you.
Further, the price fixing based on location is just another form of taxing the poor in the more wealthy countries.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Friday December 12 2014, @07:53PM
I don't immediately see how region-locking inconveniences you (assuming you're in the U.S. somewhere)
I am in the U.S. somewhere, and I know that there are some Blu-ray discs that are not available here, but are available in the U.K. or Australia. If I wanted to purchase one and have it shipped to me, it wouldn't work due to the region locking.
The converse would be if I moved elsewhere and wanted to bring my (hypothetical) Blu-ray collection with me, they wouldn't be easily playable on any player I didn't bring with me.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Sunday December 14 2014, @11:12PM
For the Australian ones, all you need to do is turn your TV upside down and you're good to go.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday December 13 2014, @05:10AM
Some years ago, my wife took a degree course through the Open University, which is the UK's premier distance-learning institution and has been for decades. They sent DVDs to her. Even though she paid twice the UK rate for her course because we are in the USA, the DVDs were region-locked. Region-locked to region 2. I cannot imagine the depth of stupidity that went into making their DVDs region-locked, but they did.
Having a region-free DVD player saved us all kinds of problems viewing the media that we had been sent.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Saturday December 13 2014, @11:26AM
During the last 10 years I lived in four different countries on different continents. If I still would buy DVDs, it would definitely be quite inconvenient to me....
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @07:18PM
I didn't delay buying a Blu-Ray because there was no crack for the DRM. I didn't buy one at all because it's from SONY!
I will never buy any of their shit machinery because of their unconscionable business practices. (Well, and because their machinery is shit too.)
(Score: 0) by Pino P on Friday December 12 2014, @07:38PM
True, Sony was an early proponent of the technology. But as of late 2014, how much clout does Sony still have within the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @07:45PM
isn't videolan all over this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @08:03PM
Somewhat, however progress is slow due to low interest in the project by people able to do anything.
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libbluray.html [videolan.org]
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libaacs.html [videolan.org]
http://www.videolan.org/developers/libbdplus.html [videolan.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12 2014, @11:50PM
There's this: http://vlc-bluray.whoknowsmy.name/ [whoknowsmy.name]
But the key file is from 2012 and can't play BDs released since then :(
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday December 13 2014, @12:15AM
Aren't there a lot of Blu-ray movie rips on pirate sites? I can only imagine that DRM on Blu-ray long since ceased to be a problem. I don't see the point of finding a cracked player when one can just download a non-DRM copy and play it on any computer. (And yes, this is why DRM doesn't work: if your DRM interferes with legitimate customers, even they will resort to piracy.)
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Saturday December 13 2014, @12:28AM
I didn't realize bluray wasn't completely cracked.
I've been renting bluray movies from redbox and ripping them to .mkv files for a couple years now with little or no difficulty.
makemkv to rip from the physical disk into a .mkv file that has just the movie. Then handbrake to transcode to a smaller file size.
Takes a while, but the rips are pretty good quality and stay on my media server until I'm done with the movie.