IF you own a relatively older DVD drive chances are that it is region protected. Most of us use DVD drives for playing media and writing. But many of us might not aware of DVD Region Protection code (RPC) a standard implemented to avoid DVD piracy, that allows you to change the RPC to 5 times only. The 5th change will be permanent and the DVD will stay locked to that particular region allowing you only to play DVD movies disc that corresponds to that region. Newer DVD drives generally not region protected
The main advantage of upgrading firmware of your DVD drives is that it support for latest format of DVD discs and older drives only supports DVD-R format and in many cases flashing the firm wire also add support for DVD+R format disk.
The purpose of region coding has never been anti-piracy (not even the industry has made such a claim). The intent was to segment the world market so as to control prices. DVD's have different prices in different regions, and region codes inhibit people buying cheap DVDs in one region and undercutting prices in another.
ReplyDeleteAlso, flashing a drive doesn't necessarily make it RPC-2. Nor does RPC-2 make it region-free. On the contrary, RPC-2 drives store the region-code change counter on the drive, making it impossible to change after a certain number of changes. RPC-1 drives require the system to keep track of the number of changes and, with software, you can reset the counter infinitely (allowing you to change regions without worry).
There are region-free firmwares out there, but they are more rare. That said, most standalone DVD players have a method of making them region free by keypresses on their remotes, or inserting a special DVD.
It should be noted that in 1996, the US became signatory to the International Copyright treaty, which prohibits region-based access controls to works. However, the prohibition largely applies to governments, not companies. The only advantage to regular folks is that it legitimized region-free mods / players (the region codes can exist, but can't be enforced).