UBCD4Win Forums > Vista won't support RPC1 drives......

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stidyup

Jan 4 2006, 11:23 AM

Old news blog

QUOTE

On the inability to support hardware that nobody makes any more

Windows Vista will not have support for really old DVD drives. (The information below was kindly provided to me by the optical storage driver team.)

When PC DVD drives first came out in 1998, the drives themselves did not have support for region codes but instead relied on (and in fact the DVD specification required) the operating system to enforce region coding, with the further understanding that starting on January 1, 2000 all newly-manufactured drives would support region coding in hardware rather than relying on software enforcement. For the purpose of this discussion, I will call the two types of drives "old" (manufactured before 2000) and "new" (manufactured on or after January 1, 2000).

So if you've patched your DVD-Rom to be region free Vista probably won't see it.

lawson23

Jan 4 2006, 12:13 PM

QUOTE

So if you've patched your DVD-Rom to be region free Vista probably won't see it.

Actually this is an incorrect statement as it has nothing to do with "region free".

If you have patched your DVD-ROM it is still usually managed by the Hardware. Just the hardware is ignoring region coding now since you patched it.

What is going on is WAY back the first dvd players looked to the OS for control of the region coding. These old dvd players are the ones that may not function anymore and has nothing to do with you changing the region coding.

Ars Technica article

stidyup

Jan 5 2006, 03:55 AM

So it's only the original RPC1 drives which will be affected then?

I thought that flashing the firmware of your drive made it a RPC1 drive literally, but your saying it's a bit more subtle than this? In effect the DVD rom is still a RPC2 drive, but it's just ignoring the region code in the hardware? So vista will so give playback as it's still a RPC2 drive.

lawson23

Jan 5 2006, 10:23 AM

QUOTE

Windows Vista will not have support for really old DVD drives.

OLD DRIVES not hacked drives or region free drives. OLD DVD DRIVES.

What does OLD mean?

QUOTE

starting on January 1, 2000 all newly-manufactured drives would support region coding in hardware rather than relying on software enforcement.

So drives built before 1/1/2000

What does this mean for us?

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First, there is no change to the way data is read from DVD drives, so data discs will still work the same way as they do today. Second, all new DVD drives will continue to run as they did before; the only change is that the risk of mis-identification as an old drive has been removed. Only if you have an old drive will you notice anything different, namely that encrypted/regionalized DVD movies will no longer play.

Ok I'm just gathering this from what I have read.
It has nothing to do with RPC-1 or RPC-2 this was something not mentioned in the original blog or anywhere else but by someone that is fearful and starting fud.

If you read the Ars article it explains it pretty well. OLD hardware left the region encoding up to the OS. New drives do not it is controlled by the hardware as it is supposed to be. So as long as the Hardware is still controlling this you will not have an issue. I have no idea what some of the firmware updates are or do but in my opinion they would just change the code in the Hardware to state region free instead of a region. The hardware then still controls region encoding but it just doesn't limit it to one code. Therefore if you have a newer drive it still is ok to work with vista.

By design this is how it is supposed to work. Now also remember we are talking REALLY old hardware here.

stidyup

Jan 5 2006, 10:59 AM

What I was meaning was I thought when you patched with a RPC2 drive with region free firmware I was under the impression that the drive became a RPC1 one. Clearly that's not the case.

Good to know that my region free DVD-Roms will be OK.

lawson23

Jan 5 2006, 04:15 PM

QUOTE

Good to know that my region free DVD-Roms will be OK.

Now I wouldn't say this. Depending on what your Region free upgrade did could depend on if it will work or not. If it set it to look to the OS then you would be out of luck.

Now I will tell you the OS doesn't give you "Region Free" so in no way do I think that this is how they fix firmwares for this.

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