Hi all,

Just bought a new usb dvd rewriter. Plugged it in and although dmesg shows it being detected, udev did not assign it any dev entry. A quick google suggested that in order to use a new dvd, either internal or external, it first needs to be region set. This is easily achieved in window$, by just inserting a dvd film.
My question is then, how to achieve the same thing under linux, as inserting a dvd film does nothing.
FWIW, once the region has been set via window$, pluggung into my linux box immediately gets udev assigning it as you would expect.
Any one guide me in the right direction.

TIA

I am fairly certain this is not true. I have a new sata dvd drive that I recently installed in a linux box that has never seen windows and has never been region encoded and it was detected and works fine in linux. Your problem probably has more to do with the fact that this is a usb dvd drive. I suspect that the necessary driver modules are not loading for this device.

Thanks for the reply, but as I said, once the drive had been region encoded via window$, it then worked correctly under linux without any extra intervention. Any more ideas. It is purely to satisfy my curiosity, as I would like to think that what can be achieved so easily under window$ should be just as easy to do under my favourite OS.

This is just your assumption. And it is not correct. Windows has nothing to do whatsoever with giving permissions to watch encrypted dvds or set the region. I have dvds I bought on amazon which are not for my region (2 : Europe). They can be watched with no hassle. Apple does the same : you are enabled to watch the dvds that work for your region only. In that regard, it sucks as much as Windows. Linux has nothing to do with regions or permissions either. This is a free OS, man.

I regularly build Linux systems and have never had such issues. DVD discs just play without the need to mess about with the region settings.

Sameal 26,

This was NOT just my assumption, so please don't presume to tell me that it is. The evidence was before my very eyes. When first plugged into my linux box, the new drive would neither register correctly with udev, or play ANY dvds. I then tried it on Window$, where it worked first time, and has subsequently been working under Linux as any other dvd device does. So unless you wish to continue to call me a liar, I suggest you read and try to understand the entire post in future. Perhaps I have just been unlucky, who knows, but either way, I can only report what worked for me, and am just trying to get to the bottom as to why, and glib comments do not lead to a successfull understanding of what is going on.

No one's calling you a liar and no one here has been insulting or glib. Please be civil if you expect others to help.

I am simply unaware of any technical reason why region encoding in windows should have any impact whatsoever on the device's recognition in linux and the contention that it does is contradicted by my personal experience and that of the others that have posted here. If you could elaborate on the technical basis for your belief, I'm more than willing to listen. But it appears that your belief is only based on your experience with one other device on another system and your unwilling to look at any alternative explanations for what happened.

vdemuth, I believe you are correct. I just bought a Samsung DVD Burner and it would *not* play back some DVDs correctly. I would get "Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_..... in xine, mplayer, and vlc.

After booting into Windows, setting the Region in the DVD-ROM device properties, and booting back in to Linux, everything works great.

There must be a firmware issue where the DVD drive refuses to return data from certain sections of the DVD if the region has not been set yet.

On the other hand, an LG DVD drive that I bought 6 months ago has never had a problem playing any DVD. LG must program the Region code in manufacturing (or at least before they shipped it), whereas Samsung does not.

Try Then run You'll want to set region code 1 if you're in the USA.

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Registered to say this got me going, and to give a nice big hint to anyone else who buys what I did.

I bought an LG GE20NU10 on faith in Linux "just working". I bought a nice big hard drive too and I've been copying all of my DVDs to hard drive to stop my kids scratching the disks.

Out of the box it mostly worked but refused to copy DVDs on my Mythbuntu 7.10 box which worked fine with an internal drive. I tried it plugged in to my laptop running Etch which copied fine through the internal DVD drive with no luck.

I ran regionset, set it to region 4 (I'm in Australia) and it's now copying just fine.

Thanks.

I would not have expected it to be the case with a user encoded DVD, but region encoding does matter for some DVDs. DVDs protected via specific Macrovision settings are readable on most DVD readers only if the region is set correctly. Examples are "Ruling Class", "The Green Wing Season1", etc. On most DVD readers these will fail to read if the DVD reader is set to the default "no region" setting.

I thought I'd post a follow up to say that I obtained a "new" computer with a DVD drive that had not been regionally set, and it had no problems playing any of my DVD's until I got to the 3rd disk in a series. The first 2 played fine, but the last wouldn't work. I double checked everything, and was about to conclude that the disk was bad until I tried the regionset program suggested by saburns. I set to my region and the DVD plays like a champ. So, for those that continue to have this issue, the region settings are still relevant. Thank you!

* Slackware 14.1
* Kernel 3.14.33-smp