DVD Duplicator

[jurb...@gmail.com]

Got one of these in and the customer seems hot to trot. It is onlty a single copy device so the bill can't really be big. Might be worh a couple hundred at best.

it must have worked because the burner drawer is not closing, and the eject button is out of the read drive. Figgure we will just change both drives and be done with it. The two of them might be fifty bucks total and I'llk be done in ten minutes.

However, DVD ROMs that do not burn, well on like the Bestbuy site they are a bit hard to find. there is one down the street so I figure instead of fucking wiht shipping and all that, just go there. I nbeed a read drive and a write drive and I need black fronts to match.

So I see a burner on there for $16. I mean, I won't put something in a box for $16. So can I just use two burners in the thing ?

It only has one little board on the bottom where the SATA cables connect, and a power supply and fan, and that's it.

There is absolutely no brand name or model num,ber on it and I can't find an FCC ID, even though I was pretty sure those things were a thing of the past I still looked.

Another question is, this isn't one of those deals where I have to get the drive from them is it ? (whoever they are) If they are using standard drives, maybe there is no hardware detection and it set to the OEM drives ?

Please advise. I just saw the $16 drives on the website, they might be out of them locally. I might have as much as $60 into them and do not want to waste money.

Another thing is it has audio outpout jacks. (not video) You (not you) mean to tell me that someone will take their DVD duplicator and listen to a CD on it ? I put CDROMs in PCs so people do not have to wear out their burner for reading, plus copying is alot smoother.

This thing, there is only a power button, no other controls. I assume that when you put in a DVD and a blank it just starts.

Also, if these things respect copyguard the job could get blown off. If the guy wants to copy protected material and it won't do it we would rather not ha ve the animousity that could bring. maybe I should talk to him. but when I do that I would like to lknow about this deal. CanI just use two burners in there or will something screw that up ? Computers, ;well sometimes I have told people "We are doing that becvause I do not know" meaning that I am dong what I KNOW will work rather than what I merely think will work. I ain't got all day.

Absolutely no model or brand on the thing. If you need, I could look at the board and see the chip number or whatever. What's more, the power supply has one old style connector on it. However no IDE at all. Could this be a stripped down PC power supply ? I don't see an ATX connector on it but wires can be cut.

That reminds me I have a PC PS to fix so I got a better PC at work. I ordered caps for its PS and they turned up too big. I did get the guy into Digikey though so now I can fix that.

If, IF there is a reason that replacement drive might niot work then I will o=look into the prospect of fixing the ones in there.

How the hell do you break the eject button ? I know how. By being an asshole and pushing the button before the disk is done burning and finalizing harder and harder because they are the same type of people who put 25 amp fuses in where a 6 came out. Just had that happen with a guitar amp. I guess there are assholes in this business as well.

Anyway, I want to know if there are any hitches involved with just throwing in regular DVD drives in there.

Thanks in advance.

[Ian Malcolm]

jurb...@gmail.com wrote in
news:35d38eaf-503c-4ccf...@googlegroups.com:

>
> Anyway, I want to know if there are any hitches involved with just
> throwing in regular DVD drives in there.
>
> Thanks in advance.

If you've got any spare used drives handy, its probably best to try it to
avoid unpleasant surprises before quoting the job.

Replacement drives may need to have region free firmware or it will
bounce when they unknowingly lock the region by copying imports.

--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk
[at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & >32K emails --> NUL

[jurb...@gmail.com]

Oh shit, that's right. Thanks for telling me. that changes the whole game. If they have to be region free then thsat is only ot make copies all over the world ?

And what if both drives at region one ? That should work right ?

I think I better talk to the customer in this. If he is bringing in DVDs from England or some shit I can see how......

Wait a minute, doesn't the regiopn only affect thge playback not the data ? Imena like a PAL disk will not play on an NTSC machine or wsomething ?

But then even PC DVDs had regions. I HAD one on which the region was never set and I made a point not to. You oculd only set it five times IIRC. The software it came with reqwuired you to set it. I refused and used it as a DVD ROM,l nd whatever. I do not know what happened to it actually. It might be around here somewhere.

I gotta talk to the dude I guess. If he is not dealing wiht international DVDs, most likely two drives set to region one willl work fine, unless there ar ehardware issuies. thatis wha tI was asking. Bt actuyally nex tI work I might just trer into that hting again and see if it is maybe region free. Look up the model numbers and all that.

Tell you this much, the customer did not set the region. ;this thing only has a power button and an eject button on each drive. not much to it at all.

[mrob...@att.net]

jurb...@gmail.com wrote:
> Got one of these in and the customer seems hot to trot.

Most likely, he's making copies of DVDs from Redbox, or possibly from
the local porn store, if they rent DVDs. (Some people *still* haven't
heard of the Internet.)

> However, DVD ROMs that do not burn, well on like the Bestbuy site they

> are a bit hard to find. [...] I nbeed a read drive and a write drive

> and I need black fronts to match.
>
> So I see a burner on there for $16.

The local used computer place has piles of used optical drives for, I
think, $5. Not that you'd sell the customer used drives, but it'd be a
cheap way to make sure that you can use any random drive.

The local new computer parts place (Micro Center) has a brand new LG
DVD-ROM for $8.09 and a brand new DVD-RW for $10.79. As usual, Best Buy
is a ripoff.

> Another question is, this isn't one of those deals where I have to get
> the drive from them is it ? (whoever they are)

It's hard to say. I would lean a little towards "any drive should work",
because People's Shining DVD Duplicator Factory #4 has the same problem
you do: the guy that they bought drives from last week, 500 drives @
$0.97, can't get any this week, so they had to buy them from a different
guy, 400 @ $0.98. They *could* be making weekly firmware changes to
support different drives, but I think that is a little less likely.

> If they are using standard drives, maybe there is no hardware
> detection and it set to the OEM drives ?

The only thing like this I can think of: if it has one DVD-ROM and one
DVD (+,-,sqrt) RW in there now, it might depend on detecting the DVD-ROM
drive to know which one is the source and which one is the blank. If
this is happening, it probably doesn't care that the DVD-ROM is an LG
model 1234, just that it's not a burner. They might not be doing it
this way, though.

One thing I do know: back when DVD burners first got faster than 1X,
they were software limited to like 1.5X when sold in the US (MPAA
problems). You had to download modified firmware and flash it to the
drive to get the full speed it was capable of. This was in the 2X and
4X era; I don't think it applies to DVD burners faster than that. Even
with this restriction, using a random burner may *work*; it'll just be
slow.

Another thing I've seen, this time with hard drives: Original SATA ran
at 1.5 Gbit/sec. SATA 2 runs at 3 Gbit/sec and SATA 3 runs at 6
Gbit/sec. However, if you plug a SATA 2 hard drive into an original
SATA controller, there's a good chance that it won't work. Most SATA 2
hard drives I've seen have a jumper to limit the hard drive to SATA
speed, and I've had to use that jumper to get it to work before. This
may not affect you; I don't know if any DVD drives have SATA 2 or 3
interfaces.

> Also, if these things respect copyguard the job could get blown off.

I don't know about the region code thing.

Matt Roberds

[whit3rd]

On Monday, January 12, 2015 at 9:56:08 PM UTC-8, jurb...@gmail.com wrote:
> Got one of these in and the customer seems hot to trot.

> it must have worked because the burner drawer is not closing, and the eject button is out of the read drive. Figgure we will just change both drives and be done with it.

If this is intended to copy DVD videos, there's a problem. All DVD mechanisms read all tracks,
but recording mechanisms never RECORD the DVD-video leadin/region code tracks. For
that, you need a special mechanism, and/or special blank disks. Without some special
hardware, a DVD duplicator only copies data DVDs.

I'm not certain that a read mechanism reports the video leadin information, it might
sequester/digest that internally.

You might just be better off putting a new belt into the 'not closing' drawer mechanism.

[John Robertson]

Didn't I see somewhere that Wallmart branded DVD players are not
regionalized?

Not that I've actually checked out this story...

John :-#)#

--
(Please post followups or tech inquiries to the newsgroup)
John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9
(604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games)
www.flippers.com
"Old pinballers never die, they just flip out."

[Mike S.]

Chances are any drive will work.

DVD regions are not an issue because they are not PLAYING the discs,
just copying data, and a duplicator cannot decrypt a commercially
pressed DVD video disc or deal with copy protection anyway.
The only video discs they're made for are those you burn yourself.

The potential gotcha's are:

- DVD drives typically have riplock which limits the read speed on
video discs, etc. When a duplicator dealer assembles a duplicator unit,
the reader drive usually has custom firmware that eliminates any
manufacturer imposed reading speed limits.

- The firmware on the duplicator controller board is tpyically written to
"support" a variety of common DVD drives AT THE TIME OF MANUFACTURE. If
you use "non-supported" drive(s) they're usually pretty permissive but you
may have speed or other subtle compatability issues.

[mrob...@att.net]

John Robertson <sp...@flippers.com> wrote:
> Didn't I see somewhere that Wallmart branded DVD players are not
> regionalized?

The version I heard a few years ago was that the inexpensive ($40)
Chinese DVD players sold at Wal-Mart would initially only play Region 1
discs, but could be "unlocked" just by entering a code on the remote.
I don't think this was the deal where you can only change it 3 or 5
times before it locks forever; once you entered the code it would play
any disc.

The modifications for most other DVD players at that time involved
burning a special CD-R with a possibly third-party firmware update,
using something like a JTAG programmer to reflash the microcontroller,
or unsoldering the microcontroller to either program it externally or
replace it with a different one. From a user's point of view, being
able to do it from the remote was a good feature.

Matt Roberds

[Michael Black]

I don't know about the details, but it did seem like some of the low end
players were coveted precisely because they could be changed in this way.

That, and some low end players used standard computer DVD drives, so if th
drive went bad, one could very cheaply get it going again.

I can't say I've seen any of those (the ones I've opened up have most or
all of the electronics on the main board), but my DVD recorder, I forget
the brand, that I found in a recycling bin certainly uses a standard IDE
cable. The thing is kind of flakey, I did try a computer DVD writer with
no good results, but then that made me assume I need to deal with the
power supply, it may be flakey so the drive is contankerous.

Michael

[jf...@my-deja.com]

On Wednesday, January 14, 2015 at 9:12:46 PM UTC-8, Michael Black wrote:
> I don't know about the details, but it did seem like some of
> the low end players were coveted precisely because they could
> be changed in this way.
>

The Apex AD-600A could be made region-free with a specific key sequence from the remote contgrol. The Apex AD-1500 needed a file loaded from a CD-ROM. I also got a Coby from Walgreens for about $20 that could be programmed easily with the remote.

[Leif Neland]

jf...@my-deja.com kom med følgende:

A little off-topic regarding to duplication, but with the price of
DVD-players, there is little gained for the content suppliers by using
region codes.

I can get a DVD-player for the price of about 1½ premium DVD, so if my
main DVD-player could only play region X, I'd just buy another to play
region Y.

Leif

--
Je suis Charlie

[jurb...@gmail.com]

The only problem with that plan is the output format. There's something I don't know. Is HDMI universal ? In the old days you would get NTSC from a region 1 - the US. I think alot of Europe is region 2 which would be PAL I believe. Even the plugs would be different, in the US you would have composite fromn and RCA jack, in Europe it might be SCART. I have no idea about region 3. Perhaps the middle east. Not sure about China etc.

Th DVD itself has no format I beieve. It's just a few bytes at the beginning or whatever that disables certain DVD players. I can imagine the reasons for this are something we do not appreciate. One aspect might be royalties. this would allow them to gouge Americans rates for this material Europeans would refuse to pay. Another thing is politics, there could be different versions of movies for diferent cunrties.

The old diffrerence in format were cuaed by technology period, and is why NTSC is among the crappiest formats. I think only Russia's old system was worse, 330 lines or something like that. Both PAL and SECAM are superior to NTSC, but then they came out a bit later. I know PAL will not work well without a COMB filter and those used to be expensive. You didn't see them in NTSC sets until about the 1980s. They werre in VCRs though, but I don't know which is the chicken and which is the egg here. Was the COMB filter invented for the crosstalk reduction in VCRs or to improve the TV set itself ? I bet even wiki doesn't know that one.

Anyway, alot of our digital tuners won't work in Earope either. they use a different channel spacing for both AM and FM. I regular analog tuner would work, but their deemphasis is 50 uS rather than 75 in the US, and they use less overall modulation. they had to do that because fof the sidebands being closer together. I think at one tome they even had a slightly different phone preamp ?EQ curve. There used to be preamps with a selector "RIAA, EUR" some of them also had "WORN".

All of this is strictly because of slightly different decisions made about the technology. The DVD regions have no such excuse.

[Michael Black]

You don't even need to buy them anymore. I have four or five I've found
in the garbage, and they all worked fine, at least for the brief time I
actually tried them.

Michael

[Dave Platt]

In article <728b0b20-8ceb-4678...@googlegroups.com>,

<jurb...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Th DVD itself has no format I beieve. It's just a few bytes at the
>beginning or whatever that disables certain DVD players.

That's the commonest approach to region-locking - the disc simply has
only one bit set in the region flag part of the data. A conforming
DVD player is supposed to check the flags and only play content which
matches its own region identifier.

There's a more complex approach which is possible... "RCE". A DVD can
contain different programs, each of which is flagged for a specific
region. A disc might contain a set of recordings flagged as "playable
in region 1" and a different set flagged "playable in regions 2
through 6". A "Region free" DVD player might play the wrong
one... and the "region 2 through 6" version would simply be a loop
saying "You're in the wrong part of the world to play this disc."
This approach isn't used very much these days, it sez on Wikipedia.

> I can imagine
>the reasons for this are something we do not appreciate. One aspect
>might be royalties. this would allow them to gouge Americans rates for
>this material Europeans would refuse to pay.

That's a big part of it.

Controlling release dates is another (related) one. They might want
to release a movie in the U.S. first (at premium prices), and then
release overseas in smaller countries later (at lower prices, more
acceptable in those markets).

[jf...@my-deja.com]

On Friday, January 16, 2015 at 9:53:10 AM UTC-8, Leif Neland wrote:
> I can get a DVD-player for the price of about 1½ premium DVD,
> so if my main DVD-player could only play region X, I'd just
> buy another to play region Y.
>
> Leif
>

My experience is that the big name brands (Sony, Panasonic, etc.) generally are single-region players that cannot be made region-free. The cheap no-name brands that are sold by places like CVS or Walgreens are also single-region as they come out of the box, but they can often be made region-free without much difficulty (just do a Google search). So there usually is no cost penalty. Once converted, I have had no problems playing the signle-region DVDs I have gotten from Europe, Asia, and North America (this works fine on both my old analog TVs with RCA jacks and the modern flat-screen TVs with HDMI inputs).