DVD Copy Control Association - Features Restricted By Manufacturers

Features Restricted By Manufacturers

All hardware manufacturers (especially DVD player/burner manufacturers) implement DVD CCA-mandated enforcement features on their products; some even go beyond that and implement additional features to restrict ripping, for example:

• RIPLOCK: many manufacturers put an artificial limit, or lock, on ripping speeds. Some of these drives have alternative 3rd-party firmware that have this removed to enable faster ripping. See the RPC-1 Firmware Site for example.

• RPC-1: there is a region code present on the drive, and it will be changed if a DVD from another region is read. Usually, there is no limit on the number of DVD region changes that can be made.

• RPC-2: some manufacturers put a limit on the number of times that a drive's region code setting can be changed (say, 5 times or less); after this number of changes, the drive becomes "locked" on the last region set and is unable to be changed. Some alternative 3rd-party firmware have this limit removed to enable unlimited region changes. It is also possible, even on an unmodified drive, to perform a brute-force attack on the DVD's encryption to overcome the region limitations.

• Bitsetting/Booktyping: this is a feature which makes DVD+Rs readable by older DVD players that can play DVD-ROMS only. Some manufacturers disable this feature on their drives. Again, some alternative 3rd-party firmware can enable this so that burned DVDs appear as DVD-ROMs and are playable by older DVD players.