External DVD RW recommendation

Seeking recommendation on an external DVD RW

USB or Firewire
DVD R/RW/Dual layer at decent speeds
Region Free
Cheap as Chips

The coded Matshita UJ-832 in this Vaio TX1 seems to beat DVD Region+CSS
Free and AnyDVD. There are no firmware fixes either.

 

I'm a paying customer for AnyDVD if you want a call raised to see if
there's a fix.

 

Well yes thanks VM. Spec as detailed.

 

Drop me an email to the address in the headers with any messages that
AnyDVD displays.

 

It seems that you're out of luck and looking for another drive.




"AnyDVD works with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives, as long as:

1.) The drive is set to a specific region code. If your drive isn't,
set your preferred region.
2.) CSS protected discs match this region

AnyDVD does not allow you with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives to watch
or copy a CSS protected disc, which has a different region then the
drive, unless you have a patched firmware. (AnyDVD allows this with
every other drive)

The reason is rather simple:

MMC standard requires, that a drive should not reveal a title key on a
region mismatched CSS protected disc. (It should return "Illegal
request - region code does not match"). Some drives are even less
restrictive and even give you the title key on region mismatch.
But AnyDVD can usually reveal the title key with a brute force attack,
as long as the drive allows you to read the scrambled sectors.
Matsushita (Panasonic) drives do not! You CANNOT read the scrambled
data, if the region code doesn't match.
No other drive behaves this way, only Matsushita (Panasonic) drives do,
as the standard does not require a drive to not reveal the protected
data on region mismatch, but Matsushita (Panasonic) drives are more
restrictive as they need to be.

There is nothing AnyDVD, DVDDecrypter, or any other software can do
about this. Sorry.

Solution: Set the drive to a region, and only use matching discs.
AnyDVD will remove CSS/Macrovision/Adverts/User prohibitions/forced
subtitles/FBI warnings/... no problem.

It cannot bypass region codes with Matsushita (Panasonic) drives."

 

Whew! well thanks. All this bollocks makes me really mad

 

Well in the end I realised that though my IBM R32 does not have a DVD
Writer it does have a more maleable DVD ROM which ripped Donnie Brasco
Region1 to my network storage using AnyDVD Ripper. DVD Shrink put it on
one DVD R using the Vaio. Interesting that once all the extra shite was
removed it fitted on a single layer DVD with almost no compression and
it plays beautifully. No startup crap, straight into the film as soon as
the tray loads and just the basic credits rolling at the end.

I used the new ImgBurn to burn the DVD. It's an update for DVD Decrypter
and seems to work nicely.

On the downside I may have to pay for AnyDVD )

 

I always ditch the crap, especially the irritating trailers. I tend to
convert to XViD for playback on the XBox rather than burn disks though.

I thought it was worth every penny and the updates come through pretty
regularly as the copy protection game progresses.