Are there any players/firmware hacks to allow skipping of warnings/preview?

[Sephiroth666]

Everyone hates shit on DVDs that can't be skipped. I mean, it was bad enough seeing 1 fed warning. Now you have to wait for it to show the damn thing in 2 or 3 languages! WTF? You'd think someone would have a solution to this on standalone players by now. I mean, besides making a backup copy of every movie and killing the annoyances with editors.

[zoobie]

I don't think so
chapters are set on the disk

my brother-in-law gets scared at the fbi warning...but I guess that's what paranoid schizophrenics do

[Seeker47]

Everyone hates shit on DVDs that can't be skipped. I mean, it was bad enough seeing 1 fed warning. Now you have to wait for it to show the damn thing in 2 or 3 languages! WTF? You'd think someone would have a solution to this on standalone players by now. I mean, besides making a backup copy of every movie and killing the annoyances with editors.

The Oppo players have a "go directly to Main Menu" function. (You have to hit two buttons in succession.) So far, I've found a couple DVDs on which this did not work, but in general it's a handy feature.

[jman98]

The old Apex DVD players had some hacked firmware that could skip this stuff, but other than the Oppo feature Seeker47 mentions, the only way to get around it is to rip the DVDs, remove the PUO (Prohibited User Operations) and reburn them. Hollyweird doesn't want you to skip the warning and with very very few exceptions firmware is almost never hacked on modern DVD players, so you just have to deal with it. The only firmware hacks I've heard of in recent years, and I could count on one hand the number I've heard of, didn't do this at all but were to solve other issues. But "back in the day" it was possible on some of the cheaper, Chinese made DVD players like Apex and other brands to skip those messages with the right hacked firmware.

[Seeker47]

The old Apex DVD players had some hacked firmware that could skip this stuff, but other than the Oppo feature Seeker47 mentions, the only way to get around it is to rip the DVDs, remove the PUO (Prohibited User Operations) and reburn them. Hollyweird doesn't want you to skip the warning and with very very few exceptions firmware is almost never hacked on modern DVD players, so you just have to deal with it. The only firmware hacks I've heard of in recent years, and I could count on one hand the number I've heard of, didn't do this at all but were to solve other issues. But "back in the day" it was possible on some of the cheaper, Chinese made DVD players like Apex and other brands to skip those messages with the right hacked firmware.

There are still a number of players around that use hacked firmware (courtesy of the dealer, prior to sale) in order to make them Region Free and MV free. (See code words like "Copy Friendly.") Try DVDCity.Com, for example. Your warranty is then from the dealer; the mfr. would probably consider their warranty to be voided, since the unit has been altered. But yeah, the f/w changes were for other issues.

It's interesting that you mentioned the Apex. If memory serves, the model or two of theirs that did this was not an example of hacked f/w, but rather the existence of "secret" menus that were there all along. You just had to know how to reach those menus, which was never publicized -- except in places like VH !. We can speculate as to why such hidden features were ever designed in, but I'm not sure anyone ever had an "official" explanation for it. I do recall that Apex had egg on their face, back when this all blew up and the MPAA began giving them a lot of grief about it.

[[_chef_]]

There is no such, rip the dvd to hdd, remove the limitations, then burn to dvd.

[jman98]

Seeker47 - We are not talking about the same thing. Yes, I know about the "secret menu". However, certain models DID have hacked firmware. The firmware had nothing to do with region free mode. It added support for playing miniDVD (DVD on CD-R media) and allowed you to skip past PUOs. That was all it did. Yes, the secret menus were well known, but this firmware was truly hacked and not for region free purposes as the player could already do region free play via the menus.

Apex at one time was the 2nd leading DVD seller in the USA, in large part because their players could easily be made to be region free and in many cases Macrovision free. Hollyweird bitched about it, but in reality Apex never "fixed" those "problems". Hollyweird had no legal standing in their objection to region free players and they feared a court battle that would most likely rule the players legal. Better to just complain about them but not actually do anything about it. The complaints just helped to drive up Apex sales. Apex's CEO went back to China and got into some kind of tax problems and I think he is still in jail there. My gut feeling is that he foolishly didn't pay the right people and they threw him in jail. Or maybe someone in China with a grudge bribed the authorities to go after the Apex CEO.

I know nothing about "hacked firmware from dealers". Such things are certainly beyond the boundaries of "do it yourself" firmware upgrades, which is really what I was talking about.