Liteon 5005 macrovision help

[hi-tech-freek]

I'm very pleased with my liteon 5005 purchase. This is a US unit, purchased in US (firmware 1063), but I've been using it in India. However, the macrovision encoding, although designed and introduced for right reasons is a major irritant for ethical hi-tech enthusiasts like us (we will never use it for copyright infringements...).

So, I used the macrovision by-pass hack (from the digitalFAQ.com) and it worked well when the 5005 is configured for NTSC system (in the setup menu). Please note that I'm using only PAL input into 5005 since I'm in India. However, since the 5005 is configured for NTSC and the input coming in is PAL, when I try to record, the system errors out saying "Wrong Signal Type". Now, when I configue the 5005 to PAL system (through the setup menu), the macrovision decoding kicks in and the output image from 5005 is distorted with the macrovision "band". Looks like the macrovision hack did not work when the system is configued for PAL. Can anyone help?

[lordsmurf]

Try the PAL hack. I updated the site a few days ago.

[hi-tech-freek]

Thanks for your post - the PAL firmware (2063) seems to be different from the NTSC (US) firmware (1063), esp since the UK model seems to have Scart ports etc, so do you think that simply using the hacked 2063 firware and uploading onto the US 5005 would work? I mean what's your feeling of the chances of it not "bricking" the machine? Or, are u recommending that we apply the manual PAL hack to the 1063 (NTSC/US) code itself? I'm not sure about this part -

For, NTSC US, the following replacement is recommended: "55 53 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00" with "55 53 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 01"

The PAL version has the string ""55 53 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00", for which, the recommednation again is to change the last byte from 00 to 01, so I'm not sure how to additionally/differently apply the PAL hack onto my 1063 (US-NTSC) firmware.

Similarly, not sure about the second update at 0x87 since it simply does a +1 at this location.

Can u please clarify?

[hi-tech-freek]

On a slightly different note, since I'm using Sony DVP NS305 for DVD play, is there a working hack to disable Macrovision in NS305 itself?

[lordsmurf]

All I can tell you for certain is that my machine has been impervious to bad firmware. It seems to have a failsafe for that. I've given it plenty of bad flashes, and it always bounces back when I give it a good one.

Also, I don't think the NTSC one has a PAL tuner, just PAL ability on the video composite/s-video connections.

[hi-tech-freek]

lordsmurf:

although officially (if u specify your complete Serial Number of 5005), the liteon website always point to lnfa1063.d00 as the latest firmware for my unit, but somehow, I have been able to download the lnfa1075.e00 binary. given your huge experience, just wanted to seek an advise whether it would be OK to try and update to this version (albeit the Macrovison problem would need to be addressed separately), but solely from the point of view of getting to the latest and greatest software?

btw, i've been getting a peculiar problem (both with the hacked 1063 and then with reflashing to original 1063 too) and am hoping to solve it with 1075. Part of the problem I had already described above. Here's the complete description with the original 1063 (unhacked) firmware:

- when the system is setup for PAL, it seems that all NTSC signals coming in on the AV1/AV2/DV ports (copy protected as well as NON copy protected) are distorted with a horizontal band at the bottom while playing through 5005 as well as recording into it.

- when u try to setup the system for NTSC (for this NTSC input since my TV is anyways a multi-system one), the system plays the signal through it fine, but if you try to record, it errors saying "Wrong Signal Type" for the DV input (from NTSC camcorder) and errors saying "Copy Protected Signal" for a video in from a DVD player (copy protected DVD).

This is driving me nuts ....

Thanks...

[lordsmurf]

I can't say I know anything at all about new firmwares, except they're new. Some report that updating to 1075 now prevents backwards downgrades. That's not good.

But hey, if you want to try it, go for it. You may be the person that saves the world, in regard to a MV-hacked, 3-hour enabled 1075 fw file!

Firmware hacking is about taking risks. I've done it many times. Normally succeeded too. Many kinds of drives and player/recorders.