This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Wolf Paulus.
Original Post: A Couch Potato Weekend
Feed Title: Wolf's Web Journal
Feed URL: http://wolfpaulus.com/feed/
Feed Description: Journal - dedicated to excellence, and motivated by enthusiasm to trying new things
While some (or may be even most) of you already have bought HDTV equipment and service, I'm still watching TV on by Philips 27PT643, a very reasonably priced stereo TV with a truly amazing picture quality. It has a 27-inch Real Flat black matrix picture tube and is equipped with a comb filter. The Motorola Digital Cablebox I got from Adelphia is hocked up to the TV's component video input, while the APEX-AD-660 DVD player is connected to the TV's S-video in.
From the kind of equipment listed above, you may have guessed that I'm not watching all that much TV. However, this weekend a Dual-DVD box set I had waited for, for years, finally arrived from Germany: Der Seewolf, a 4-epidode (6 hours long) mini series that ran on German TV in 1971.
Amazon's Editorial Review: Van Weyden is trapped abroad the Ghost, a seal-hunting schooner crewed by the most desperate, brutal outcasts of the Pacific. Ghost's evil captain, Wolf Larsen (The Sea-Wolf) is murderous tyrant who uses his superhuman strength to torture and destroy, his brilliant mind to invent sick games, and his relentless will to control his mutinous crew.
Now since this a German DVD release, it comes with a region code not supported by the APEX-AD-660 DVD player. Now, how stupid is that? Just imagine other things would work that way as well i.e., your bottle opener would refuse to open a bottle German beer ;-)
Fortunately there is VideoHelp, a terrific resource for all things related to digital video. Looking-up my apex-660 on this site revealed a link to a Region-Code-Hack.
Hacking the DVD-Player was as simple as burning a file onto an ISO9660-formatted CD, putting the CD into the DVD player, waiting for it to read and eject the CD.
After restarting the player, it did not only play the German DVDs, is also had the 660's infamous subtitle bug fixed - Thank you Darren K., you saved my weekend.
Previous Topic
