DVD players/software that put YOU in control?
 

Are there any players on the market that will play a disc how you want it played with total disregard for what options the studios do not want you to use?

For example, some discs will only let you change the audio options from the main menu, not on the fly. I don't see how it could possibly harm anything to switch from 5.1 to PCM in the middle of a scene. But that's only a minor annoyance ...

What really kicks me in the nuts is when you can't rewind, fast forward, access the menu, and jump between titles and chapters. I'm all for purity of vision and crap like that, but after the 10th time through, when all you want to do is check a quick scene composition or a few lines of dialog, well, what the hell.

Any ideas?

So it looks like i'm screwed, huh?

It's part of the DVD spec. I know there are chipped players sold in England that do what you suggest, as well as making the players region-free, but I don't know about their availability here.

Hmm. I didn't even know they existed.

If that's the case, you might consider doing a search or posting your question in the International DVD forum.

If you find anything, let us know. :)

-David

Back when I got my first DVD player, a second-generation Sony, looking into what it would take to make it region-free. This was probably mid-1999. There were kits you could buy for Sony players for about $125 from British stores. The kits were basically new chip sets that did away with Macrovision, region coding and the software lock-out of certain buttons.

There were similar kits for other brands of players. I never ordered one because Sony players are difficult to modify and the Web sites noted that you had to know what you were doing to install the chips yourself.

See, now this part I knew. I bought my Toshiba 3109 in mid '99 too. :) This was the part I must have missed or forgotten. :)

Cool. Thanks for the update...that would be a nice feature to have.

-David

you might look here-

http://www.nerd-out.com/forum/index....96dc42b5f5be13

Not sure but there is a lot of talk on hacks.

My Pioneer dvd player will let me switch audio at anytime. It has an audio button on the remote that toggles throught the audio options while watching the dvd.