I think I tried DaPlayer some months ago. I'm looking on the page and on downloads sites. I see no mention of the dreaded PGS word. Does it support PGS subs?
I don't watch movies off the optical drive on the PC anyway. But it's always nice to have more players with PGS support since I mainly watch foreign films. (Not to hijack the thread.) :)
All "authorised" bluray software players like Power DVD, WinDVD, TMT, Nero Player etc., pay a licence fee to Bluray Disc Association or some such competent entity and obtain the rights to decrypt and play the contents in the encrypted media. It is absolutely legal to play such encrypted discs with these players and the use unconditional.
As for DVDFab, it operates from an alien territory beyond the jurisdiction of the competent entities and copyright holders. Its website somewhere clearly states " The user of the software bears sole responsibility for its use in compliance with local laws." That is what counts finally, not the fact that that is commercially available or it is a free utility freely downloadable.
Now the laws vary or are interpreted in many ways from country to country. In Germany personal use of AnyDVD is declared legal by its top judiciary. In UK, I understand that a personal copy from owned media has been made legal. In U.S.A atleast one district court had pronounced that copying one's own DVD is illegal - in variance with the "fair use doctrine" :). In many other countries, it is ambiguous.
In a nutshell, bypassing any DRM technologies or systems by any software that have not the licence to do so or declared legal from the competent entity, is illegal, whether one buys it or it is a freeware.
So is DAPlayer okay to dl? I don't want to get myself invovled with illegial stuff, you know
Please do a google search on the vendor's location, DA player reviews, user experiences, problems etc., and you can find everything yourself.
Some drawbacks as I read about: Does not play all bluray discs, does not uninstall clean (changes file associations to itself that do not revert after an uninstall), calls home frequently and that can't be stopped. Some have even reported that it contains trojan horse: DLoader.ANCHY
Absolutely nothing wrong if you want to try it but make a system restore point before install and also a full registry backup.
Having said that, even the authorised software players have problems playing some recent bluray disks - because of their very nature viz continuously evolving protection algorithms - but you have access to technical support and official forums where it can be discussed and vendors release patches to overcome any problems.
A lot of these paid decryption and player software aren't satisfied with you just buying the software. Many have a "subscription" model. Like, if you want to update for one year, two years, etc. it's costs $$$ per year. Or they might sell you a "lifetime license" but the "lifetime" might only last as long as the major version number. Oh yes, you have a lifetime license to 5.x but we just upgraded the software to 6.x. So pay up again dude!!
It's a risky business no matter how straight you try to shoot. Nobody has all the answers. Courts change their minds as they go along.
As far as I know, none of the software players (atleast Power DVD and TMT which I have) use the subscription model. These are always version based. The update/upgrade policies are mentioned clearly - updates free till next version, upgrade to next version payable.
The problem with the software players is that the older version will cease to play recently released BDs without the update and one will be forced to upgrade to the newer version. The vendors know this and that is why they dole out the older versions ( and never the newest version) free with the optical drives.:)
Most decryption software is of course subscription-based but they keep their word on lifetime subscription - atleast it has been so till now in my experience.
(Starting from DVDFab Decryptor v5, I have been getting regular updates/upgrade to version 6, 7, and 8. Now v9 has come up but that involves only a facelift to the GUI. The basic modules remain the same and I continue to get updates to version 8. People have also been getting regular updates to anyDVD/anyDvDHD for more than 7 years now.)
EDIT: Just now I read in DVDFab Forum that registered users of DVDFab8, can upgrade to DVDFab9 without further charge. There was a little confusion on it till now.
Last edited by jumanji; 11 Dec 2012 at 07:08. Reason: additional info.
Tried this -- didn't work. Got audio but no video. Disk played fine in PowerDVD.
Also, you need to be careful installing this as it automatically grabs ALL your video file extensions and, apparently, does not reset them when you uninstall it.
I say apparently, because that's what I read in another thread -- so I disabled them all when I installed this.
Also I tried some of the encoders from that same publisher because they were on GAOTD. Some encodes worked. But anything that didn't just happen to fit in the usual aspect ratio came out distorted.. squashed/stretched. I use better freeware encoders. I took them off even though they were a give-away.
I got PowerDVD back, didn't bother even installing DAPlayer or whatever. It works fine, with the exception that it doesn't if you paused a movie for around 10 minutes then have to wait a while, or play the DVD drive, until you use it again. Sucks, but okay. I"ll mark this a solved, but that doesn't mean this thread can't be used for something else.
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