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28th August 2009, 08:16 | #1 | Link |
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Blu-ray Region Tray Tool - one-click region hack for PowerDVD and TMT
Description Blu-ray Region Tray Tool sits in your system tray, displaying the current region setting of your PC software Blu-ray Disc player and allowing you to change it on-the-fly with a single click or keyboard shortcut. It uses the widely-known so-called region "hacks" for these players, applying them with the bare minimum of user effort. This makes your playback software essentially "region free" or more accurately "multi-region". Compatibility - All versions of Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 7, 8, 9, and 10 - ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre (tested 2.1, 3.0, and 5.0; other versions should also work) Notes Upon opening, the tool will read the current region setting from your installed player program and update its icon. If you have more than one compatible player installed, the "lower priority" programs will be set to match the one with highest priority. Priority is currently hardcoded as follows:
Usage Region switching can be done by keyboard shortcut or by clicking the icon with either left or right mouse button and selecting the desired region. There are also command line parameters that will set your specified region and then immediately close. Whenever the tool sets a region, it also resets your "changes remaining" counter (5 changes for TotalMedia Theatre, PowerDVD 7.3.3516 and newer; 99999 changes for older PowerDVD versions). For PowerDVD, the region change takes effect immediately. If you change region while playing a movie, PowerDVD may stop playback when you attempt to access a menu function/skip to next chapter/etc. This is because PowerDVD's region settings are greyed out during playback; it isn't designed to change regions in the middle of watching a movie. Simply hit the Stop button before swapping regions if this is a problem. For TotalMedia Theatre, the region setting is only read back from the configuration file when the program is first started. If TMT is open when you change regions using the tool, it will be automatically closed and reopened. This may crash the player if you try it during playback. Usage to check actual region coding of a Blu-ray Disc Simplifying this was the primary purpose for writing this tool. Because of the complexity of region code enforcement on Blu-rays, AnyDVD's automatic region code checking is often inaccurate or incomplete. Likewise for cover art and disc labels. The only guaranteed way to see what regions a disc is coded for is to use a player set to each region and find out what happens when you play it back. Despite common conceptions, there are more region code possibilities besides just "Region Locked" and "Region Free". All seven combinations can be set: Region A, Region B, Region C, Region AB, Region BC, Region AC, Region ABC. Discs have already been released using the less common two-region codings without noting them on their packaging (see Unofficial Blu-ray Audio and Video Specifications Thread on AVS Forum). So to confirm the real region coding of a Blu-ray, play it back in all three regions and note which ones are locked out, if any. (In reality, only two regions need to be checked since a disc will never be locked out of the region in which it is released, but I like to be absolutely certain that there isn't some playback error.) Steps are simply:
Keyboard shortcuts (global hotkeys)
Command line parameters (with or without quotes, case insensitive) If you create shortcuts and include the command line parameters, you can match the icon to each and set your own "shortcut keys". With these you may use a remote that doesn't let you assign the regular hotkeys to buttons.
- Example: "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\BDRegionTray.exe" PDVD2: A TMT: B (sets PowerDVD 8 to Region A and TMT to Region B) Installation None required. Just run it. Nothing is written to the registry or hard drive except the changes to PowerDVD and TMT registry keys/files. Requirements - Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 operating system - Blu-ray BD-ROM drive - Compatible software player Version history 2010-12-22: Version 1.4 - Fixed support for TMT 5 MCE (Media Center versions must be reopened manually to accept the change) 2010-12-19: Version 1.3 - Added support for the Media Center version of TMT (may not work for XP MCE) 2010-12-18: Version 1.2 - Added support for TMT 5 and hopefully future versions - Changed the TMT auto-close function to be more "gentle" - Now reopens TMT with the auto-detected program executable instead of the hardcoded launcher name 2010-06-25: Version 1.1 - Added the ability to specify per-program region settings via command line parameters 2010-06-21: Version 1.0 - Now resets TMT's "changes remaining" value - Now detects TMT's path so that it can be auto-reopened regardless of where it was installed - Added support for PowerDVD below 7.3.3516 on Windows Vista and 7 - Added command line parameters to set region code and then exit - Several minor UI tweaks 2010-05-13: Version 0.2 - Added support for PowerDVD Ultra 10 - Now works with non-English Windows versions - Confirmed support for Windows 7 2009-08-17: Version 0.1 - Initial release Download Blu-ray Region Tray Tool v1.4 Executable "Source code" (a simple AutoIt script) Last edited by ChiDragon; 23rd December 2010 at 03:45. Reason: Updated to v1.4 |
6th October 2009, 17:10 | #3 | Link |
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Suggestions for Blu-ray Region Tray
Hello,
Here are some suggestions for the tool: 1. It could be possible that it doesn't find Maxiuca's BRF.dat file, because the language of his/her Windows is Polish and not English, so the path has another name and the tool doesn't find it. One could add the possibility to select the path where the file(s) to modify is (are) saved. 2. The tool should not work with the "priority method," it should be able to set Regions for each individual player, so, if you have 2 players installed on your system, one could set one to Region A and the other to Region B (and what if you want to set the Region not of the "higher-priority," but of the "lower-priority" player?) 3. It could also support Nero Showtime and WinDVD. According to Rathbone, NeroShowtime hides its BD Region setting in a file, just like TMT. C:\Windows\Cursors\arrow_n.cur:NEDTA.DAT Rathbone writes: The BD region code is really linked with a file called arrow_n.cur in the Windows/Cursors folder. ADSLocator shows that there is an ADS stream in this file, but when I delete it with the MS Tool Streams.exe Showtime says that the BD settngs are screwed and you need to reinstall Showtime. So simply make a backup of arrow_n.cur when you have some changes left and replace the original with it when you need more changes. Perhaps Blu-ray Region Tray could do something like it does for TMT. There is also a hack for WinDVD provided by SuperGoof, but it sounds complex and I don't know whether it can be done by a software: Guide: How to reset Blu-ray region counter in InterVideo WinDVD BD for VAIO Ver.8.0.08.100 1) Download a program called "Autoruns" from www.sysinternals.com. 2) Run autoruns.exe, go to "Drivers" tab and disable driver called "regi" (regi.sys). Just untick the checkbox next to it. Note: Do not delete it. 3) Restart Windows. 4) Delete file "ivireg.ivr" in "C:\Windows\System32\" folder. 5) Re-enable "regi" driver using Autoruns (tick the checkbox). 6) Restart Windows.File "ivireg.ivr" will be recreated with default settings and you can change BD region from WinDVD interface 5 more times before you have to repeat this procedure. Enjoy! P.S.: If you have a dual boot system (say, XP and Vista), you can just boot to another OS and delete "ivireg.ivr" from there. * Using this information, Blu-ray Region Tray could become a Blu-ray equivalent of "DVD Region Killer" or "DVD Genie." I hope you will find it interesting, ad there will be a new version soon. Many greetings, A Pal |
27th February 2010, 18:34 | #5 | Link |
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I tried it with TMT and it works just fine in the standalone version but I use the Media Center version of TMT (uMCEDVDPlayer.exe) and that exe does not seem to care what region I set using this tool
Just to be clear, I don't launch uMCEDVDPlayer.exe directly, that exe is called from within 7MC. Edit: uMCEDVDPlayer.exe stores it ini settings in another folder so I downloaded the source and replaced the original path with: "%UserProfile%\Application Data\ArcSoft\ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3(Vista Media Center)\" and recompiled the .exe and now it works as expected. Last edited by hewwra; 28th February 2010 at 01:13. |
13th May 2010, 09:41 | #8 | Link |
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Hi folks, the tool has been updated to v0.2 in order to support PowerDVD Ultra 10.
I also made a small change to ensure that the same "INACTIVE" message is reported under Windows 7 as it is with Windows Vista for PowerDVD below 7.3.3516. Tested using English Windows 7 (64-bit) and English Windows XP (32-bit). I was only able to test with TMT under Windows XP so if someone using BRTT v0.1 with TMT+Vista or TMT+Win7 could make sure I didn't break anything with v0.2 I'd appreciate it. Thank you all for your comments. I have made some changes to attempt support of non-English Windows. I believe it should now work with any language so long as the text used by PowerDVD and TMT themselves remains in English. Are they usually translated as well? I hope not... So please test and report back. Regarding post #3, I don't think support of Nero Showtime is possible, as I don't know any way to deal with Alternate Data Streams by scripting. Support of WinDVD is definitely impossible since that requires unprotecting things and rebooting. As far as your point #2, what you suggest (keeping different programs set to different regions) can be done without even using any separate tool so there isn't really a reason to work on adding it. It would just make things more complex since then the icon in the taskbar wouldn't have full relevance to the set region. @hewwra, if you want I can try to support both versions using the regular tool but I would need you to test since I don't have Media Center. |
1st June 2010, 00:25 | #10 | Link |
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Hello,
I think my point #2 (two different players set to two different Regions) does make sense: Players can also have different features, i.e. the one has a feature the other does not have. So you want to play BDs with both players, depending on what feature you want to use. But both players allow only 5 Region changes each. As long as the tool uses the priority method, it will reset only the one player, while the other player will be region-locked after the 5th change. Therefore, it is better to have the possibility to reset the Regions of the players individually. Many greetings, A Pal |
15th June 2010, 01:37 | #11 | Link |
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Thanks for the feedback. I understand what you mean now. I thought your intention was to keep one set to A and one set to B and not constantly change them both.
But actually, the tool already does reset the region counter on all players that it is able to (i.e. PowerDVD versions) whenever a change is made using it. You'll have to close it and change the lower priority player to the region you want after that manually, but at least you won't be locked down. I still can't think of a way to do what you want that makes sense with the current region display method. The icon wouldn't be able to say that one player is one region and another is different. In other news, I did confirm that TMT+Win7 works with v0.2 still, so Vista is fine too. I have been able to edit the alternate data stream of CLDShowX.ini for PowerDVD below 7.3.3516 manually to swap regions and change the region counter to arbitrary values (I prefer 99999 since it fits into the box). But it appears that the majority of the 2.50KB stream is install-specific and I'm not sure how I could actually edit the file instead of my current methodology with later PowerDVD of just overwriting the BRF.dat completely. I suppose I could read it into RAM temporarily then overwrite with the edits. I think I'm the only one still playing with the old PowerDVD versions anyway though. I was going to try to work with Nero Showtime but it appears that it no longer exists! |
21st June 2010, 08:42 | #12 | Link |
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The tool has been updated and I jumped the version all the way up to v1.0, because it finally does everything that I had initially planned (namely, full support of all PowerDVD versions and TMT).
The full list of changes is in the first post, but the thing that I'm happiest about is that I figured out how to reset the number of changes remaining in TMT. It's quite sneaky because it requires a misleadingly-named INI setting and registry key to be set to the same seemingly arbitrary value. Last edited by ChiDragon; 21st June 2010 at 08:46. |
21st June 2010, 20:41 | #13 | Link |
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Hello, ChiDragon,
Just out of curiosity: In what .INI file and where and in what Registry key is the BD Region of information of TMT hidden? Is there a way to get more than 5 changes every reset (PowerDVD 7.3 allows 99999 changes in XP)? I still think the tool should offer the possibility to reset the players individually and not use the "priority method." Yes, in that case, the taskbar icon cannot show the Regions of different players, but for example the icon menu or the main window could do this. > - Added command line parameters to set region code and then exit How do you use this? The programs comes without documentation. And, if two or moreplayers are installed, how do you make sure that the right one will be reset? Many greetings, A Pal |
23rd June 2010, 11:07 | #14 | Link | |||
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Quote:
Code:
5 changes = 0xD3A535FB 4 changes = 0xDCAB1F36 3 changes = 0xF0CC1274 2 changes = 0xAF01CEC2 1 changes = 0xBC110012 0 changes = 0 Setting the number to greater than 5 would require figuring out the correlation between the numbers above, if there even is any, and then hoping that the program actually accepts your new value instead of reverting to 0 changes like it does with all invalid numbers. The hex values look completely arbitrary to me. A graph of them in decimal form is all over the place. BTW, the old PowerDVD 7.3 versions can also be set to 99999 in Vista/7 with the newest version of the tool. Quote:
Quote:
Let's say BDRegionTray.exe is located on my Desktop and I want to set Region C from the command line. I could simply run: "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\BDRegionTray.exe" C Currently these command line options execute precisely the same functions as the hotkeys, except that the program exits afterward instead of sticking around in the tray. Therefore the change applies to all compatible players. I think it would be fairly simple to extend the command line parameters so that you may specify which program to set, if this would be useful for you. Would you want to set more than one program from the same command line, like "P1=A T=B"? Would you prefer a different formatting instead, like "PDVD1:A TMT:B"? |
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23rd June 2010, 18:27 | #15 | Link |
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Hello, ChiDragon,
1. BD Region reset: Yes, it would be better to reset the players individually. But not only parameters, also the interface of the program should allow that. Examples of formatting: a) Only one player is reset: "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\BDRegionTray.exe" PDVD: C %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\BDRegionTray.exe" TMT: C b) Two players are set to the same BD Region: %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\BDRegionTray.exe" PDVD: C TMT: C c) Two players are set to different Regions (PowerDVD: Region C, TMT: Region B): %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\BDRegionTray.exe" PDVD: C TMT: B 2. PDVD 7.3 BD Region Reset in Vista/Windows 7: Again, out of curiosity: What values must be changed to get 99999 changes, and where are they hidden? The normal hack was to destroy the file, and PDVD recreated it with 5 new changes. 3. DVD Regions: Another thing: Can you think of adding a program part that can bypass DVD Regions on the fly? Surely, you may say now "DVDFab Passkey" is a freeware that can do this, but it is only free during its beta stage, and it is still unknown whether there will be a free light version as "DVDFab HD Decrypter" is for "DVDFab." I think it would be great to have a free tool that can bypass BOTH BD Regions AND DVD Regions ON THE FLY (even with REGION-LOCKED drives). It would be the successor of "DVD Region Killer" and "DVD Genie." Many greetings, A Pal |
23rd June 2010, 23:29 | #16 | Link | |||
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Quote:
Let me know if you still want me to add the command line parameters even without interface options. If so there needs to be a distinction between PowerDVD "Method 1" and "Method 2" so that they could be set separately too if someone wanted. That's why my examples were with "PDVD1". Quote:
Quote:
Both DVDFab Passkey and AnyDVD have to use a filter driver to intercept and communicate calls to the DVD drive. There's a reason they charge for that.. it's very complex. |
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24th June 2010, 23:39 | #17 | Link |
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Hello, ChiDragon,
1. Yes, please add the command line parameters even without interface options. Please don't forget the parameters for TMT. 2. Could you give more specific information about the reset of PDVD 7.3 in Vista/Windows 7? What exactly does your tool do to reset it to 99999 changes? 3. Perhaps, Fengtao could add the DVD-Region-killing part of DVDFab Passkey to DVDFab Region Reset. Then, we would have a free DVD-and-BD Region tool. Many greetings, A Pal |
25th June 2010, 23:30 | #18 | Link | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
Here is the relevant section: Code:
$CLDBin = BinOpen ($CLD, 0) ; Often the relevant values are shifted forward by 0x40 (64) bytes; this test byte is (so far) always '00' when this is not the case and '0F' when it is If BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x807, 0x01) = 0 Then ; Chunk1 + Region code + Chunk2 + Changes remaining (99999/0x9F860100) + Chunk3 $UpdateCL = BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x01, 0x800) & Binary (DecSwitch ($Letter)) & BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x802, 0x3C) & Binary (99999) & BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x845) Else $UpdateCL = BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x01, 0x840) & Binary (DecSwitch ($Letter)) & BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x842, 0x3C) & Binary (99999) & BinaryMid ($CLDBin, 0x885) EndIf BinOpen ($CLD, 2, $UpdateCL) ; Write binary data to CLDShowX.ini stream Last edited by ChiDragon; 26th June 2010 at 06:30. |
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7th October 2010, 21:54 | #19 | Link |
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Hi,
I just managed to get two systems out of order - and I donīt know the exact reason for this. On both systems, the latest PowerDVD 10 version (Build 2113) was installed as well as AnyDVD. After enabling AnyDVD and inserting Ice Age 3 3D (it might be a coincidence that it happened with this BD), the region changes were set from 5 to 0. Trying to reset it, does not work, neither with your nor the DVDFab Region Reset tool. As a result, when inserting a BD even with disabled AnyDVD, I first get the message, that PowerDVD is unable to access the device. Then, the region code dialog pops up twice (showing that 0 available changes are left), before an internal error pops up with code 80040154 - no further description. Uninstalling and reinstalling PowerDVD 10 did not help (of course). Any ideas? Any registry keys that might help you finding out what went wrong? [EDIT] Sorry, problem solved: On both systems, an outdated AnyDVD version caused the strange problems. Seems like Cyberlink tried to block them. Last edited by JK1974; 7th October 2010 at 22:18. |
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