Hi, I have a new windows 10 laptop, and an old (2012ish) external dvd/blu ray player. The blu ray player worked on my old computer (the one I'm using now) but it didn't play blu rays very well (kind of jarry and awkward, due to not being designed for them). Now, on the new computer, it doesn't work at all. The computer clearly recognises it, but doesn't accept when there is a disc in there. I try to play a movie, but it just ejects the disc and says "Please insert disc into drive F". Drive F is clearly correct, and it is ejecting the drive (so it can clearly see the drive; it just doesn't know there's a disc there). I've tried uninstalling the drive, and reinstalling, and then I've checked the driver, but the computer says everything is fine there. Then it just keeps ejecting. I'm using various free dvd players, including VLC, but they don't work, for blu ray discs or for dvds. If anyone can help, that would be great - was kind of looking forward to this new machine, now not so happy (and Win 10 is a pain too). Thanks, you folks keep me sane, IBE (talk) 17:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update: well, I've now just checked the dvd player in my Vista laptop, and, well, wouldn't you know it, it's not working. So it may be broke, not really sure. But: I do still have a question. I have the new laptop, windows 10, and I have downloaded some free players. If I get a new usb-attachment external drive, are there likely to be any problems, eg. with compatibility of dvd/bluray formats/security features? Thanks, IBE (talk) 18:10, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's probably a hardware issue. There aren't any issues with BD-RWs or BD-ROMs that I know of. I just recently built a Win10 system with a BD-RW and I've been burning discs on it with no trouble at all. Best thing I can tell you is to check out this link. If your Win10 machine is a desktop, then I'd suggest an internal drive. SATA is (a little) faster than USB (for now). ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:22, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, I'll check out stuff like that, but it's a laptop (hp), so I just use USB plugins. IBE (talk) 20:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You can get a really good USB CD/DVD reader that plugs and plays perfectly under Windows 10 for $20. No drivers needed, and it works with USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LCUMZOA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00 --Guy Macon (talk) 07:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, tho I have never once been able to order any hardware, or anything but books and cds, from Amazon. I'm thinking its about taxationy type stuff - in Australia we have sales tax etc. so there's some import restrictions I suspect. Maybe I'll give it a shot though - expensive out here, sadly, IBE (talk) 08:19, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, confirmed, can't get it, ;( IBE (talk) 08:24, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What's the situation with these and region codes, or NTSC vs PAL? I see region-free players advertised all the time, but not region-free drives. I seem to recall that some drives will play different regions a small number of times, but eventually lock the region. I suppose you could get one for each region.

And why do they bother mentioning NTSC vs PAL? Is that like gluten-free water, or are there some that can output only one format? Or is it a matter of converting it from the disk's format to your TV's? --Trovatore (talk) 08:44, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For clarity you're referring to DVDs right? (Since I don't think region free BluRay players really exist.) Region free DVD-ROM and RW drives don't really exist as commercial products any more, see Regional Playback Control. Modern drives let you change the region, generally 5 times before it's locked permanently. You can or could often get modified firmware which removed the region locking although the primary site is now dead [1].

However this could hit another snag, as Windows itself as well as most commercial software on Windows (although I expect commercial software on most OSes) would then implement their own region locking where again you'd get a limited number of tries before it would refuse to let you change the region, unless you knew where Windows and the software stored this and removed it. (There were tools to help this process.) One simple way around this which some firmware mods implemented is that rather than removing the region lock on the drive, it would act like a RPC-2 drive with internal region locking but allow unlimited changes. (These are generally called auto-resetting RPC-2 mods.) I believe most software never got sophisticated enough to detect this.

On Windows there was also software like PassKey and AnyDVD which installed a driver to (try and) transparently remove protection. This is mostly used for ripping, but they can also generally removes any region restrictions (well if the disc appears unprotected to software it won't have any region restrictions but I believe they often had the option to simply make the disc appear any region). Another alternative was simply to use software with built in DeCSS like VLC although such software may or may not have worked with the hackish copy protection systems implemented later to try and stop ripping.

Note that it's possible that any or all of these methods may be in violation of the DMCA in the US. [2]

Nil Einne (talk) 12:09, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As for NTSC vs PAL, this doesn't concern the drive. It could matter to the software, but I'm not aware of any software so limited. The was this is handled would depend on the software, settings, and output device. (For example, if you monitor or TV could handle 1080P50, your software and computer could output a PAL DVD by deinterlacing and upscaling, and nothing else since it changes the output to the TV or monitor to 1080P50 if needed. But if you're running at 1080P60, often this doesn't actually happen and you'll actually still be outputting at 1080P60 meaning you may get issues some people notice due to a non integral frame increase.) Nil Einne (talk) 12:16, 19 May 2017 (UTC)>[reply]

If you search on Amazon for "region-free blu-ray player", lots of hits come up that claim to be just that. Couldn't tell you whether they work or not. --Trovatore (talk) 18:23, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Looking a bit more, you might be right. One issue with BluRays is it's possible for future BluRay discs to selective disable certain players. (See Media Key Block.) Also you may need firmware updates for future compabitility. (While additional copy protection measures were introduced to DVDs these were just doing odd stuff and were only normally intended to affect computers. By comparison BluRay was pretty much designed with compatibility firmware updates as a required feature.) So even if your region free player works now, it's not guaranteed to work in the future.

This was by design, one of the ideas was that manufacturers who ended up violating the Advanced Access Content System licencing agreement, for example by not properly implementing region restrictions, could be disabled for future BluRay releases. While this has been used for various reasons, I'm not sure if it has actually been used to disable region free players.

There appear to likewise be a lot of firmware hacks for BluRay players which aren't region free, these likewise may work now but if you update the firmware which may be needed for compabitility, you may need a new hack. Some commercial players sold as region free by third parties appear to simply be players with such modified firmware. Actually I think you can pretty much assume any player from a major manufacturer (e.g. LG, Panasonic, Pioneer, Yamaha, Samsung, Sony, Oppo) which claims to be region free for the BluRay component likely has modified firmware or similar. It seems some players can also be hardware modified to allow region free playback [3], I don't know how this actually works.

As for on computers, it seems that the drives don't actually have any region locking, it's implemented solely on software Blu-ray#Region codes, [4], [5]. (I assume the drives still implement RPC-2 for DVD region locking.) I wouldn't trust the commentators there that much, but some of them suggest the region locking can be hard-coded to the software player you purchased, or may determine you region by the timezone and other regional settings on your computer. (I know that a number of online streaming services do do things like this, so I wouldn't be surprised.)

As with DVD playback, you just need to work out how your software player determines the region, or obtain version of the software for the region you want to use and you should be able to get around this although unlike with DVDs it's not something I've looked into much. (An obvious point is even more so than with standalone players, the software often requires compatibility updates or it won't work with newer discs. So depending on how strict your software provider is, you may need to go through a fair amount of work to keep uyour players working.)

Again there is software (actually fancier versions of the same software), which claims to be able to do this for you. This software also helps you rip the BluRays although given the earlier mentioned problems, it also can required frequent updates (and waiting) for compability with newer discs. (I assume the region unlocking component generally just keeps working or if it is changed, is fixed quickly since it doesn't actually require you to break the protection.) Note that most of this software is closed source. While there are open source attempts to enable playback (and ripping), these are complicated and actually rely on keys obtained from the closed source software I believe [6] [7].

Somewhat OT, but note even if you successfully rip a BluRay, modern ones often have a Cinavia watermark. This means if you try and play it back on a BluRay player, it often simply won't work. Some hi-fi audio systems also implement Cinavia (meaning you won't have audio), but I'm pretty sure this only affects theatrical releases. (For theatrical releases it's simple, as these aren't supposed to be played on pretty much any consumer hardware so they are expected to just refuse to work if they detect a soundtrack so marked. For BluRay's it's more complicated since the BluRay player needs to convey to the audio system that playback is allowed. This may be possible over HDMI, but given S/PDIF and analog output is generally allowed, you can't always convey it. When the BluRay player itself is playing back the content, whether from a BluRay disc or a USB key or whatever, it easy for it to know.)

Incidentally, if you are in the market for a region free BluRay player, I'd suggest you at a minimum ensure it clearly says it's region free on the BluRay component and not just for DVD playback as I have heard of people misleading selling BluRay players are region free when only DVD playback is region free.

Nil Einne (talk) 05:04, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Trovatore's question, yes, that's the case, but I think nearly all (not some) players (at least those that attach to computers via eg. usb) did things this way only - you can change the region, but only about 5 times, then you are locked on that. Total bummer, and in fact, these region locking things are most likely about restrictions to trade, that is, so the scumbag manufacturers (sorry, opinion alert) can charge different prices in eg. Bali and Australia. These may even be illegal, that is, the very system itself may be an illegal trade restriction, but I don't know the latest update. IBE (talk) 13:35, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When CD/DVD is working fine, and only BlueRay disks have a problem on the BlueRay drive, install a Windows 10 compatible Software Blu-ray player/writer software. Some provide a lite software version for free or trial. --Hans Haase (有问题吗) 18:11, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More generally, is there any way to look at (in near real-time):

• Web hits per minute by article title?
• Edits per minute by article title (article and / or talk page)?
• New article creations during the last minute?

For the moment I'm just interested in the English site.

I'm not familiar with how clustering works at WikiPedia, but am familiar with basic Apache httpd logs (and piping those). MySQL likely has logs of when people "commit"?

Are any of these made available to the public? Any APIs?

I'm looking into identifying what is "hot" and "trending" at Wikipedia that might serve as a "breaking news ticker / IRC channel" (possibility) to feed potential WikiNews editors.

Have no real idea where to start. Have seen grok (daily is the most granular I've seen), and a few of the 3rd party analysis sites at Wikipedia:Statistics but have not yet found anything that operated with say 1,10,30,60 minute "time buckets".

All leads and pointers greatly appreciated (including finding out that's NEVER going to happen, etc....)

Thanks! Rick (talk) 22:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For access: the cluster topology is described at meta:Wikimedia servers. For most visitors, "hot" articles will be served from Varnish cache, not by Apache servers. I'm not aware of anything like a real-time API showing what those Varnish servers are sending; you'd probably best ask on the Wikitech list linked from that article. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 23:04, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For edits and creation: you can listen to the ATOM stream from recent changes (there's a link to it in your own recent-changes link) and process it from there. It may be wise to ask for an account at meta:Help:Tool Labs where that could be run (rather than your own machine). -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 23:08, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]