Ever buy a DVD, put in the player you paid for, and have it tell you that you can’t do what you want? A wonderful “feature” called User Operation Prohibition (UOP) lets the disc enforce restrictions such as not skipping the FBI warning, or more sinisterly, the movie company’s previews. While it’s easy enough to find software players that ignore these artificial restrictions, doing it in a hardware player is a bit tougher.
Fortunately, dedicated hackers are on the job; Tom’s Panasonic firmware site offers firmware updates for several Panasonic players that disable this annoyance as well as free you to watch DVDs from other regions of the world. It works like a charm; I bought an S52S player this afternoon, burned a CD, and now have total control of my DVDs!
