lenovo thinkpad t61p: dvd playback problems

[^rooker]

When the first OS you install on a IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T61p is not Windows, you might have some problems with DVD playback, because the Matshita DVD/CDROM combo drive has region protection enabled, but not properly initialized.

Unfortunately, there is no real solution to this useless hardware crippling, because there seems to be no rpc1 (region free) firmware for those drives:
Quote from forum.rpc1.orgt=44839

It is a well known documented fact that Matshita / Matsushita / Panasonic Region Code prohibitions are difficult and most likely are unable to be circumvented.

Running regionset on a brand new T61p, returns the following information:
$ regionset

regionset version 0.1 -- reads/sets region code on DVD drives
Current Region Code settings:
RPC Phase: II
type: NONE
vendor resets available: 4
user controlled changes resets available: 5
drive plays discs from region(s):, mask=0xFF

Would you like to change the region setting of your drive? [y/n]:n
idun@fiu:~$ regionset
regionset version 0.1 -- reads/sets region code on DVD drives
Current Region Code settings:
RPC Phase: II
type: NONE
vendor resets available: 4
user controlled changes resets available: 5
drive plays discs from region(s):, mask=0xFF

Would you like to change the region setting of your drive? [y/n]:y
Enter the new region number for your drive [1..8]:2
New mask: 0xFFFFFFFD, correct? [y/n]:

As you can see, it has no region code set at all ("drive plays discs from region(s):,").

After setting/initializing the region for this drive, the output of regionset should look like this:

Current Region Code settings:
RPC Phase: II
type: SET
vendor resets available: 4
user controlled changes resets available: 4
drive plays discs from region(s): 2, mask=0xFD

Would you like to change the region setting of your drive? [y/n]:n

(make sure to answer "n" to avoid re-setting your region code again)


If you can play DVDs now, but have broken/garbled video output and stuttering audio, you might want to check your libdvdcss2 version:
libdvdcss2 v1.2.9 seems to be broken (medibuntu repositories). Use v1.2.5 instead:

Run /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh
(which currently installs libdvdcss2 v1.2.5)

Here's the output from mplayer with these problems:
$ mplayer dvd:///dev/cdrom

a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed! 5 ( 1:58:17.4) ??,?%
a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed! 5 ( 1:58:17.4) 0.5%
a52: error at resampling
a52: CRC check failed! 5 ( 1:58:17.4) 0.6%

General information about the DVD/CDROM drive in the Lenovo T61p thinkpad:
$ hdparm -I /dev/cdrom

/dev/cdrom:
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Permission denied
idun@fiu:~$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/cdrom
[sudo] password for idun:

/dev/cdrom:

ATAPI CD-ROM, with removable media
Model Number: MATSHITADVD-RAM UJ-862
Serial Number: HE25 xxxxxx
Firmware Revision: RB01
Standards:
Likely used CD-ROM ATAPI-1
Configuration:
DRQ response: 50us.
Packet size: 12 bytes
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
DMA: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=240ns IORDY flow control=120ns
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 1

[^rooker]

If you have lots of I/O error messages in your dmesg log, looking like this:

end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector

You might want to check the following 2 things:
1) is libdvdcss2 installed?
2) is the region code of your DVD drive set up properly