What is a hacked firmware??

[sick_unit]

ive read some posts in the DVD shrink forum and other DVD program forums and i have seen a hacked firmware, i want to know what is a hacked firmware??

thanks

[joegib]

The firmware of an optical drive contains its operating system, a command set used to communicate with the main OS and computer devices. It's held in an EEPROM chip that can be updated by "flashing" in the same way as a motherboard BIOS (the BIOS is the motherboard's "firmware"). To my knowledge DVD drive firmware hacking covers 3 main areas:

1. Removing region-protection -- Since 2000 all DVD drive manufacturers have had to include various features in their drives as a condition for being given a license to decode CSS encoded DVDs. One of these is that a drive must be set to operate only in one region. The user is allowed to change the region setting but only 5 times after which the drive locks on the last region set. Firmware hackers have removed this limitation on many drives so that you can change the region setting indefinitely.

2. Removing speed limitations -- I'm not sure whether this is part of the CSS licensing terms but many drives limit the speed at which you can copy CSS encoded disks to 2X. Toshiba drives are a case in point and hackers have removed this limitation from the firmware so that commercial DVDs can be ripped at much the same rates as data DVDs.

3. Removing/Changing media limitations -- Manufacturers of DVD writers include a table of "approved" media in their firmware. If the media is approved the writer will burn at the highest speed the drive is capable of. If the media is not approved the drive will only burn at a lesser, "safer" speed. Up to a point this is justifiable because retailers/manufacturers don't want sound drives RMA'd because users have failures using crap media. Hackers can tweak the media table in the firmware to allow a wider range of media to be burned at full speed.

[sick_unit]

i found a forum on hacked firmwares and found 1 for my burner a Pioneer dvd-rw dvr-106d called:

DVR-106D v1.07 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip

whats does all this mean??

i think RPC-1 means removing the dvd region but not sure wat the other mean.
can some1 plz tell me

thankz

[solara]

I'm guessing it removes Region Protection (RPC-1),
adds -R writing support or increases writing speed (2xDVD-R)
and removes ripping speed limitation (12xRip)