Richard Rauch said:

> Okay, can you please explain what "region 1", "region 2", and "region free"
> mean?  I'm searching a bit on google, but so far haven't turned up anything
> that really explains this term.

Sure.  Basically, the people who put out films do so in a staggered fashion;
for example, they release it in the US in April, then in the UK in September,
and in Asia in December.  Now, if the film goes to video in the US in August,
people in the UK would just buy the video from america and see it before it's
released in the UK theaters in September.  Thus, the film industry "looses"
revenue from theatrical sales, which generally makes them rather angry.
To solve this, they introduced region coding on DVDs.  Each major country/area
is assigned a region number, and DVDs are coded to that region.  A DVD player
may be setup for a given region, and will only provide decryption keys for the
DVD if the region of the drive and disc match.  That way, if a guy from the UK
buys a US DVD, it won't play.
At least, that's the idea.

People have since figured out how to make drives region free (i.e. ignore the
region codings on the disc), or figured out how to make the DVD player change
its region to match the disc.  So, manufacturers introduced RPC-2 drives which
only let you change the region 5 times, then it locks the region.  So, nasty
nasty people hacked their firmware.  Then, the decss program made its way
around, and the whole thing became rather moot.
ogle, IIRC, will try to determine the CSS keys if the DVD drive won't provide
them.  Thus, it can circumvent a piece of the region encoding.
Of course, I haven't tried this personally.  Take a look at the ogle
faq/troubleshooting - it mentions this under a topic of "it takes me 3 minutes
to start playing a film" or similar topic.
> Those of us who have been put off touching
> DVD due to the shortsighted encryption used (even peecee games gave up the
> copy protection arms race, didn't they?) may not know what the various
> terms are.  (All I know about DVD's is that they are like CD's but hold
> about 10 to 20 times the capacity, really.)

There's lots of DVD info, including a FAQ at http://www.dvddemystified.com/ -
the book is rather good as a high level overview, as well.
-- 
-Jon
 "As three unwavering bands of light, we were simple and separate and
 beautiful.  As machines, we were flabby bags of ancient plumbing and
 wiring, of rusty hinges and feeble springs.  And our
 interrelationships were Byzantine."
 - Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions