VLC Stopped Working

[rhodese]

I used VLC last semester in a course I teach with no problems. After upgrading to the latest Quicktime (7.1.3) and doing the latest Apple system updates, VLC now tries to play DVDs, but looks like blocky pixelated image and choppy sound, generates many different error messages and eventually crashes. This happens with both PAL and NTSC DVDs. I have tried the latest VLC 0.8.6 and have tried deleting the preferences file.

The Apple DVD Player still works, but this is not a good option for me because I'm on my last Region swap.

This is a Powerbook G4 PPC, running 10.4.8.

Elisa[/list]

[whildonen]

For me, it stopped to play DVDs - not all, but most of them. I am not sure what makes them different, though, or what causes some to be played and others not.
It might have something to do with the new QT upgrade but I suspect the new VLC-version.
Browsing around to see if there are any helpful hints, but so far nothing - and no responses to others with similar problems, either...

[whildonen]

Well, I am not sure whether this is the right answer, since VLC worked fine earlier but maybe I am thinking of my iMac here and the problem is on my iBook. On the forums of rcp1.org I found this post, however:

Most MASTSHITA drives have an extra region protection that disables VLC (and *any* other player for that matter) playing region-mismatching CSS encrypted movies.
The extra protection is that the drives REFUSES to read raw encrypted data sectors, that is, once the region mismatch has been detected, every read operation is aborted, i.e. I/O ERROR. It doesn't matter that VLC can do a crypto analysis and crack the CSS key, it can't READ THE MOVIE, so it can't play it.

[fkuehne]

Additionally, some updates to Mac OS X and QuickTime added further locks which prevent apps like VLC from reading disks from other regions.