The user operation prohibition (abbreviated UOP) is a form of use restriction used on video

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

discs and

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discs. Most DVD players and Blu-ray players prohibit the viewer from performing a large majority of actions during sections of a DVD that are protected or restricted by this feature, and will display the ''no'' symbol or a message to that effect if any of these actions are attempted. It is used mainly for copyright notices or warnings, such as an

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warning in the United States, and "protected" (i.e., unskippable) commercials.

Countermeasures

Some DVD players ignore the UOP flag, allowing the user full control over DVD playback. Virtually all players that are not purpose-built DVD player hardware (for example, a player program running on a general purpose computer) ignore the flag. There are also

modchip A modchip (short for modification chip) is a small electronic device used to alter or disable artificial restrictions of computers or entertainment devices. Modchips are mainly used in video game consoles, but also in some DVD or Blu-ray player ...

s available for some standard DVD players for the same purpose. The UOP flag can be removed in

DVD ripper Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to ...

software such as: DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, AnyDVD, AVS Video Converter,

Digiarty WinX DVD Ripper Platinum WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is a Windows-based DVD ripping program for copying and transcoding DVD discs, disc image A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data stora ...

, MacTheRipper, HandBrake and K9Copy. On many DVD players, pressing stop-stop-play will cause the DVD player to play the movie immediately, ignoring any UOP flags that would otherwise make advertisements, piracy warnings or trailers unskippable.Hit Stop -> Stop -> Play and Other Tricks to Skip DVD Trailers and Warnings
Lifehacker, 2010 Nevertheless, removing UOP does not always provide navigation function in the restricted parts of the DVD. This is because those parts are sometimes lacking the navigation commands which allow skipping to the menu or other parts of the DVD. This has become more common in recent titles, in order to circumvent the UOP disabling that many applications or DVD players offer. Newer DVD players (i.e. post-c. late 2010) have, however, been designed to override the aforementioned counter-countermeasures. The DVD reader software inside the DVD player automatically generates chapters for parts of the DVD lacking navigation commands, allowing them to be fast-forwarded or skipped; pressing the menu button, even in these previously restricted sections, will cause a jump to the main menu.

References

External links

User Prohibited Operations flag documentation
Unofficial DVD Specifications * {{US patent, 6553180
Microsoft Windows DVD Info, Get Current UOPS
List of User Operations that can be controlled by this flag. Digital rights management DVD Hardware restrictions

Countermeasures

See also

References

External links