dan pritchard · com » Blog Archive » Apple DVD Player User Op Patch Available here

Apple DVD Player User Op Patch Available here

If you have an external DVD drive on your Mac, you may encounter this -70012 error message which Apple explains this way: “to view movies on a DVD-Video using Apple DVD Player (Mac OS 9) or DVD Player 3.x (Mac OS X) you must have an internal DVD drive.”

Well, you don’t. That’s just some dumb, artificial “licensing” limitation. To get around it, you can just install this nifty patch.

The patch’s main purpose is actually to take back user control of the disc’s playback, so you don’t get “Not Permitted” when you try to fast-forward things the studio thinks you should be forced to watch. Hence the name “User Op” patch.

Since both of these features rule, and the site which formerly hosted it (http://xvi.rpc1.org/playerpatch.html) has mysteriously gone down, I am happy to provide the patch as a service to users.
This is the same patch that has also been distributed as UserOpPatch1.9.dmg.

By: Dan Pritchard
Fri Apr 14 2006 11:10 pm
in Tech
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33 Responses to “Apple DVD Player User Op Patch Available here” »»

peter baldwin

Comment by peter baldwin | 05/04/06 at 2:26 pm

UserOpPatch1.9.dmg
peter baldwin

Comment by peter baldwin | 05/06/06 at 10:27 am

Mr. Pritchard,

Sorry to bother you again. Is this patch still around? I’d love to get a copy–v.1.8 will not work with the current DVD player.
best regards,
Peter Baldwin
Pixelmutt

Comment by Pixelmutt | 06/07/06 at 5:17 am

Thanks for keeoing this around, the developer disappeared
JJ

Comment by JJ | 07/04/06 at 11:08 pm

Thank you for hosting the patch. The patched Apple DVD Player 4.6.5 works great. I’m running an older version of OSX (10.4.4) on a Summer 2001 iMac G3/600 that has 512 meg of ram, and only the original equipment slot loading CD-burner. The external FireWire DVD drive is a Pioneer DVR-110D in a third party/generic box. Date: 07/05/06.
liboni

Comment by liboni | 07/14/06 at 9:36 am

is there any patch of his kind working with macintel?

thanks
Dan Pritchard

Comment by Dan Pritchard | 07/14/06 at 10:11 am

To my knowledge, there’s not a similar patch available that works on Intel-based Macs. I, for one, bought mine with Superdrive. I expect there will be less demand for this patch overall among Intel Mac owners since most people are probably opting for the Superdrive nowadays. I did. Good luck, though.

Actually, you might try patching the DVD Player.app on a PPC machine, and copying it over to your Intel Mac. It would probably work okay in Rosetta. That might do it. If you try it, let me know how it goes.
Klaus Mc Venus

Comment by Klaus Mc Venus | 08/22/06 at 8:15 am

Thanks a lot for providing this patch-
http://www.macvenus.de
Johan

Comment by Johan | 09/09/06 at 8:00 am

will there be a universal version for intel machines?

i would really like that
Dan Pritchard

Comment by Dan Pritchard | 09/13/06 at 2:26 pm

@Johan:

Someone will have to find the time to patch the other binary.

Perhaps you could use the PPC version of the patch and then run DVD player under Rosetta.
john

Comment by john | 09/30/06 at 5:48 am

new update for tiger: 10.4.8 but the patch doesn’t work!
any chance for update the user op patch?
Maccampus

Comment by Maccampus | 10/02/06 at 1:23 pm

Someone should really work on this since rosetta ain’t the answer. Eventually this patch might also break on a future update of dvd player. Like the version that will be included in Leopard.

Does anyone has the original developers source code & notes or can someone contact the retired developer to get that stuff from him.

I kinda hope to someday find this patch on sourceforge, if that was done from the beginning it wouldn’t have turned this way, dead & all source lost ain’t a bright future
Gitsey

Comment by Gitsey | 10/04/06 at 8:29 am

Picked this up from http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/index.html#S21806

“Clive E. was wondering about the DVD User Op patch (DVD player patch for external drives, he had no internal DVD drive) not working any more after the 10.4.8 update. I found out the same issue, and as there will no more be updated patches (the guy releasing the patches has “retired”), I figured out what the patch was actually doing with 10.4.7.
It changes the binary code at two offsets of the “DVDPlayback” file.
I found the corresponding code bits at the DVDPlayback v4.6.9 coming with the 10.4.8 (this time at different offset locations), and made the changes with an hex editor.
This seems to work. I don’t have an external DVD drive but at least the DVD Player control buttons honor again the user actions.
The file to be changed is: (backup before editing)
/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback
and the changes are:
Offset 669CC: 4082 0020 80A1 0040 3860 0000 7CA4 F430 -> 4082 0020 38A0 0000 3860 0000 7CA4 F430
Offset 9D7E8: 4E80 0020 7C48 02A6 429F 0005 BE01 FFC0 7FE8 02A6 -> 4E80 0020 3860 0000 4E80 0020 BE01 FFC0 7FE8 02A6
Editing the file needs naturally Admin rights. (name withheld by request) “
Dan Pritchard

Comment by Dan Pritchard | 10/04/06 at 8:40 am

Very cool, Gitsey! That should help a lot of people!
MovieJerk

Comment by MovieJerk | 10/06/06 at 9:53 pm

My Powermac G4 with OSX 10.4.8 And DVD Player 4.6.5 doesn’t even recognize the “X-3″ DVD I just bought. What can I do about this?
maestro

Comment by maestro | 10/11/06 at 12:07 am

I downloaded a Hexeditor and located the file to be changed. But now I don’t know what to do next.
I performed a search on “669CC” (hex) but got no result.
So:
- how can I find those two offsets?
- does pasting the right string into the hexeditor work or do I have to type it in manually?

Thanks for replying!
David Cox

Comment by David Cox | 10/11/06 at 3:53 am

Does anyone know whether this patch would also allow reading region 2 DVDs without having to reburn them using Mac the Ripper? We don’t have a burner.
Jack Freedom

Comment by Jack Freedom | 11/06/06 at 4:50 pm

Hey GItsey! Any chance of breakin that down for a lameman. I get to the file & can’t edit. What app do I need?
Klaus Mc Venus

Comment by Klaus Mc Venus | 11/09/06 at 4:58 pm

Hex-Editing and overwriting of the DVDPlayback-File didn’t work for me under 10.4.8.
‘Got no internal drive-only an external one.
‘Will try it again.Also I will try to adopt an older version of DVD-Player to 10.4.8
I guess the easiest way is to use VLC-Player because it’s not an easy job when we always have to change
something after every OS X update.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
–
http://www.macvenus.de
Klaus Mc Venus

Comment by Klaus Mc Venus | 11/11/06 at 7:23 am

Hi ,
I’ve found the solution now to get DVD-Player working under 10.4.8 :
I’ve copied the hole DVDplayback.framework from an older 10.4.x - partition
to 10.4.8 /System/Library/Frameworks.
Then copied the DVD-Player app to /Applications.
Then I applied the here provided UserOpp-Patch-
that’s it-works fine.
I will provide that DVDPlayback-framework from an older 10.4.x-partition on my website-Blog in the
Downloads/Links-Section.
Have fun !
http://www.macvenus.de
Klaus Mc Venus

Comment by Klaus Mc Venus | 11/11/06 at 8:41 am

Hi ,
you’ll find the installation-instructions & necessary downloads to get DVD-Player to work under 10.4.8 in my blog -
permalink:
http://83.236.149.205:16080/weblog/klausmcvenus/Software/?permalink=AppleDVD-Player-Patchfor1048.html&page=trackback
Have fun !
http://www.macvenus.de
Baba

Comment by Baba | 11/19/06 at 6:04 am

Klaus,
Your suggested way works beautifully fine. Many many thanks!
Pete Gray

Comment by Pete Gray | 11/21/06 at 6:00 am

Thanks Klaus

This works well for me on my G3 imac 600mzh/768 mb with external DVD drive. Solves the 10.4.8 update problem.
Didn’t have much success when I tried changing the offsets so this is a nice solution.

Thanks once again Pete
Oraculo

Comment by Oraculo | 11/22/06 at 10:20 am

Anyone done this on an Intel Mac? Obviously the code to be changed is different since the byte order is different on Intel Macs.
Henri

Comment by Henri | 11/23/06 at 1:29 pm

You can find the patched file DVDPlayback for MacOS 10.4.8 PPC here :
http://rapidshare.com/files/4557550/PatchDVDPlayer.dmg.html

Enjoy and share !
Elizabeth Thompson

Comment by Elizabeth Thompson | 01/21/07 at 12:00 am

I love you, Dan Pritchard. Love. Seriously.

I just upgraded from OS 10.3.7 to 10.3.9, on a whim, to try to upgrade Quicktime and do the Flip4Mac thing in a vain attempt to get a .wma file to play on my G4. What was I thinking? I hate upgrading! I had a DVD in the external drive, and when I hit DVD Player, and got that foul message, and I really almost started crying!

Now I’m better. All better now.

I love you, Dan Pritchard.
Seth

Comment by Seth | 02/11/07 at 7:45 am

Didn’t work for me, I got this message when i tried to install it:

Sorry, this file to patch is not as expected.
The installed version of the DVDPlayback framework
is probably too recent for this version of the patcher.
Sorry, but the patch failed or couldn’t be run.

What does this mean? Thanks
CoryM

Comment by CoryM | 03/20/07 at 10:28 pm

Thank you Gitsey. Your instructions on hacking the DVDPlayback file worked great.
luciano

Comment by luciano | 05/10/07 at 6:54 am

Hello,
is there an update version of this patch?

I used it before and it’s great,
but I had recently to install a new system,
and it doesn’t work any more…

thanx
Greg

Comment by Greg | 06/20/07 at 9:48 pm

Hi Dan, I just found this site that you talked about this -70012 error message which I am getting when ever i put a DVD movie in my new Lacie external DVD drive. It launchs DVD player but the error comes up. So i downloaded your patch and it didn’t work. I did a restart and no luck. I am running 10.4.10, so would the patch work for this.

If there is anything you can do to help, I sincerely appreciate your time in advance.
Thanks,
Greg
CoryM

Comment by CoryM | 08/17/07 at 9:51 pm

Apple keeps changing this dang thing? What’s their motivation in preventing people from using external DVD players?

In any case…, in 10.4.10 the instructions are as above in Gitsey’s post with minor changes. See below.

—————–

/System/Library/Frameworks/DVDPlayback.framework/Versions/A/DVDPlayback
and the changes are:
Offset 674A8:
4082 0020 80A1 0040 3860 0000 7CA4 F430
to
4082 0020 38A0 0000 3860 0000 7CA4 F430

Offset 9E2C8:
4E80 0020 7C48 02A6 429F 0005 BE01 FFC0 7FE8 02A6
to
4E80 0020 3860 0000 4E80 0020 BE01 FFC0 7FE8 02A6

—————–

Worked for me anyway. I suspect Apple will continue to change this, so saving a working copy of the DVDPlayback file for the next system update might be good.
Scroop Moth

Comment by Scroop Moth | 11/11/07 at 6:04 pm

CoryM

How do you get OS to accept the change to the “DVD Playback” file? I found the codes with a HEX editor, but can’t save them!
won

Comment by won | 03/30/08 at 4:36 am

Hey Scroop,

You have to change the permissions of the file before you can edit it. You can use the permissions settings in Get Info to do this or the ‘chown’ command via the terminal.

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bund

Pingback by bund | 10/14/06 at 11:56 am

DVD Player.app ohne Laufwerk nutzen? - Apfeltalk
Meintest du diesen Patch?
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Apple DVD Player User Op Patch Available here

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