HD-DVD Wins Support of 4 Studios 355
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like HD-DVD has won the latest round in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war. Toshiba announced today that 4 major studios (Warner,Paramount,Universal, and New Line) have endorsed the HD-DVD format. Toshiba also said it will use AACS for content protection, which is basically just CSS with better crypto & no ability to recover from security failures."
How strong is it (Score:5, Interesting)
A guy using a camcorder while watching his TV
Someone plugging in the composite video to a capture card
Brute Force Attack
To stop me from buying your DVDs
Alginate the Movie Industry
So, what's next? (Score:3, Interesting)
At least the need for a HD-DVD format is consumer-driven. I forget whether this particular format is compatible with existing DVD players or not, though.
But what's next? Is there even industry talk about a post-HDTV video format? 3D video, maybe? Lossless video compression? What will the industry R&D teams do once they've got HD-DVD out the door and China's manufacturing players for US$30 again?
Toshiba Wins Battle But Loses War to Chinese (Score:4, Interesting)
The evil mind is capable of almost anything.
Windows Media 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, anyone know how the decision is made to encode a DVD using MPEG2, MPEG4 or WM9?
Re:Toshiba Wins Battle But Loses War to Chinese (Score:1, Interesting)
Seems like just desserts to me. Especially when you figure the Chinese media players probably won't kowtow to CSS next generation.
Re:Not on your life. (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds nice because AES is strong by most standards (there is a theoretical attack that is faster than brute force, but only very marginally better - in reality it is jst as impractical). The catch is that you still have to decrypt the content at the client end for viewing. Unless you include unique serial numbers in the packaging that the user has to input each time (yeah right), or require the DVD player to be internet connected and download keys, the key has to be on the DVD. From there it's just a matter (okay, not simple, but still) of reverse engineering the unlocking procedure to find where/how it gets/decrypts the necessary key, and we're back where we started.
Personally I loathe DVD encryption just for the region encoding alone. I used to travel a lot (and may well do a lot more travelling in future), so my DVD collection is a hopeless mess of different regions. Worse, when living in the Asia-Pacific region there were any number of interesting DVDs that simply weren't released there (usually more obscure art-house films). The only solution was to order them from overseas...
region encoding is silly. It's supposed to protect film distributors who distribute their films at ifferent times to different markets - but with the ever growing popularity of simultaneous worldwide releases (or releases separated by weeks at most) that isn't a very relevant argument. Instead it is being used to provide regional DVD distributors with a monopoly so they can price gouge.
Jedidiah.
Makes me feel dirty (Score:5, Interesting)
What's most interesting is that "real" pirates (pressing discs for mass distribution) would likely be able to circumvent all these measures with a bit-accurate re-press. *shrug* At least we know who the industry is really worried about when they talk about pirates...you and me.
BTW, yes, my 2 year old knows how to load a DVD player, and I print the discs so she knows which is which. I reauthor them so that the movie starts immediately without user interaction. I haven't figured out how to make her understand that the top-loading CD player in her room won't play three discs stacked like records, though.
Re:This is how you create a vast pirate market (Score:3, Interesting)
And (important) the movie companies that just announced HD-DVD support hasn't made their support exclusive, meaning thay can also support Blu-Ray at the same time if they want (which they will).
Re:Plus Minus (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Very misleading (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it does.. it's not an article! It's marketing from Cryptography Research pushing their 'solution'.
And I must say, I'm not convinced. They propose having security oftware on the discs, running on a little virtual machine in the player. Supposedly, this would help against compromised players.
I can't exactly see how that would work if the VM was compromised.
Re:Plus Minus (Score:4, Interesting)
In comparison, DVD-R and +R are nearly identical formats... there is almost no difference distinguishing the two. Basically the +R format is a slightly hacked version of the official -R specification to circumvent licensing fees. Note that +R discs do not display the official DVD logo with the circle image.
wireless or crippled DVDs (Score:2, Interesting)
Alternatively, you'll be able to burn a time-bombed or player-specific version, one that will work FOR 2 DAYS ONLY or one that will work ON YOUR LAPTOP ONLY.
Of course, someday, they'll just beam it straight into your head complete with commercials, a la Futurama [tvtome.com].
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)
The article also uses the term "serial number" which would seem to me to indicate one particular player in the whole world. Your kid hacks your player and through revocation it can no longer play disks. That's reasonable. You slap the kid upside his head, make him pay for a new player and you're back in business.
I'd like them clarify what they mean.
Re:Where's the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
While this may seem a bit paranoid, I have a CD collection with the most remarkable range of scratches from casual handling. I swore that my DVDs would not suffer the same fate. Until recently, I had all my DVDs in a jukebox (I no longer own the jukebox...long story). I wasn't really happy with that solution from a payback standpoint, so I'm building a video server now.
Dear Consumer (Score:3, Interesting)
With love,
Hollywood
Re:Dear Hollywood (Score:3, Interesting)
Since I knew I'll end up buying HD versions 5 years later, I've been just renting my DVD's from Netflix and Blockbuster, and holding off building a movie collection. When HiDef dvd's become standardized and popular, I'll purchase movies again.
What's wrong with DVD-Audio encryption? (Score:3, Interesting)
Consumer will choose ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a relevant story. When DVDs first came out, I was an early adopter, and bought a player in the first year or so. I figured the format was going to take off, and I was tired of the kids video tapes wearing out from repeated play.
The first thing I did was bring the DVD player home, and pipe it through my VCR, which had multiple inputs I could switch between using the remote, rather than with a mechanical switch. Convenient. Finally, buying a higher-end VCR was going to pay off. This was all in the days before multiple video inputs were common on some types of stereo receivers, so this may seem trivial today.
The hardware was all set up, and I put in "The Wizard of Oz" (one of the initial crop of discs I bought, this one at the request of the spouse). WTF? Fading to black and back, messed-up sound, etc. This is not what the DVD is supposed to look like! Was it broken out of the box?
No. It was at that point I learned the joys of MacroVision video copy protection [wikipedia.org]. Now I know that it is not technically difficult to circumvent, but it was damned annoying. I was not trying, and had no interest, in video taping from the DVD. I was just piping through the VCR as a source switch. Thanks to this nonsense, I had to re-do the wiring and buy a stupid and awkward mechanical switch for the TV input.
From that point on, I have been wary of any kind of copy protection or anything else that might interfere with the simple and valid desire to watch the video content I paid for, on the system I have, without stupid encumberances. I will *not* buy any flavour of HD-DVD player until I know that I will not be surprised some day by the thing incorrectly deciding I must be a pirate, and my license to play has been revoked. I've already been fooled once with regular DVD.
Hey! Get off my acronym! (Score:3, Interesting)
AACS web site [computersociety.org]
Re:Proprietary codecs in a standard are nothing ne (Score:1, Interesting)
But don't get all worked up just because Microsoft was the company whose codec was chosen instead of one of the other evil companies in mpegla.com's portfolio, unless you want to be thought of as this guy.
Neither Dolby nor Fraunhofer have a vested interest in seeing Linux getting screwed and sued into the ground. Microsoft does.
Deal.
Re:Not on your life. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, the professional pirates would not have to decrypt anything. All they would need is a hacked player/recorder that copies the digital data bits exactly, bit for bit onto another disk. There would be NO way to tell the copy from the original, because a bit is a bit is a bit. If such bitwise players/recorders become commonly available, NO encryption scheme would ever work again. A bit for bit image could be distributed on the Internet and burned onto a disk which the player would decrypt just like an original disk. Making an EXACT copy, encryption and all should not violate the DMCA, since no copy protection is actually circumvented. All that is happening is that a string of ones and zeroes are transmitted from point A to point B. Back in the 80s, there were floppy drives that did bitwise copying, making exact copies, which included the weird formatting and other tricks that the then current copy protection schemes used.
I thought that once but don't think so now (Score:4, Interesting)
On the main point though - I once thought as you do that people would be happy enough with DVD's as there were and wouldn't see a noticable difference between DVD's and HDTV resolution signals. But after comparing HD broadcast movies and normal DVD's, I have to say the difference is not all that hard to see and is pretty impressive. And lots of people are buying TV's now that do offer the extra level of resolution that can take advantage of the extra resolution.
The format will take a while to catch on though if there's really much of a standards war.
Re:This is how you create a vast pirate market (Score:3, Interesting)
What TV?
None of my friends here in the city own a TV or a car. None of us use land line telephones either.
Isn't it obvious? (Score:1, Interesting)
Hollywood movie studios--not consumers--will likely decide the fate of the two formats, he says. The HD-DVD format could have the edge with the studios, he says.
The reason: HD-DVD discs are similar to current DVDs in that the recording layer is sandwiched between two 0.6 millimeter layers of plastic in the middle of the disc. This means existing production lines can be easily converted to manufacture HD-DVD discs--a possibility that was confirmed in conversations with Taiwanese disc makers at the Computex trade show in Taipei last week.
Because the recording layer in a Blu-ray disc is 0.1 millimeters below the surface on the top of a 1.1 millimeter substrate, this disc will require a new production line.
Hollywood studios, which produce billions of DVD discs a year, are very sensitive to even a slight rise in the price of production, Inada says.
Oh, gee, no shit? Slight price increase? Yeah, we want to MAXIMIZE profit and ELIMINATE consumer choice.
I hope every stinking format from now until the day I die gets hacked in record time.
Re:Toshiba Wins Battle But Loses War to Chinese (Score:2, Interesting)
Lets make a SF analogue, that might be appreciated here. Suppose that an alien spaceship crashes on this planet. If (for instance) the americans find it, take it apart, and build their own spaceship, would anyone consider this theft of the IP of an alien species? Are we stealing their ideas? Of course not. But that alien species will probably quickly stop any ideas of selling our spaceships in their territory.
Simply regard China as a different planet. If they have different ideas about owning ideas than we have, that is their right. Don't ever assume the right to enfore 'your' 'Intellectual property' somewhere else, because the notions of IP are just something to protect a market system -- and you can't decide for someone else how they should run their markets.
Jan