New Sony DVDs Not Working In Some Players 651
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that the most recent DVDs released by Sony — specifically Stranger Than Fiction, Casino Royale, and The Pursuit of Happyness — have some kind of 'feature' that makes them unplayable on many DVD players. This doesn't appear to be covered by the major media yet, but this link to a discussion over at Amazon gives a flavor of the problems people are experiencing. A blogger called Sony and was told the problem is with the new copy protection scheme, and they do not intend to fix it. Sony says it's up to the manufacturers to update their hardware."
Class action lawsuit anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Again? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you buy from Sony and don't expect this to happen, who's fault is it really?
Happened to me (Score:5, Insightful)
So I ripped it and returned it.
The sad thing is - (Score:5, Insightful)
It is things like this that make me cautious about buying media from Sony these days. I have no problem with buying DVDs however one of the reasons I buy a DVD is that I know it will work perfectly in any DVD I wish to buy (unlike XviD rips from BitTorrent or Usenet) however apparently this isn't true anymore so DVD is now no better than a rip downloaded from the internet.
It is a shame that the companies are worsening their products with these copy protection systems to help fight piracy when all they end up doing is ruining it for the people who want to buy DVDs.
One thing that I have wondered about for a while is how many DVD rips online originate from retail DVDs? I would have thought the majority (if not all) came from pre-release copies as the DVD rips are normally several weeks (if not months) ahead of a retail DVD release.
Re:Class action lawsuit anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the DVD label, whatever entity licenses the use of the "DVD" logo probably dictates what that logo is supposed to mean. It doesn't mean that all DVD-labeled discs will work in all DVD-labeled players, the most obvious example being the case of region-specific discs and players. Sony's DRM scheme may be another area where they permit incompatibility between hardware and media.
Re:Alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
What it HAS done, is forced the legitimate customer to turn to the 'black market' to get access to the material that they payed for.
"I bought this movie, and I can't play it, but it doesn't matter because I was able to grab a rip off the Internet that same day and burn a new one."
Prevents casual "rent and burn" (Score:5, Insightful)
This copy protection prevents most people from renting/borrowing a DVD and making a copy of it. Until people download the latest software for cracking it. This is mostly targetting non-technical people who were given DVD Shrink by a friend.
There will be copies of the DVD available on the Internet, because someone will crack the protection. All it takes is one copy on the Internet to ensure that anyone on a peer to peer network can get a copy.
Sony is risking alienating a large number of people to stop a small number of pirates. Not just a small number of pirates, but the non-technical pirates. They are also annoying Walmart, Blockbuster, BestBuy and any other retailer who sells their DVDs. Who are the consumers going to complain to? The retailers.
Oddly, this could cost them money even if you ignore retail backlash. Companies which rent DVDs to the consumer, purchase DVDs based on rental demand. If someone rents and burns a DVD, the movie company is pissed, but it still increases rental demand. Higher rental demand, increases sales of the DVDs to the companies who rent them. If someone finds they can't rent and burn, they probably will just download the image from BitTorrent rather than buy the DVD. Not to mention the people who can't play the Sony DVDs, they'll want a free version which actually works.
Sony has the right to put any copy protection scheme they want on their DVDs, as long as it maintains compatibility. If you sell someone a product which is designed not to work properly on their DVD player, you better tell them first. Even if the consumer was willing to get firmware updates, do you think the manufacturers want to start sending out discs and supporting consumers through the update?
Just boicott Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, Sony Electronics tries to deliver great products, and Sony Pictures strongarm the electronics division into delivering defective products.
Just stop buying Sony altogether (Movies and electronics) until they become a customer focussed company again.
In the end the blame goes to the stupid Sony customers that allows Sony to sell them this defective crap, and then comes back for more.
Bait and Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, oh why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope Sony Entertainment chokes and dies on their new DVDs.
Another reason to never buy Sony again (Score:2, Insightful)
Return Every One of Them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
Making Grandma update the firmware on a DVD player just to make it take two minutes longer for a pirate to copy a DVD is stupid.
Re:Happened to me (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how it works in the US and elsewhere in the world but in the UK we have consumer protection legislation which says if a product is not 'fit for purpose' then we have a legal right to a full refund.
Occasionally a shop assistant will call over the manager and the manager will try to get 'cute'. In this situation you would be amazed how effective it is to kick up a little (and slightly noisy) fuss. Most managers are not too happy to see such things in their shops, it tends to put the browsing customers off. I dislike this behaviour when the customer is in the wrong, such as demanding a refund for a product that is an incorrect size or they just don't like (there is no legal provision for this, some shops offer a courtesy exchange, an offer to be accepted with gratitude), however, I don't like being screwed out of my rights and am happy to protest loudly when required and entitled.
Should I be unfortunate enough to purchase one of these DVDs... pray you are not managing the shop when I come to return it
I have to solution! (Score:2, Insightful)
Stranger Then Fiction http://thepiratebay.org/search/Stranger%20Than%20
Casino Royale http://thepiratebay.org/search/Casino%20Royale/0/
The Pursuit Of Happiness http://thepiratebay.org/search/The%20Pursuit%20of
Isn't that easier then screwing around with a stupid broken DVD?
Re:Works For Me (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm Not Mistaken... How hard was that? huh?
BRB/TYT/LOL/etc. were useful at a time when we had to "pay" for being online by the hour (or the minute for some) and had 10 private chat windows open, 5 IRC channels, etc.
Did typing IINM save you anything? A couple of keystrokes? Is it that widely used?
No, it doesn't make you look/sound smarter, because there are a LOT of acronyms that are just plain dumb.
Sorry for going off, I didn't mean to shoot directly at you, just the whole acronym thing is driving me up a wall.
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
When one branch of that multinational corporation is making discs specifically designed to play in another branch's hardware, then no, I don't think that's a little bit naive whatsoever. I don't expect the computer division to hit up the TV stand division about every little thing, but it seems like "we're making a new type of DVD, so let's call up the guys who make the DVD players and make sure nothing broke" is a thought that should have occured to someone.
Re:ARCCOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Give the DVDs a bad Amazon review (Score:1, Insightful)
Go to Amazon, and give the movies bad reviews. State clearly that the movies themselves aren't necessarily bad, but the DVDs have a new copy protection scheme that will make them unplayable on many DVD players of different manufacturers.
Also, find other people's reviews like this, and make sure you mark that they were helpful, so they shop up on top. That will get the word out.
Re:Bait and Switch (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite, I know all about this one. (Score:4, Insightful)
Copy Protection on audio CDs was always a less than satisfactory method anyhow - relying on part Orange Book multi session TOCs with looping or non-existent sessions or degraded EFM, interleave or error correction (of course Red Book players would ignore such things and data players would kill the audio or disc). What has killed audio copy protection is market forces, some labels have already dropped it and others look to be doing the same.
Conventional CD audio player (Red Book) are largely removed from the market, nowadays all CD player also play MP3 - in other words they are data CD players (Orange Book) in order to read the ISO9660 or UDF format and hence read the MP3 files. When this shift happened - we started dropping classic audio systems from the CD players we made in about 2002, and the market took a few years to follow - the industry suddenly found that a *very* large percentage of the hardware could not play their discs so the copy protection was dropped. That and the fact it was massively unpopular.
I remember sitting in lectures from the IPFI when they clearly stated that the CD patents from Philips would expire some day and people did not give a damn about the logo or not. The IPFI certainly did not, and as long as Philips got the license money neither did they. Certainly CD copy protection never made the job of building CE audio equipment any harder - we ignored it largely.
Now we have the same again, as Sony has changed the format of the DVD system slightly for *enhanced* copy protection - there is a slight difference as they also have patents on DVD as well as Philips and others. There are only a few things that can happen here
1. The people who make DVD systems will alter their FW and that takes a while to reach the market - but (trust me on this) the teams involved in most firms have had sample discs with encoding on for quite some time.
2. Market forces will force Sony into a humiliating reverse *if* sufficient publicity and bad press can be generated. What is takes is a very large number of bad tempered people and some media backing. I would be confident that Sony has tested this new system on a wide variety of player to get a feel for the market first.
3. The number of players that refuse to play them will be small enough that the MPAA/Sony/Others will be able to railroad in this change over a year or so (after all some people will assume that their player is fucked and just get another cheap one) - but as the hackers of this world have a formidable reputation for cracking these things in a week or so the status will largely return to normal in due course.
Re:I have to solution! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ARCCOS (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is not so much the DRM (bad as it is) but that in their neverending quest to prevent copyright infringement (pardon me, "theft of their intellectual property") they've begun to deny legitimate purchasers of their product the ability to actually use that for which they plunked down good money. Oh, I'm sure Sony figured out well in advance that some number of purchasers would get screwed, but decided that the risk was acceptable. I guarantee it won't be acceptable to me, if I ever mistakenly happen to buy a Sony Pictures DVD.
This has got to run afoul of more than a few laws, and it sure as hell isn't a good way to run a business.
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm wrong, but like some "CDs" in the past that incorporated some copy protection and couldn't carry the CD logo/seal any longer on the cover, wouldn't the same thing apply here? Can Sony legimitately still call this thing a DVD anymore without being sued for fraud?
Re:Happened to me (Score:2, Insightful)
You might enjoy your flair for the dramatic, and it might make you feel high and powerful to make a scene in a store, but the product works as intended from the manufacturer and the retailer made the sale in an appropriate manner. All you're doing is taking advantage of decent customer service and contributing to increased animosity between retailers and customers.
If you have a problem with a Sony disc, send it back to Sony with a copy of the receipt and demand a refund of the purchase price. Yeah, it's harder, and yeah it takes more time and effort, but that's what happens when you do the right thing.
Never mind the whole "rip and return" issue, which is exactly the kind of thing that put DRM on products in the first place. The laziness of customers (who won't do anything to fix a broken system, but will happily ignore the law merely because it suits them and is the easier thing to do, all the while justifying it in their heads) is the real reason we've been foisted with all this crap. But this is Slashdot, so God forbid the evil companies aren't totally to blame.
Re:Happened to me (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Bait and Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
(2) Swap at store, still no joy. Try to return, get hit with restocking fee - take DVD home irate.
(3) Call Sony to complain, get told to update player.
(4) Call player manufacturer to complain, get told "sorry, we've no idea, your player is out of warranty, go away". Now you're broiling angry.
(5) Discover software that rips the CD, despite whatever security measure on it, and burns it to a DVD-R.
(6) Realize you can do the same thing with DVD-R images on the net, and start downloading.
Congratulations, Sony, for having turned a customer over to the Dark Side with your wonderful customer relations program!
Re:Happened to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Retailers can't "not carry" Sony pictures, because people will notice the gaping holes in the collection and buy them elsewhere--the general public might be annoyed with Sony, but they're not going to stop buying their products. The retailer has to carry them, or they will suffer reduced sales elsewhere (because most people will shop where they have a full selection). The manufacturer won't eat their own products that work exactly as designed unless the PR gets really bad (like the CD rootkit) or they're forced to recall them by a regulatory body.
Stores could get pissed off enough not to carry Sony products, but it's rare for a retailer not to have to accept getting reamed. The store's anger is not often greater than the consumer desire to purchase them. If they can't break even, they'll have to sit back and take it (even Target).
In any case, you're still just advocating passing the buck. The retailers have zero to do with Sony's poor product choices--and as long as people continue to buy them in large numbers, they'll still be on shelves. The only way to get Sony to act is to avoid buying them in the first place, which means that retailers won't have to order new stock and Sony won't be making money from anyone.
My Hard Earned Money... (Score:1, Insightful)
Sony makes media / movies PAYING CUSTOMERS purchase, that WON"T work as per the STANDARD. Hmmm. THey bork.
Sony says, sorry, tough - upgrade. Meh.
I say this. Sony, you'll never see my money again. Sorry. Your are tools. When PIRACY is EAISER then purchased media, when pirated content plays EASIER and better then yours...you have a serious issue with seeing the 'big picture'. You have to compete now with that. YUP its true....suck it up and be a bigger man and come back to the market with your BRAINS because your muscle is weaker then ever now...
Consumers are good. You want them. You want them to BUY your shit. TO enjoy it. TO be ABLE to use it. Those last two points, they are key. USE and ENJOY. Get it? Well it seems not.
You are so out of touch of reality it will be your down fall. It is your down fall. You ARE falling. These actions are just that, PROOF how stunned you really are.
Labels wonder why sales are low? Jesus could it be the customer is WRONG, dead last and A THEIF! Lets beat the guys over the head with a lead pipe who DARE, DARE to show up at a check out and purchase our products. How the fuck is this any different? I want to buy it and then GET punished for it? Sorry..i won't buy into that.
Sorry sony. I have not purchased your shit media, or electronics since the ps2 many years ago. NO longer. I vote with my dollar. Get the message? More importantly, do you UNDERSTAND the message?
Nope. Guess not. Not yet
Re:Bait and Switch (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Xine (Score:5, Insightful)
What did you expect from Sony? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, they got their fingers burned a little over the rootkit debacle - but they aren't sorry about it, nor have they changed their direction. Expect more outrages from this corporation that has already "jumped the shark".
What can us as consumers do? It's simple; just say NO to anything from Sony. If you'd been doing that since the rootkit, you wouldn't be bothered with these defective DVDs or their future mistakes. All they look at is their bottom line, and the only thing they'll pay attention to is when that bottom line suffers; quit buying their crap and they'll pay attention.
Re:Gee. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Happened to me (Score:4, Insightful)
From who's point of view? Certainly not a consumer who gets it home and finds that it doesn't play. It is absolutely defective as far as he is concerned, and under basic requirements of servicability for the intended use under consumer protection laws it fails miserably.
The seller of such merchandise had better be ready to deal with issues of this sort, it is part of being in business.
Re:Happened to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. That's why the solution is to get another copy of the same DVD, take it home, open it, try to play it, then take it back to the store an tell them that one won't play either. When you've gone thru almost their entire stock, take the last, unopened copy back to a different store and get your cash (or at least store-credit) back for the unopened one.
Re:That's the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have to solution! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stranger than Fiction (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
-having to get dressed according to weather
-burn some expensive fossil fuels and put wear on an expensive car
-wasting a half hour in city traffic getting cut all the time -- both ways
-hunting for parking spots
-walk around a store full of unhelpful minimum-wage/comission employees looking for what you want (hopefully you won't impulse buy anything you don't need in the process)
-standing in line for a half hour to pay for it
-find out it doesn't play on your computer either (unless you shell out money for something like AnyDVD)
And possibly things like buying a new DVD player (more $) only to find out (if it even works at all) that there's unskippable previews and such crap (FBI warnings) on the disc too.
Whereas using P2P I can download the thing in mere minutes. No DRM, no protection that prevents playing, no rootkits, no unskippable previews, no FBI warnings -- none of the usual crap. No need to waste time ripping/re-encoding it in mpeg4 to put it on my video server either.
I would rather pay for a un-DRM'ed mpeg4 rip direct download then buy the DVD, but studios won't let us, much less for decent prices. Pirating is easy, fast (~30 seconds to start the transfer then downloads overnight), convenient and often provides you with a better product (at least an un-crippled one) -- and much cheaper too. As a bonus, you're not being treated like a thief by the pirated copy (oh the irony). So people pirate instead.
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sony electronics actually rather quite sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The Sony laptops are light and attractive, but almost universally have mechanical problems (hinges and latches break). The MP3 players are a disaster. A relative bought one, and it wouldn't play MP3s -- he had to convert music into Sony's proprietary atrak format before it worked. He returned it and bought an iRiver. The headphones give reasonable (but not exceptional) audio quality for the price, but generally break after about 3 months of use. Cameras have nice imagers, mechanically filmy (but not horrible), but as with most Sony, try to force you into a proprietary, incompatible, overpriced technology stack with MemoryStick. PS3 was an unqualified disaster. Home audio equipment is okay, but suboptimal on the price/performance curve (e.g. Kenwood generally has better-sounding, better-quality equipment for the same price in my price range).
I also really, really, really hate the attempted "synergy." If you want the PS3, you need to pay for Blu-ray. Everything you buy will use MemoryStick, and where possible, use proprietary cables, plugs, and formats to try to lock you in to buy other Sony products, and not work well with non-Sony products.
Re:Gee. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Happened to me (Score:3, Insightful)
You think the customer is at fault for buying a DVD to play in their DVD player?
The customer, who bought the DVD at a local retailer, is too "lazy" to seek remedy from Sony, in Japan, who they probably didn't even know was involved, rather than take it back to where they bought it?
You think it's insane to take back a defective product to where you bought it from, since in your version of a sane society, this wouldn't happen?
You think that the retailers are the ones who are getting screwed?
I'm glad I don't live in your world.
Dear China,
Enclosed please find my 37" LCD television, I just bought it yesterday from Best Buy, and it just won't turn on at all. I would've sent this to Sanyo, but they said all their manufacturing is done in China now, so you are the responsible party. Please refund my $649.99, plus $39 tax, and if you wouldn't mind, the $147 shipping and $219.99 extended warranty purchase, as well. I need the refund as soon as possible, since I need it for a new TV.
I still haven't had a reply from my previous 72 returns, please send those checks out at your earliest convenience.
Thanks,
Bob
Even more powerful (Score:4, Insightful)
Pissed off share holders, particularly those who might have personally encountered the DVD problem, are a very nasty bunch to deal with. They cause heads to roll when voting for new board members etc.
Consumer Math (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's also say that the average pirate is looking to change their ways, and is now out of college and making enough money to support paying for movies. Their incentive to do so is threat of legal persecution and, more significantly, a moral imperitive to support artists that they care about. Now, suddenly, on the other side of the equation is this looming doubt over whether the thing will work at all. If the scales had tipped one way earlier, this might just be enough to tip them the other way.
So in other words, Sony has succeeded in alienating a section of their customer base, prevented another section from becoming legal customers, and all the while (judging by the wide availability of pirated copies of the movies mentioned) had zero effect on the piracy of their movies.
Brilliant. Is it time to put Sony to bed with SCO yet?
Sony's PR department is better than yours (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Gee. (Score:2, Insightful)
Are political nihilists also bad programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone remember this [acm.org] article about bugs and programming?
Committing the "black or white fallacy" is destructive everywhere, both in politics and programming. Saying that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans because they're both politicians is good for one thing:
letting smug, lazy cynics feel somehow that by not doing anything, they're intellectually superior.
All that makes you is a part of the problem.
Re:Gee. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gee. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not quite, I know all about this one. (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people here (UK) will assume the concept of a DVD is fucked, and not get another one. They will just go on the Internet instead, and stop viewing home movies entirely.
In other countries I shall not name, they will assume that the fake ones are a better bet, and stop buying legit ones.
Either way, it would appear that Sony has gone for gold in the Olympic foot shooting stakes.
Re:Consumer Math (Score:5, Insightful)
So, they fix the problem themselves by downloading it. Now, what do you think that customer is going to do the next time they want a movie?
WTG Sony, you've just educated another customer in the benefits of piracy...
Re:Gee. (Score:4, Insightful)
I found it necessary to decrypt a rental DVD to play a it on my computer. It kept complaining about enabled YV out.
Bypassing copy protection should never be the only way to access protected content....
Re:Xine (Score:2, Insightful)
What Sony will listen to - is if Walmart, etc Say: Remove to Copy Protection that causing us to lose sales - Or we'll stop selling your DVDs.
This is the point that is being made - Big Business is about Money - and lots of it. Not the Consumer; Big Business could care less about the consumer.
Only Small Business cares for the consumer, sometimes because they like to, sometimes because they have to they garner sales.
When small business' gets Bigger, its starts to lose consumer focus - and starts focusing on money, and then once a company is public - they don't care about money so much either - they care about shareholders - because shareholders care about money, and they vote weather Mr. CEO and Board Members get to keep their (Very Highly Paid..) jobs or not.
Re:That's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO this should be dealt with the other way around. Instead of preventing companies from labeling these discs as DVD/CD/whatever, they should be forced to tag the boxes with "CONTAINS DRM", "Content is remotely managed by $CompanyName", "Contains rootkit by Sony", etc. This is a matter of consumer rights, not just distributors' rights. The consumer should be made aware of how the device is meant to work and hopefully a standard set of consumer warnings and advisories should foster the much needed discussion on the fairness of these distributors' tools.
Sorry, but no (Score:2, Insightful)
An earlier poster suggested there may be legal implications if Sony had used "DVD-Video" but AFAIK DVD is not a guarantee of any specific type of content.
Re:Gee. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm slightly surprised that the incredible disaster of CD DRM hasn't actually resulted in Sony learning anything.
If anyone from Sony is reading, this is what happens when a customer buys a disc with DRM that renders it unplayable. Joe Sixpack simply returns the disc. A N Other Slashdoteer rips the disc and then returns it. Joe Sixpack then uses BitTorrent to download the rip made by A N Other Slashdoteer. Mr Slashdoteer thinks twice about buying another disc, as does Joe Sixpack.
Re:I ran into this with Casino Royale (Score:2, Insightful)
I know that Sony just wants to make sure that people can't pirate their movies, but it's too late for that. It's game over for DVD, at this point the toolchain for ripping dvds is so advanced that it's almost an open format. You might as well avoid all the pain and suffering of trying to encrypt the dvd and just release all DVDs as open format without encryption.
A simple download of a tool and the right DVD drive is all it takes to make a protected DVD into an open one.
I think that it was a smart move on the content producers part that they also used MPEG-2 for HD, when they could have used MPEG-4. MPEG-4 would to have increased the amount of content they could put on a BluRay/HD-DVD since the same movie would take less room on the disc. I think that they wanted the massive amount of data required for MPEG-2 HD content. It only makes it harder for the pirates to rip/burn/transmit a large movie if the source material is huge as well. It makes the pirate re-encode the movie since less people will download a 20+ GB movie. Re-encoding causes the resulting movie to look slightly worse then the original since it is very hard to re-encode a movie in a lossless fashion. It can be done, but usually takes multiple encodes as finding the right bitrate to keep the loss imperceptible is not something the tool does for you (AFIAK).