Copy Protection Backfires on Blu-ray

An anonymous reader writes "The first two Blu-ray releases to hit the market encrypted with BD+ (an extra layer of protection designed to stave off hackers) are wreaking havoc on innocent consumers. As High-Def Digest reports, this week's Blu-ray releases of 'Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer' and 'The Day After Tomorrow' won't play back at all on at least two Blu-ray players, while load times on other players (including the PS3) are delayed by up to two minutes. 'The most severe problems have been reported on Samsung's BDP-1200 and LG's BH100, which are both said to be incapable of playing back the discs at all. Less catastrophic issues (error messages and playback stutter) have been reported for Samsung's BDP-1000. The discs appear to play back fine on all other Blu-ray players ... Calls placed to both Samsung and LG customer support revealed that both manufacturers are aware of the issue, and that both are working on firmware updates to correct it. Samsung promised a firmware update within 'a couple' weeks, while LG said an update is expected in 3-4 days.'"

hollywood's perfect anti-theft technique

[jollyreaper]

Make movies so bad, nobody will pirate them.

The thing that's so darkly amusing to me is that if I was interested in viewing these movies, pirating would be zero-hassle. It's only when I try to view them legally that I get dicked over.

Why firmware updates?

[ktappe]

Why is this on the drive manufacturers to fix when all previous discs played? Isn't this on the shoulders of the disc manufacturers, to produce discs that are playable? By promising firmware fixes, aren't the player manufacturers both diminishing their brand value in the eyes of consumers and also opening themselves up to a lot of headaches when other discs don't play a month or a year from now due to even more envelope-pushing protection?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Interesting Timing

[zjbs14]

Given the pace of these things being cracked, there's a good chance the torrents will be available before the new player firmware will.

Re:hollywood's perfect anti-theft technique

[morgan_greywolf]

Make movies so bad, nobody will pirate them.

Too bad it doesn't seem to work for the RIAA...

Small Consolation

[camusflage]

Samsung promised a firmware update within 'a couple' weeks, while LG said an update is expected in 3-4 days.'"

I'm sure that will be of great consolation to folks who rented the movies and have four "nights" (which most people refer to as three days) to have the movie back before getting hit with PMITA late charges.

Re:Obligatory

[fyngyrz]

Many players are upgradeable. For both HD and Blueray, you should make sure yours has an online upgrade capability. We know they're going to mess with the protection continuously - that was a given when the general public accepted HD-DVD and Blueray as viable formats.

The Fantastic Four Silver Surfer Blueray version of the movie played back fine on my PS3, no delays or other evidence of handling problems. It was fine for a comic adaptation. Don't know what everyone is bitching about as far as the movie itself goes - it isn't like the Fantastic Four was either great art or great writing in the first place. This isn't a McFarlane production (i.e., not Spawn, which was a tour de force.)

I remember giving someone a really blank look when they said that "Dumb and Dumber" was a "dumb movie." Same thing kind of applies here. You don't get a Fantastic Four movie in order to broaden your critical faculties.

Re:Only the RIAA could match this stupidity

[Starteck81]

MPAA Underling: Sir, unfortunately the pirates cracked the 'no play protection' within 24 hrs and are now the only ones that can watch the movies.

this is really turning me away from HD movies

[SpecialAgentXXX]

I really like watching movies and was excited about purchasing a BluRay and/or HD-DVD player when they came out. But I decided to wait and see and have the companies work out the kinks. Well it's over a year later and there are still problems. When the main focus is not on enhancing the paying customer's experience, but on padding the pockets of the media execs, this is what you get. I should be #1 in their minds. After all, it doesn't matter how much DRM they put in their product if no one buys it.

So, these media firms have lost a faithful, paying customer. I refuse to buy all of their DRM'd HD crap. Since my HTPC upscaler looks almost as nice as HD, I'll just stick with regular DVDs until, if ever, the DRM crap is done away with. And since you can also record broadcast HD shows, there's no need to shell out another $30 to get the HD-version of a show compared to the regular SD DVD version.

Question

[dedazo]

Maybe I'm behind the times here, but how the hell do you flash an appliance to update the firmware? Do they have USB ports now or is it a special disc and some weird command from the remote?

Well, maybe not

[androvsky]

I know this is slashdot, so if anything goes wrong we must blame any copyright protection schemes in place, but according to insiders, it's actually a problem with blu-ray's java, and the players that are having problems just need a firmware update. And according to people with ps3s and the movie, the ps3 plays them fine, note how the article says the load times are *up to* two minutes. Don't you just love it when people leave things nice and vague so you can make the situation sound much better/worse than it really is? Although I'm a blu-ray fan, I'm not really apologizing (problems are problems), I thought I'd clarify, especially the bit about the ps3. I wouldn't know anything first hand, I don't like either movie, and Fox tends to charge too much for their blu-ray movies anyway.

Re:Obligatory

[the_tsi]

"This isn't a McFarlane production (i.e., not Spawn, which was a tour de force.)"

It may have amazing character design and art, but come on, the story was written by a drop-out mouthbreather who wouldn't recognize a cliche if he was reading a wikipedia page called "List of Cliches in Literature". Face it, McFarlane is a dunce who can draw pretty.

Re:DRM is just plain bad business...

[Opportunist]

That's exactly the crucial problem with DRM: It devaluates the commodity. From the user point of view, content that was stripped of DRM is more valuable than content still retaining it. If nothing else, content without DRM plays without a 2 minute delay. It plays in every player.

It's almost like going to a store for a new computer and the clerk tells you "well, you could buy it, but only if you steal it you got warranty".

Re:Why firmware updates?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Of course, this assumes mightily that the BD+ discs themselves are properly authored and coded....

Punish the paying customer...

[Gadzinka]

Both the movies mentioned are long available as torrents all over the web. And HDCP protecting the transfer between various HD STB and HD TVs was broken [wikipedia.org] before it was even finalized and small boxes decrypting HDMI signal on the fly are available in various shady places.

Meanwhile a paying customer cannot play the crappy, overpriced movies on his overpriced video player. And my national HD Sat operator's STBs still cannot authenticate via HDMI with my LG LCD. Which is not good, since HDMI/HDCP is a requirement for their VOD HD content...

Screw'em, gotta go and see what's new on trakcers...

Robert

Bad car analogy

[KiloByte]

You see, this is just as if a car manufacturer declared their cars can go only on a special type of road surface without publishing this first, and then told people that they need to have their cities upgrade the roads first...

Back in the days, the product would be simply sent back as defective and the manufacturers sued for false advertising...

Re:Obligatory

[provigilman]

When your player wears out? How about people that happen to have two? I have a DVD player (I know, I haven't upgraded either) on my TV in the Living Room, and then another in the form of one of several consoles down in my basement. There have been plenty of movies that I've watched in one room, and then watched in the other at a later date. Now I have to buy a second copy?

Hell, this is one of the reasons that I already gave up on Apple and their DRM laden music. When my wife buys an MP3, which would be joint property in a legal sense, and we can't have it on both our iPods simultaneously, that's just stupid.

Welcome to the wonderful world of DRM, where pirates watch everything with ease while you have to jump through hoop after hoop just to listen to/watch something that you legitimately purchased. Enjoy the show...while your player still works that is.

No product testing?

[Mr. Samuel]

You'd really think that, given they were releasing discs that work differently, they would test them out on currently available BR players. It's not like there's that many out there (to my knowledge). I wonder if there's any coordination at all between the software people and various hardware manufacturers (including Sony) in this area. What a stupid, stupid mess this HD crap has become.

That's the real test

[IPFreely]

This is what Sony really wants to know. The tech problems are only a side effect and a distraction. They can be fixed.

What Sony desparately needs to know right now is whether BD+ is going to hold or fold. They are watching those torrents very closely.

BD+ was one of their main selling point to the studios. If it fails it can't be fixed, and they could lose studio support. That would be crippling to their format.

Don't call it until you can see it on your monitor. All else is rhetoric.

Re:...firmware update?

[Opportunist]

You know, I somehow wish my dad would've bought it (I managed to talk him out of it). He has neither a computer, nor internet, nor any inclination to get either, but he bought the player, so he wants it to work.

Just listening to the conversation would've been worth the money.

And I guess a few more people like my dad do exist. People who want a standalone HDDVD/BluRay player for the simple reason that they don't want to fiddle with firmware updates, drivers or other "computer crap" they don't care about. They're used to having some machine in their living room that plays movies. It worked for VHS. It worked for DVD. When it suddenly doesn't work, they'll start questioning whether "newer==better" still applies.

And finally, we'll get them to listen.

Re:Updates?

[Opportunist]

You know, if this happened to me, I'd have them mail me the CD. For free. Or cash back. Yes, I do have a computer, yes, I have internet, yes, I can burn a DVD, but when it starts being a money sink for them, they might reconsider supporting the content industry shackles.

Where did you get that?

[norminator]

I'm not sure where you get the idea that disc would "bind" itself to a player... care to cite a source for that? In order for that to work, the BD/HDDVD player would have to have an Internet connection, and register every single time a disc is inserted in a machine... How else would one player know if a disc had been played in another player? If I remember right all HD-DVD players have network connections, but not all BD players do.

The degraded resolution has to do with the Image Constraint Token [wikipedia.org]. I believe that ICT is implemented in all HDDVD/BD players, but content publishers have "promised" not to use it for a couple years at least. ICT would downgrade the resolution if the video output is not HDCP-compliant. This is bad, but it's not as bad as what you described, and it's not being used, at least not yet.

Re:hollywood's perfect anti-theft technique

[TimothyDavis]

FBI WARNING: DO NOT COPY THIS FILM*

If you don't want to be forced to see this message everytime you watch the movie you purchased, then copy this film and edit this out.

Or go to bittorrent - somebody has probably done this for you already. Otherwise, please wait for 30 seconds while we remind you (once again) not to copy this film.

Re:Obligatory

[moderatorrater]

I'm not 100% sure here, but I think you're wrong. How would a disc get "bound" to any one player? Unless your player is networked it can't communicate with the other players to let them know that it is the chosen one for that disc, and even if it could that would be a ridiculously expensive thing to keep track of AND the player would have to be hooked up to the internet whenever you played a disc. For the disc itself to store that information would require that they be recordable somehow and that the player could then burn to that disc. Unless I'm missing something, you were misinformed.

Message to Sony

[Morgaine]

Dear Sony:

Let me explain this to you by way of a simple 3-party model, since you are too clueless to understand the actual technical details:

Encryption was designed to protect communications between Alice to Bob from the evil Eve. It was not designed to cope with the case where Bob and Eve are the same person. As a clueless DRM proponent, you are trying to give Bob access to an item without giving Bob access to the item ... which isn't logical.

If you don't understand that then I have nothing else to say to you, and any brain cells you may have are entirely superfluous. I recommend eBay as a good place to sell them off.

Kind regards,

Joe Public.

Re:...firmware update?

[Kjella]

If they're remotely intelligent, a "firmware update" involves putting a disc in the player. It'll probably be included on new discs too, when it's ready. Kinda like my Wii tells me it'll update itself when I put in a newer game disc.

Re:If you fuckers didn't STEAL their shit we would

[Perseid]

If those fuckers didn't make us suffer this we wouldn't have to STEAL their shit. You're right. It is always the assholes...

Re:hollywood's perfect anti-theft technique

[jollyreaper]

FBI WARNING: DO NOT COPY THIS FILM*

If you don't want to be forced to see this message everytime you watch the movie you purchased, then copy this film and edit this out.

Or go to bittorrent - somebody has probably done this for you already. Otherwise, please wait for 30 seconds while we remind you (once again) not to copy this film.

Honest to fucking Cthulhu, while I think the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is pretty kick-ass, I think the best part is how you put the disc in and you get the pretty menu immediately, no FBI bullshit. It's like the crew that put the DVD's together said "Ok, let's cut the bollocks, we're talking about some movie magic here. Let's not put in anything to detract from it." Those are the last DVD's I've purchased and I don't begrudge Peter Jackson a dime -- though I do begrudge New Line because they're acting like total dicks to Jackson and the actors by fraudulent bookkeeping practices.

Re:If you fuckers didn't STEAL their shit we would

[TheRaven64]

You know, the people who did 'steal' their shit[1] got a much better product. Theirs played on laptops and desktops, could be downsampled and burned to DVD or played on an iPod, and loaded immediately. Maybe next time I should 'steal' it instead of buying it...

[1] This one doesn't go in quotes, because it's surprisingly accurate in the current context.

Re:...firmware update?

[rtechie]

The parent poster has an excellent point. Current firmware update procedures involved downloading a firmware file from the manufacturer's web site, creating a burning a ISO CD, and then hoping the player recognizes the update when the disc is inserted. It's a PITA for an expert, I don't think most consumers would even consider it.

Some new BlueRay players come with ethernet ports for the sole reason of connecting the player to the network to download firmware because the manufacturers have started to anticipate this bullshit.

BlueRay is doomed as a consumer video format. It's the next LaserDisc. BlueRay is still really expensive, Sony has gone out of their way to screw the early adopters, and BlueRay has nothing but bad press. This is not to say we won't see lots of BlueRay, but only for PS3 games, data archive systems, etc. BlueRay is settling into being a niche proprietary format, like UMD, MiniDisc, MemoryStick, or .

Re:...firmware update?

[geekoid]

Most people are like your dad.
Very few households have anything other then a computer online.
Millions dn't even have a computer online regularly.

Any device Blender, TV, CD player, should work stand alone.

On the practical side, look at what a nightmare it is to keep windows updated. They want to do that with firmware? God forbid something happen mid-stream.
Just thinking about what they would have to add to the device to be sure failure and interruption can be cleanly recovered from is a nightmare.

Re:Well, maybe not

[The_DoubleU]

I have the same views with books.
I buy the book. Open the book, no commercials.
I can flip to any chapter I want.
I can read it as many times as I want.
I can borrow it out to a friend.
I can sell it if I don't want to book anymore.
And that is what I want to be able to do with digital media!

Re:this is really turning me away from HD movies

[mpeg4codec]

So, these media firms have lost a faithful, paying customer.

Another poor soul deluded into believing he's the customer. Here's a tip: when you're sitting there forced to watch adverts on the disk over which you cannot skip, you're not the customer: you're the consumer.

And by the way, that's just a euphemistic way of saying that you're the product.

Re:If you fuckers didn't STEAL their shit we would

[siddesu]

... It was not until unauthorized copying and distribution became mainstream that companies felt they needed to add copy protection to their products.

You must be blind or a shill if you don't see where the real push of the music industry is targeted (so i guess i am wasting my time anyway). It is going one way only: perpetual copyrights, criminalization of the public domain (and thus potential competition), and developing technological solutions that make you pay incrementally for every time you listen to music. You know why? Because that is the most painless way to guarantee what the music industry has now -- monopoly profits, and multiply them many times over, by what economists call discriminatory pricing. incidentally, it means total control over the supply market as well. And why is it happening now, and not 20 years ago? Well, only one reason -- now they have the technology to do it (and due to the massive profits from the 80s and 90s -- the cash to finance the bribery of the various parliaments all over the world). The fight against downloaded music is an aside -- the music industry types, being the myopic idiots they are, simply had not expected the general public to adopt the same tools they use. They thought they were way too smart.

Re:Why firmware updates?

[Kris_J]

I'm not sure "vast majority" is the right phrase to use when talking about the available range of Blu-ray players. There's, what, maybe a dozen different models in the market? And five of them have some sort of issue.

Re:hollywood's perfect anti-theft technique

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Thank you for that. As a viewer in the UK, I particularly appreciate how considerate you were to include the FBI warning and DMCA-related advice on every DVD I bought for the past year, and the way you ensured that I, too, couldn't accidentally miss this important and highly relevant information by locking it on my screen for 30 seconds. Your standard of customer care is truly in a class of its own, and you can be confident that I will take that fully into account when deciding about future purchases.

Fireware Upgrade == Pirate Vector

[Malluck]

The more firmware-pushing-screw-ups the better. Every firmware upgrade released into the wild is another chance to take a peek under the hood of these blue-ray players. This is just another vector pirates can use to get inside.

I hope more screw-ups follow.

Re:Well...

[andy_t_roo]

and i'm sure that car 'theft' would similarly be quite common if there was a way to duplicate a car with no inconvenience to the person who owned the original, for less than the cost of a can of coke.

Re:hollywood's perfect anti-theft technique

[Eivind]

I always wondered about that. With digital stuff, the copy is (normally) precisely as good as the original.

Somehow producers of movies, music and games have come up with the idea of making people copy the stuff less by making the copy *SUPERIOR* to the original.

If you use copies you can;

Listen to music on your choice of players. Take a backup of the expensive game you bougth. Burn a new copy of the kid-game after the children messed up one. Watch movies on your laptop -- even if you don't use Microsoft Windows. Play games without having to insert the original DVD all the time. (which is a hassle, and risks scratching the disc sooner or later) Be certain that your movies and music will still play 50 years from now. None of this generally works if you stay with originals.

I never got it. I never will.