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."
Plus Minus (Score:5, Insightful)
Toshiba Wins Battle But Loses War to Chinese (Score:4, Interesting)
The evil mind is capable of almost anything.
Re:Plus Minus (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is fine, provided that commercial equipment can play both formats. It is a bigger deal now because they are talking about releasing content on those formats. That was never an issue with DVD+/-R, where compatability was left to the consumer to figure out. If I am burning my own DVDs, I can stick to whatever format I find works best. If I am buying a DVD from the store, it had just better work.
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.
Didn't blu-ray already win? (Score:2)
When Playstation 3 with blu-ray comes out people will be saying "Where does the line start to buy one? Oh look, it can play the HD-super-ultra-edition of Goldeneye. "
This consortium may help level the playing field for demand for eye-candy movies (LOTR in particular helps HD-DVD) but movies aren't going to
Re:Plus Minus (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:How strong is it (Score:5, Funny)
Alginate [google.com]? You want to cover them in medical dressings? Or possibly make them thicker and more tasty....
Re:How strong is it (Score:4, Funny)
Screen-Scraping to the next level (Score:5, Insightful)
Scrape. Store. Burn. Sell on the street corners.
The studios will never "win," they'll only be able to manage their losses.
In the USA, it will be less of a problem as most middle-class people move to a subscription model, where they can watch what they want when they want to for a fixed monthly fee. This will take away most people's economic incentive to buy bootleg copies.
Sure, you'll still have some domestic piracy, but if the studios price things correctly, it will be drawfed by legitimate users.
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].
Whyyyyyyyyy?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Whyyyyyyyyy?! (Score:2)
More and more we see (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
HDTV != DTV (Score:5, Informative)
While I wouldnt mind if the spectrum was freed so that there could be some unlicensed bands to enable 802.11 style equipment for consumer use, I'm sure licenses for the newly freed TV bands will be auctioned off to megacorps instead. I'm just hoping that they dont just sit on them to prevent competition for high speed services.
Why do so many people confuse High Def and Digital - they are *NOT* the same thing, nor do they always go hand in hand.
You *CAN* broadcast HighDef in analog, and you *CAN* broadcast digital, and still be using standard definition (and if stations are forced go digital, it isnt all that likely that they will switch to HighDef)
Re:HDTV != DTV (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they will be auctioned; part of the point is for the Feds to make money.
" I'm just hoping that they dont just sit on them to prevent competition for high speed services"
Unlikely; one of the basic FCC rules is that licenses must be used. If a licensee doesn't use the s
Re:So, what's next? (Score:2)
Remember, competition is "good," LMAO.
Re:So, what's next? (Score:2)
Re:So, what's next? (Score:2)
HD and BR both have entertainment value (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HD and BR both have entertainment value (Score:2, Funny)
I don't think I want to see porn in high definition. Seeing all the blemishes, pimples, and imperfections will detract, not enhance, the experience.
Re:HD and BR both have entertainment value (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree.
The "home-made" segment of that industry has become very popular in the face of plastic-surgerized actresses and actors to make them look "more perfect".
Hopefully this is what will also result in cheaper massmarket HD camcorders, for, uh, home use. And stuff.
Re:HD and BR both have entertainment value (Score:2)
I could be wrong so be nice.
Re:HD and BR both have entertainment value (Score:2)
Re:HD and BR both have entertainment value (Score:2)
Does it matter? It'll all be mastered from something camcorder-quality anyway. I don't know if I've ever seen a porn DVD that had decent quality, other than Andrew Blake stuff.
Windows Media 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, anyone know how the decision is made to encode a DVD using MPEG2, MPEG4 or WM9?
Re:Windows Media 9 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Windows Media 9 (Score:2)
Re:Windows Media 9 (Score:2, Informative)
Here [slashdot.org]. But it says they were considering dropping the WMV format... who knows what'll happen in the end.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Proprietary codecs in a standard are nothing ne (Score:4, Insightful)
No MP3 in VCD (Score:3, Informative)
Your general point is very apt, of course. Except for VCD, virtually all media technologies require various patent licensing, and in practice these haven't resulted in any company gaining undo control over the technology. It just means that makes of encoders, players, and/or content have to pay a fee to make the stuff. But the licensing contracts don't let a company revoke or re-negotiate the
Re:Windows Media 9 (Score:2)
Hollywood is generally wary of Microsoft, and they could just pubish their discs in MPEG-2 or that H.something video codec, and you'd be clear of that mess for those discs.
I think Microsoft is going to have to play nice to even be competitive if disc producers have a codec choice.
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Revocation can help contain some attacks by preventing future titles from playing on a pre-chosen set of players. For example, if studios learn that pirates have hacked a player with a specific serial number, revocation makes it possible to author future titles so they will never play on that player.
So just because you own a DVD player that was hacked, you won't be able to play future DVDs? That's a load of crap.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Now that that's out of the way... they're saying that if your *specific* DVD player was used to create illegal copies of a DVD, that were later distributed, they can make sure later DVDs don't work on it, so you don't illegally distribute those, too.
While I think this whole proposition sucks, this is one of the few parts of it I don't have a problem with. If they can confirm that you're doing illegal stuff with the DVDs they sell you (see the sections on forensic ma
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Yes, it's a load of crap. First because it's not an article.. It's a marketing piece which is about to contrast this situation to Their Solution(TM).
Re:WTF? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure if you're trolling for people who haven't read the article or posted before you finished reading it yourself, but the paragraph you quoted was arguing against revocation. It's quite clear from the next two paragraphs and the first requirement listed.
From TFA: Revocation is completely ineffective, however, if pirates develop tools or instructions for hacking a popular player
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.
Very misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is it?
Is the format using "CSS with stronger encryption" in other words...once some company makes a mistake and puts the key in the clear (like Xing did with the original CSS key) then it's game over, have a field day with HD content...
Or is it some kind of improved system that uses any of the principles in the cryptography.com article? The stuff in that article would scare the pants off anyone who believes in fair use rights and using any tactics necessary to secure them. Thankfully, it sounds like this articles is merely pointing out the dream and there doesn't exist such a magic bullet.
But judging by the replies to this articles, it already looks like people are bemoaning and wailing the lost of fair use rights thanks to this unbelievably draconiam new system.
My reading leads me to believe that we should all be very very quiet, wait for HD to reach a nice sizeable market penetration, then wait for the key to appear and bring about DeCSS round II.
-JoeShmoe
.
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 p
Re:Very misleading (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason this won't work for this sort of thing is that the hardware is staying constant, so all you need to do to get a general case break is to build an emulator.
Re:Very misleading (Score:2)
If the key generation algorithm had been done correctly, DeCSS may not have been possible.
Re:Very misleading (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Very misleading (Score:3, Informative)
The Xing key helped get to this point, but it's far from necessary now.
Re:Very misleading (Score:2)
It's not like they XOR'd it or something. When you say algorithm it makes me think of something that trivial. At some point, there had to be some kind of key used, right? So the only question was how strong was that key? I don't know and trying to google for it turns up a lot of information about DeCSS but little
Re:Very misleading (Score:2, Informative)
The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] claims a home computer can brute-force CSS in 24 hours. I don't doubt it. But DeCSS runs in seconds, so it's largely a matter of convenience now.
Re:Very misleading (Score:2)
The title key is unique to the content and to the disc. It only needs to be calculated once and the
This is how you create a vast pirate market (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is going to buy either kind of player when there's such an open question as to which will succeed?
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 Bl
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.
People already downloading HD content now. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are already a large number of people downloading copies of HD TV shows, not much shorter than a full movie. You can thank BitTorrent for making that possible - and people seem willing to wait literally days for show to finish transferring.
Pirates or users? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, pirates will attack high-definition disc formats.
It should be noted that the DVD content scrambling system failed not under the attack of pirates but due to legal owners of encrypted media striving to play them on an open source operating system. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that.
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.
Where's the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
By the time this format is the standard, your kid will be, like, twelve or something. :)
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
Re:Makes me feel dirty (Score:2)
Reading your sig, and reading about how you are making DVD backups for your presumably TV-addicted two year old, I can't help wonder if there might be a correlation.
Upgrades? (Score:2)
Yes! But it will happen automatically!! (Score:2)
Sure. It'll just be a firmware patch automatically downloaded to your DVD player through the, um, power cord by, um, the Department Of... uh... The Interior.
Re:Upgrades? (Score:2)
Re:Upgrades? (Score:2)
But more importantly, with the first suggestion on c.com, you'd be expected to upgrade your player every few months, after the last one was hacked. (This is suggested as a problem in the article, but - suprisingly - is only considered undesirable when applied to either a very popular model or an entire manufacturers line. So make sure you get a really, really popular HD-DVD player, just in case. Actually, I see class action written all over this, even for low-moderate number players)
DMCA vs "Conventional Copyright" (Score:5, Insightful)
"In the U.S., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits unauthorized circumvention. Outside the U.S., however, many jurisdictions only have conventional copyright laws that only protect creative works. Normal decryption keys do not include any obvious creative element."
Now, jumping to the Constitution ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries") it is not clear that copyright must *only* be granted to works with "obvious creative element." But I liked the fact that the above comment on future security requirements acknowledged what seems to be much of Slashdot (and the tech community's) beef with copyrighting algorithms and computer software, but from the assumption that it's a GOOD thing, rather than a BAD thing.
Just an example of how you can agree on the issue while still having mutually exclusive views on the sollution.
-Trillian
Re:DMCA vs "Conventional Copyright" (Score:2, Funny)
That explains a lot piracy. Hollywood seems to have a lack of creative works as of late, so it must be OK to copy and distribute those. And any of the truly creative works will only play an my region 1 DVD player if I "pirate" them.
I give up... Video on Demand or nothing. 8) (Score:2)
But for the consumer movie market, I'm just about ready to give up on this whole thing. One has to ask: do you want to keep buying movies over and over as a new format comes out? VHS? Then DVD? Then Blu-Ray? We keep updating... jumping as a new format comes out. And part of the reason they keep comin
These formats won't take off... (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that HD-DVD and Blu-ray will go the way of Minidisc. They don't add anything remotely interresting for the average consumer. The average consumer is still buying Full-Screen edition of the movies. They won't put any money on those new formats any time soon.
Unless they pull the plug on the DVD format. Which won't happen anytime soon.
Re:These formats won't take off... (Score:2)
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.
Holy Lock-Out, Batman (Score:2)
There are a lot of states SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS to address that problem.
However, at no point (that I could detect) does the Q&A bring up a SYSTEM REQUIREMENT for the following scenario: What happens to legitimate purchasers of a given player that get
Re:Holy Lock-Out, Batman (Score:2)
"Revocation can help contain some attacks by preventing future titles from playing on a pre-chosen set of players. For example, if studios learn that pirates have hacked a player with a specific serial number, revocation makes it possible to author future titles so they will never play on that player.
Revocation is completely ineffective, however, if pirates develop tools or instructions for hacking a popular player model. This is the most common kind of security failure in consume
Dear Hollywood (Score:4, Insightful)
HD DVD has no significant features that are of value to me. Instead of focusing on new technologies, perhaps you should divert your precious R&D resources to providing better content.
With love,
The Consumer
Dear Consumer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dear Hollywood (Score:3, Interesting)
Since I knew I'll end up buying HD
Re:Dear Hollywood (Score:3, Funny)
When the next SUPERDEF on molecular cube storage (no moving parts) comes out 5 years after that, you'll have to buy your collection again. Another 5 years later, they'll have MEGADEF on atomic quantum storage devices (100 Terabytes on a chip) and you'll have to buy your collection again. Another 5 years later.....
Don't you see the game yet? Hollywood and the electronics manufacturers want to stay in business. They will be do
Yeah! Another reason to buy Mac (Score:2)
Now we can only hope M$ does not fuck it up like they did with old MPEG-4 format.
Acronym Collision (Score:5, Funny)
I started at that for a full twenty seconds thinking, "What the hell kind of crypto is involved with cascading stylesheets?"
Missing the mark? (Score:3, Informative)
Formats with Self-Protecting Digital Content(TM) solve this problem by enabling discs to carry their own security software that runs in a tiny security interpreter (VM) in each player. This software can identify and correct security problems in the player, re-establishing secure playback without revoking legitimate users' players. This capability is called system renewability or true renewability.
Who thought this up? Emulation of a player's security VM in software would eliminate the renewability of the security anyway, just as a comprimised key would. You'd have to resort to revoking the ability of a certain hacked or emulated VM to decrypt the content anyway.
This whole thing is asinine. With the right equipment you can make bit-for-bit copies of CSS-protected DVD's, thus "pirating" them withouth having to break any security whatsoever. It would be reasonable to assume this may be possible with any HD disc format as well. With any HD player, unless you integrate the codec processor into the security processor, you can probably build some hardware to get at the decrypted datastream too (169time.com [169time.com] does this type of hack).
DirecTV and digital cable and all that use this same model, only this replaces the smartcard with essentially a more limited type of smartcard on each disc. The model works with directv because to hack it you must be able to decrypt the live stream for immediate viewing. With a DVD this is not the case - you only need to be able to decrypt it once then distribute the decrypted copy. Only one person need have a hacked piece of hardware to accomplish this. This is where the true "priacy" is taking place anyawy. All this new junk does is just make players more expensive and discs harder to watch.
favorite quotes (Score:2)
Yeah, so they can one by one stop the hackers, who can just spoof the serial number on their computer. And of course $30 HD-DVD players will come about.
Doh! REFA (Score:2)
A Spensive (Score:2, Funny)
Re:A Spensive (Score:3, Insightful)
pirate (Score:2)
My mind rejects the term pirate. At what point did they run their boats up along side the MPAA and take something from them?
It's not piracy. It's something else. It may be a crime, but it's not piracy.
Love how they talk about encryption... (Score:5, Insightful)
When are people going to realize that in things like this, encryption/obfuscation/etc... will only keep honest people honest. The pirates and people who have extra time will break ANYTHING they can put on a disc.
Why is this?
The answer is so simple, which is why it flabbergasts me that people put so much time and effort into copy protection.
The decrypted content is IN THE HANDS OF THE END USER. Right there, that simple fact is why every possible method of copy protection will fail. If the end user has the decrypted content, it is possible to (obviously) retrieve that content by the end user (I know that's circular). Because of this, you can NOT protect a DVD or whatever from being copied, no matter what.
It's appalling the kind of money and time that goes into trying to keep content from the user, when in the end, it's doomed to fail and it's obvious to anyone with half a brain.
format wars will hurt media outlets (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? I didn't want to be caught with a losing proposition.
I'll buy a high-capacity DVD player only if it can play all common formats.
Message to the Media Moguls who probably aren't listening:
Either agree on a common format or make darn sure you sell affordable multi-format drives. Otherwise you aren't going to get my money. Remember, once I buy
Well, this sucks.. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can be sure that this will be a user-hostile situation. M.I. type discs, "Mr. Phelps, this disc will self destruct in 5 seconds." after watching something.
They do NOT want to allow us to keep anything.
They want recordings to operate like PPV, pay each time you watch it, even if you've recorded or BOUGHT it.
No matter how loud people bitch and squeal, they'll force this on people, one way or another.
I've got a number of old TV's. Several of them are in great condition, nothing wrong with them at all, but they won't receive HD programming. So if I want HD programming (which I don't) I would have to either buy all new TV's or some sort of set-top tuners. But, no worries, they'll make me do it anyway, I've got one more year [pbs.org] of use out of my old legacy TV's and rabbit ears.
All the local stations have begun dual-casting in HD and analog and are hawking the new technology in PSA's, urging everyone to hurry and buy a new TV set before they turn off the old.
I like the analog way. When there is a signal problem with digital, the picture breaks up and almost completely fails and the sound is either mangled beyond understanding or is muted completely. In the old analog world (that I still live in) the signal can be weak but the picture and sound is still viewable and understandable. I can turn my old TV on, turn the rabbit ears around and get the local news. It looks like crap but it's more than good enough to get the weather report. If it were digital and the signal was that bad it would have already muted the sound and put up a message on the screen "Please stand by, acquiring signal"..
So, just like they are forcing digital TV upon us, they will force whatever media type gives THEM the upper hand, the most control. They will NEVER gives us any technology that gives US the upper hand..
Encryption.... (Score:5, Insightful)
free shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
All they care about is that StupidPeople and StuplePeopid won't copy all kinds of movies, music, pictures, software, and other media. That's all they care about. Bunch of greedy scumbags. You wait and see. The free software movement is changing software. More and more governments, corporations, businesses, and individuals are switching every day. Right now, this software is catching up to commercial software in many areas. It has already exceeded it in others. In the next few years, it will exceed commercial software in many areas. The desktop will switch to free software. This same movement, I believe, will eventually take control of the music, movies, and other media industries. This movement will continue to grow, until the messiah shows up and everything is free in the world, and all work will be done by robots, and all we'll do is hang out at the beach and have a good time. That'll be cool.
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]
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD (Score:3, Informative)
- blu ray has a special coating that is meant to eliminate 90+% of handling scratches to the disk.
- blu ray holds more data (changes in materials and tolerances).
They both require the same 3 codec support in the player (MS WM9 (VC-1), MP4 (H.264) and MP2). They both need blue lasers. They both will use next generation Dolby Digital and DTS sound formats for 7.1 (or higher) surround sound. The only reason HD-DVD is even in contention is because the manufacturing methodology is nearly identical to normal DVD. Therefore, the same factories and materials can be used to produce HD-DVD and normal DVD content. With Blu-Ray all new equipment needs to be purchased and the per-disc materials costs is higher. So, the studios are faced with the following choices:
- Use a more consumer-friendly (scratch resistant, more data) format, or
- Use a format that gives us more profit.
Wonder which one will win?
Re:Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD (Score:3, Funny)
But I guess there's no fun marketoid way to abuse the word "violet", espeically without it sounding like "violent"
Even if they ignored that and called it Violet-Ray or something outright, they'd probably worry about losing sales to people who think it'll give them skin cancer.
I just want to know how long it'll be before mass production of these laser diodes make violet laser pointers easy to find and afford. =)
Re:Not on your life. (Score:3)
(I don't have a non-computer DVD player).
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.
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
Re:Not on your life. (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough. I am quite aware of my fair use rights, and certainly pay attention when they're whittled away. I even give money to the ACLU and EFF in the hopes that they can slow the whittling somewhat.
The post I was replying to was talking about `professional pirates' --
and assuming that piracy here means copying DVDs and s
Re:DVD Don - Oh yeah! I've heard of him. (Score:2)
That's DVD Jon's [nanocrew.net] hi-definition brother.
Re:Even if... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ETA & MSRP? (Score:5, Insightful)
those people are not going to simply cast aside their players and huge DVD collections for the new shiny thing that will force them to buy all their movies yet again.
Unless they wait 5 years so that the consumer doesn't get all pissy when they spend $129.95 on their 7th linited hyper digitally remastered editions of the star wars hexilogy with yoda bouncing first and then have to re-buy it again for the new format.
I do not see any HD DVD content catching on very fast. DVD-audio and sony's offering of higher def audio formats are failing horribly to attract buyers, and with most homes not even considering buying HD televisions soon It looks pretty dismal.
Yes, I own a HD tv, and if they demoed the cable TV signals and off the air signals to me instead of their perfect 1080i DVHS example material I would not have been suckered into it.
I'm just glad I only spent $5500.00 on mine, I'm betting the guy that spent $13K+ on his HD plasma is insanely pissed at the quality of programming available in the real world right now.
the cable company compresses the hell out of the signal to the point that everything looks wierd with the background almost completely still most of the time and artifacts around the actors.
Re:Copyright expiration? (Score:3, Insightful)