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Comments: 460 +-   BD+ Resealed Once Again on Wednesday July 01, @08:25AM

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 01, @08:25AM
from the changing-the-locks dept.
movies
media
encryption
security
IamTheRealMike writes "It's been a few months since we last checked in on how the Blu-Ray group was doing in their fight against piracy. In December 2008, a new generation of BD+ programs had stopped both SlySoft AnyDVD HD and the open source effort at Doom9. At the start of January, SlySoft released an update that could handle the new BD+ programs, meaning that Blu-Ray discs could not be decrypted for a period of time about the same length as SlySoft's worst case scenario. The BD+ retaliation was swift, but largely ineffective, consisting of a unique program for every Blu-Ray master. Users had to upload log files to SlySoft for every new movie/region. They would then support that unique variant in their next update, usually released a few days later. Despite that, the open source effort never did manage to progress beyond the Winter 2008 programs and is currently stalled completely; SlySoft is the only group remaining. This situation remained for several months, but starting around the same time as Paramount joined Fox in licensing BD+, a new set of programs came out which have once again made Blu-Ray discs unrippable. There are currently 19 movies that cannot be decrypted. It appears neither side is able to decisively gain the upper hand, but one thing seems clear — only full-time, for-profit professionals are able to consistently beat BD+."
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Submission: BD+ resealed once again by IamTheRealMike (537420)
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  • It's important to remember that a lot of people aren't yet focused on bluray. DVD ripping was a must have and many different open-source and closed-source programs popped up over the years because DVD had critical mass. As a previous ex-blu-ray-early-adapter, it may be that people just don't care about blu-ray the same way.. yet. I think if blu-ray ever catches on like DVD did, the story would be different.

    I stopped caring about blu-rays, they became too much hassle (and too expensive) for not enough of a quality boost. Maybe in the future when they really start to overtake DVDs (on price too) I'll reconsider. But at the moment, I highly doubt I'm the only one who has no more than one or two blu-ray movies and rented the rest. The big reason I'd have wanted to rip was to keep a digital copy of my collection. Since I don't even have a collection, that will hold off till I stop caring about DVDs.

    Blu-ray may yet die a horrible death..

    • it may be that people just don't care about blu-ray the same way.. yet. I think if blu-ray ever catches on like DVD did, the story would be different.

      You're absolutely right. Furthermore (and perhaps crucially), it would take a significant increase in at-home internet bandwidth / quotas for that to be any different. Can't see many of us throwing 30 gig down on one michael bay movie :-) (Yes, ripping bluray->smaller formats still could be advantageous but I think it would be fair to say, few can be bothered with such tedium).

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by samkass (174571)

        The best use-case for ripping for me is to bring a movie with me on my iPhone. But Blu-Ray discs increasingly contain a full low-res version that can be ripped to the iPhone, fulfilling that need. The next most common need I've heard cited (but am not affected by myself) is the ubiquity of DVD players in car entertainment centers, meeting rooms, etc. Once the licensing, circuits, optics and laser for Blu-Ray are down to trivial cost we'll see that support explode.

        All I can say is that on a recent HDTV Bl

      • Not to mention the average home user ATM really doesn't care about BD. The few customers I have had ask about BD said "no thanks" when they found they couldn't rip like they can with DVD. The DVD rippers have gotten so butt simple that even the most computer illiterate can rip them, and I have found many do. Not to pirate or transcode, but simply to make a backup they can toss around or let the kids use while the original stays in the box.

        What I have found with my customers that most just go "meh" when it comes to BD. If they want to rent a flick a redbox is just around the corner, and when they want to buy they like to have it backed up. Maybe when everybody has huge HDDs(I still see many customers with 80-160Gb as their only storage on their PC) and big fat pipes so they are exposed to more high def content that will change, but with how lousy the cable/teleco duoploy is about running new lines and instead just want to cap everybody I doubt it.

        For most folks DVD is "good enough" and the abundance of cheap players and cheap movies has made BD a non starter here. I am beginning to wonder if the pissing contest between HD-DVD and BD has ultimately doomed both formats, as more and more folks I talk to are just trying out Hulu and finding the convenience more appealing for TV shows, and redbox has the movie rental experience so smooth most rental stores around here are having to offer all kinds of deals just to stay afloat. BD may yet end up a dead format, with just PS3 owners and a few videophiles using it. After all, didn't I read somewhere [slashdot.org] that more folks own a HD-DVD than BD?

      • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Informative)

        by sexconker (1179573) on Wednesday July 01, @10:58AM (#28543501)

        What are you talking about?
        The standard is to encode a blu-ray rip down with x264. 720p in 4.37 GB and 1080p in 7.93 GB (single layer and double layer DVD +/- Rs).

        Of course there are people out there who will just encode with a constant bitrate / quality target without caring for final file size (and some people who exceed 8 GB on purpose to make it seem like their release has higher quality, or just to piss people off).

        It's a very active scene.
        Rips can be had easily.
        Encodes in various formats, sizes, resolutions, etc. can be had very easily.

    • Yup (Score:3, Insightful)

      by metamatic (202216)

      I have a Blu-ray player and HDTV.

      I still buy DVDs, even when the Blu-ray disc is available, because Blu-ray isn't enough of a quality upgrade (compared to a DVD player with a good upscaler) to be worth the functionality loss.

    • It's important to remember that a lot of people aren't yet focused on bluray.

      DVD Jon and Co. cracked CSS in 1999, long before DVD hit its stride. The reality is that CSS was vastly easier to circumvent, virtually trivial, compared to the protections on HD media. AES encryption is not something that can be broken in a few minutes by a cracking program. We're talking about a fundamentally difficult encryption method.

      The main issue here is that the content industry has built Blu-Ray distribution around devices which do not trust their owners. This is the first concrete deployment of "trusted computing" type system, and the reality is that it is working. Despite the best efforts of hackers everywhere, Blu-Ray has not been cracked and most likely never will be.

      The content industry has won this round, and will continue to win with ever more secure encryption and a legion of untrusting, internet connected players in peoples living rooms. The genie is back in the bottle. Once DVD dies, or is executed, the age of high quality movie rips will be behind us.

        • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Mix+Master+Nixon (1018716) on Wednesday July 01, @10:53AM (#28543405)

          Moreover, Blu-Ray *was* cracked. The updated BD+ is taking some time, but once they figure out how to emulate the virtual machine better, it will again fall. The downfall of Blu Ray is built in - accurately emulate an official virtual machine, and the disc will decrypt itself for playback.

          The studios'll keep breaking the virtual machine emulator, and the emulator will keep improving... until eventually the emulator is good enough that it simply doesn't break. Then I can actually start buying the Blu-ray movies instead of getting ripped copies of them, as they'll work in my media center box. Though I will say that it is amusing watching the movie studios fighting this hard and spending so much capital, all to prevent me from giving them money.

    • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:4, Informative)

      by overlordofmu (1422163) on Wednesday July 01, @10:52AM (#28543371)
      I feel like there is a huge groupthink happening here. Do we all really dislike Blu-Ray? Is there no one else that finds the quality unbeatable and worth the price?

      I cannot believe you do not appreciate the quality difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray. That is as bizarre to me as people, and there are many of them, that say they cannot tell the difference between a CD and a 192 kbps MP3. I think those people have hearing problems. The loss of quality is like nails on a chalkboard.

      In both cases, the difference is striking and the higher quality product is significantly better. I love my Blu-Ray films and I love losslessly compressed audio (FLAC anyone?).

      I see Blu-Ray as a significant step forward and as a film lover, I truly appreciate the quality of this format. No satellite, broadcast TV or cable company is giving me the quality of HD signal that the Blu-Ray format does. Blu-Ray is the best in show for the quality category for digital multimedia.

      Now, is it more expensive than DVD?
      Yes.

      More importantly, is it TOO expensive?
      I answer firmly, "No. The quality justifies the price."

      Prices are less expensive, considering inflation, than DVDs were at this same period in their adoption cycle. Also, as adoption/market-share increases prices will drop as well.

      I care about Blu-Ray because I care about film and quality is important to me. May Blu-Ray have a long, happy life.

      • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by xorsyst (1279232) on Wednesday July 01, @11:05AM (#28543659) Journal

        I cannot believe you do not appreciate the quality difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray. That is as bizarre to me as people, and there are many of them, that say they cannot tell the difference between a CD and a 192 kbps MP3. I think those people have hearing problems. The loss of quality is like nails on a chalkboard.

        Hell, I can't tell the difference between a CD and a 128 kbps MP3, except maybe if I really, really concentrate. I can't really notice the difference between DVD and VHS either. I guess I'm just thinking about the content, not the quality.

      • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Draek (916851) on Wednesday July 01, @11:23AM (#28544019)

        I feel like there is a huge groupthink happening here. Do we all really dislike Blu-Ray? Is there no one else that finds the quality unbeatable and worth the price?

        Not really.

        I cannot believe you do not appreciate the quality difference between a DVD and a Blu-Ray. That is as bizarre to me as people, and there are many of them, that say they cannot tell the difference between a CD and a 192 kbps MP3. I think those people have hearing problems. The loss of quality is like nails on a chalkboard.

        Yeah, except here the 'loss' of quality simply comes from having less pixels, not from compression artifacts which are what produce the "nails on a chalkboard" effect. It is simply less bothersome for most people.

        In both cases, the difference is striking and the higher quality product is significantly better. I love my Blu-Ray films and I love losslessly compressed audio (FLAC anyone?).

        And there's where we disagree. You see, DVDs look good, Blu-Rays look great, but the majority of my opinion of the end product is determined by the content itself. Transformers is shit on DVDs, shit on Blu-Ray, and shit on the cinema screen, it is *not* 'significantly better'. And Mozart's Requiem is awesome on 192k MP3s, and only marginally more awesome on lossless FLACs, the MP3s may have some compression artifacts but the *music* itself is still the same. Furthermore, all I pay for FLACs over MP3s is the fraction-of-a-dollar increase in storage space, not so with Blu-Ray.

        More importantly, is it TOO expensive?
        I answer firmly, "No. The quality justifies the price."

        And I answer firmly: FUCK YEAH! Blu-Ray players are 5x the price of a DVD player with similar features, movies are at least twice as much as regular DVDs, and all for what? higher resolution. DVDs had multiple audio tracks and user-selectable subtitles in many different languages, plus "behind the scenes" features and complementary material compared to VHS, but all Blu-Ray offers me is just same old crap in high definition. Gee, no wonder I'm in no rush to buy one of those things.

      • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bobcat7677 (561727) on Wednesday July 01, @10:31AM (#28542973) Homepage
        Agreed. There is that "certain something" missing from Blu-Ray that would make it the next big thing. I was shocked when my wife (who is not terribly tech savvy) flatly stated that there was little point in us buying a Blu-Ray player because we should wait for the "next thing after Blu-Ray". And added that "Blu-Ray feels like laser-disk". I was about to argue that there isn't anything after Blu-Ray but then quickly realized that at the time I bought my ill fated lazer disk player back in the day, DVDs were not out there yet either:) So I took it as simply one of those woman intuition things that I would be wise to heed and decided to leave the Blu-Rays on the shelf.

        • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Funny)

          by sexconker (1179573) on Wednesday July 01, @11:04AM (#28543651)

          *Whip cracking noise*

        • Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cens0r (655208) on Wednesday July 01, @11:23AM (#28544021) Homepage
          But I don't think there is any logical successor to Blu-Ray except for downloads. Blu-Ray provides 1080p video. Unless you have a massive screen and a projector, moving the resolution up isn't going to improve the perceivable quality at all. For 99% of the people 1080p will be the highest resolution you ever need. Blu-Ray provides 7.1 channels of lossless audio at 96 kHz/24bit (and in some cases 192 kHz). You'll never need higher quality audio than that, and the number of channels is more than sufficient for the foreseeable future. It's already had to fit a 5.1 channel system in a lot of rooms. A 7.1 channel is do-able in most places that you can put a 5.1, but I can't see a time where anyone but the most obsessive people are putting more than 8 speakers in their homes (assuming there isn't a radical change in speaker technology). This isn't like the 640k is enough for everyone argument either. With the quality of Blu-Ray we've basically surpassed what we can perceive with our natural senses.

          Maybe at some point we have OLED wall paper with hundreds of point source ultra sound speakers. In that case you could possibly use more channels of audio and higher resolution, but that kind of stuff is still mostly just theoretical at this point. Or maybe we all start augmenting ourselves, and we gain the ability to perceive higher quality. I just don't don't think either is likely in my lifetime. Even if I could affordably make an entire wall into a TV, my wife would never let me.

          So, I'd wager that Blu-Ray is the last physical format for home video that we ever see. The world will eventually move to downloads for everything. Eventually the bandwidth will become cheap enough for Blu-Ray quality movies to be delivered digitally, and the majority of consumers will move to that. However, there will always be a small minority of people who want a physical copy and that's probably always going to be Blu-Ray. The disc is small enough (do you really thing a smaller disc would be enough reason for people to switch, because I don't especially with the infrastructure in place for the standard disc size.), cheap enough to manufacture (I think it will always be cheaper to press a disc than to create some sort of flash memory), and we've already covered the quality. About the only argument for a different physical format would be the speed at which the movies load (reading data off a disc has a maximum speed), but each generation of players is faster than the last, so I don't see that as a compelling reason to upgrade. If DVD was good enough for a large chunck or consumers, Blu-Ray is good enough for 99% of them. I just can't envision any other physical format ever surpassing it. It may end up as a niche product when downloads get to that quality, but I don't think it will ever go away.

  • Dear Sony (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Wednesday July 01, @08:29AM (#28541381)

    I don't care about your little IP war. All I know is, the first time I pop a blu-ray disc into my $300 player and it refuses to play because of one of your new little one-upmanship encryption schemes, I'm going to be plenty pissed. And I bet there are any number of ambulance-chasing trial lawyers out there are who going to be looking to make some big money off some nice class action suits everytime one of your new schemes renders all our existing players obsolete too.

    P.S. And no, "Well you may be able to get a firmware update from your player's manufacturer" doesn't cut it.

    • Re:Dear Sony (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 01, @08:37AM (#28541459) Homepage Journal

      ... one of your new schemes renders all our existing players obsolete too.

      As someone who's still using DVDs, I see this from a slightly different angle. In my brain I'm thinking about the future and how difficult it's going to be for device manufacturers to support this format "consisting of a unique program for every Blu-Ray master." I mean, while the fight was HD DVD vs Blu-Ray, I was looking forward to "movie players" in the future being able to play anything under the sun and since the disc is standardized in size you'd be able to have players be backward compatible for multiple technologies ... maybe even leave open possibilities for up-converting old discs.

      But after reading this story, I'm sure all this new anti-anti-anti-theft encryption technology requires you buy a license to use the per master programs and that these programs require a ton of chipset/memory on the device to decrypt these things. By the time you've foot the bill for the hardware and IP licenses on the technology, the universal player isn't going to be worth it.

      It currently may spell annoyance/lawsuit but I predict the future techies will look back and frown upon what was done when future generations are left to be curators of digital media and wacky encryption schemes.

      • Re:Dear Sony (Score:5, Informative)

        by IamTheRealMike (537420) on Wednesday July 01, @08:44AM (#28541541) Homepage
        The BD+ VM is pretty simple actually and can be implemented in software. I imagine the bulk of the cost is in licensing, not the actual technical cost of implementation. And by the way, BD+ only really digs into your player if it's known to be compromised. If a new version of the player firmware is released that resecures it, BD+ programs won't bother to do any checks on it.

    • I win against blue ray every day (Score:5, Insightful)

      by syousef (465911) on Wednesday July 01, @08:49AM (#28541615) Journal

      I win against blue ray every day because I don't own a blu ray player and have never bought a blu ray disc. I recommend you do the same. Don't buy the discs then get pissed and try to sue. Vote with your feet.

      • Re:I win against blue ray every day (Score:5, Interesting)

        by elrous0 (869638) * on Wednesday July 01, @09:05AM (#28541767)
        Sadly, if you want HD content (and not that overcompressed downloaded crap), blu-ray is the only choice now. It's a shame too. I have an HD-DVD player which loads discs and performs MUCH faster than any blu-ray player I've ever had. And the HD-DVD format had a lot cheaper prices for discs, more lax region coding, didn't make unskippable opening trailers a seeming prerequsite for the format (seriously, every single blu-ray I buy seems to have these annoying things), and was generally WAY more consumer friendly. Blu-ray seems more geared to the studios; their trailers, their encryption, etc.; than to the person actually BUYING the disc. It's like the studios invented blu-ray just to piss people off and turn them off to the whole idea of a HD video format.

        • Re:I win against blue ray every day (Score:5, Interesting)

          by syousef (465911) on Wednesday July 01, @09:11AM (#28541831) Journal

          It's like the studios invented blu-ray just to piss people off and turn them off to the whole idea of a HD video format.

          If so it worked for me! I grew up with crappy VHS tapes that lost tracking, had snow, and generally had poor picture quality. DVD is heaven to me. Why the hell would I pay $1000+ for a HD tv and $300+ for a blu ray player so I can put up with unbreakable encryption, crappy region coding, overpriced discs, unskipable ads and propaganda. For what? A bit more detail in the picture? There truly isn't another advantage to the format that even interests me. They can keep it.

        • If you don't mind buying your players and discs from China, there's always CBHD...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by thedonger (1317951)

          Blu-ray seems more geared to the studios; their trailers, their encryption, etc.; than to the person actually BUYING the disc. It's like the studios invented blu-ray just to piss people off and turn them off to the whole idea of a HD video format.

          They invented Blu-Ray to fully monetize the high-def video market, which includes all those things in the first sentence.

          • Re:I win against blue ray every day (Score:4, Insightful)

            by houstonbofh (602064) on Wednesday July 01, @10:02AM (#28542549)

            Blu-ray seems more geared to the studios; their trailers, their encryption, etc.; than to the person actually BUYING the disc. It's like the studios invented blu-ray just to piss people off and turn them off to the whole idea of a HD video format.

            They invented Blu-Ray to fully monetize the high-def video market, which includes all those things in the first sentence.

            That is funny. I thought you needed customers to fully monetize something.

    • Re:Dear Sony (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ground.zero.612 (1563557) on Wednesday July 01, @09:06AM (#28541777)

      All I know is, the first time I pop a blu-ray disc into my $300 player and it refuses to play because of one of your new little one-upmanship encryption schemes, I'm going to be plenty pissed.

      Amen brother. I recently bought a $1200 HP Pavillion with blu-ray player and gf9600, 4gb ram yadda yadda. What interested me the most was 500gb HDD, blu-ray player, and hdmi out...

      I was pissed off the very first time I played a blu-ray. You see, HDCP shut me down before I even got to the blu-ray menu. I am still very pissed off because nowhere on the box, or in the press kit; was a notification saying that although this computer has a blu-ray player AND HDMI out, that you will not be able to play a single blu-ray disc through that port. The best I get is upscaled DVDs, which I'm not surprised they haven't put BD+ on dvd's now to prevent me from doing even this.

      I tried to purchase AnyDVD-HD but my Visa is declined for "109 Euros too high, authorization declined" which my bank has no idea what that means. I refuse to buy a PS3 for many reasons and I refuse to pay out another $200+ for a standalone player. I feel a bit duped by the movie studios into buying a blu-ray player that is only good on the small 17" screen built into my laptop, which does not handle 1080p :(

    • Re:Dear Sony (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MobyDisk (75490) on Wednesday July 01, @09:16AM (#28541883) Homepage

      The power of BD+ [wikipedia.org] is that they can do this without breaking existing players, because they can actually change the encryption [wikipedia.org] on the new disks, while still supporting the existing players.

      Everybody laughs that DRM can never succeed - but BD+ has taken DRM to an entirely new level. It is a shame so much brain power was devoted to hustling people - I like to think that if this same amount of intelligence were applied to legitimate problems, we might have a man on Mars, or a fusion power.

  • maybe (Score:5, Funny)

    by speedtux (1307149) on Wednesday July 01, @08:29AM (#28541391)

    only full-time, for-profit professionals are able to consistently beat BD+

    Maybe open source developers have better things to do than to do legally questionable things in order to circumvent copy protection on an overpriced, obsolete distribution format?

  • And nothing of value was lost (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Goodl (518602) on Wednesday July 01, @08:36AM (#28541453)
    Time and again the drm has been cracked, why should we think otherwise for this latest iteration. I just don't think enough people are concerned / bothered about it to build up sufficient momentum in the open source arena. The closed source with a paying userbase just hasn't reached critical mass for them to devote enough resource

  • Here's the real question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iCantSpell (1162581) on Wednesday July 01, @08:40AM (#28541489)
    50gb Blu-ray RiP or 1-3gb DVD-RiP?

    • Re:Here's the real question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IamTheRealMike (537420) on Wednesday July 01, @08:46AM (#28541583) Homepage
      Yeah, exactly. I'd be surprised if BD+ really reduced piracy. I suspect most pirates will just grab the lower quality but still highly watchable DVD rips. I guess if BluRay penetration increases studios might start releasing the DVD copies months after the BluRay copies, but there'll always be a large contigent of people who just don't care about the quality increase. I think piracy is mostly about convenience after all.

  • give it some time... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rob13572468 (788682) on Wednesday July 01, @09:06AM (#28541783)
    The arms race with BD+ mirrors exactly what happened with sattv hacking 10 years ago. The encryption starts out simple and uses a minimal implementation of the BD spec. Once that is compromised the ip holders inevitably move to the more complex implementation of the spec. Currently this involves uploading a code package with each new release that performs the decryption, blacklist checking, and ultimately a system integrity check (the latter makes sure that BD+ API has not been patched to allow unconditional decryption which is the method slysoft uses). With every release, the IP holder looks at how the system has been hacked and writes a specific code package to detect those changes. The end result of this game is that the system will become totally compromised as hackers will simply rebuild the entire BD+ VM and API in emulation and allow for patching outside of the VM implementation (e.g. the system will respond as a valid unhacked system to any checks via VM code packages but will still perform unconditional decryption) Once that happens its over for BD+ as the only possible countermeasure is to attack flaws in the emulator implementation and those are easily fixed. Give it a year or so...

  • troll article is trolling (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tiber (613512) <josh.knarr@gmail.com> on Wednesday July 01, @09:13AM (#28541851) Homepage

    It appears neither side is able to decisively gain the upper hand, but one thing seems clear â" only full-time, for-profit professionals are able to consistently beat BD+.

    That's like saying "only government funded, for profit individuals have any hope of working on the space shuttle". But the space shuttle isn't represented in the majority of homes yet. Come back when enough people have BD+ to make it interesting.

  • Any "bricked" players out there? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by scharkalvin (72228) on Wednesday July 01, @09:20AM (#28541947) Homepage

    Does anybody reading this own an early BD player that no longer will work
    due to changes in BD+? Has anybody reading this had to get their BD
    player firmware updated to play existing or new discs as a result of
    changes in BD+ (firmware updates to get new features such as BD live
    don't count)? I know that the design of BD+ makes this possible, but
    has it actually happened?

  • one thing seems clear â" only full-time, for-profit professionals are able to consistently beat BD+.

    In this case, the "professionals" (hah!) would be the knuckledraggers at Sony who approved this fiasco. They beat BD+ so thoroughly that I have no desire to go anywhere near it.

  • Piracy Wars and the Halting Problem... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nweaver (113078) on Wednesday July 01, @09:46AM (#28542333) Homepage

    "Piracy wars are not solved by solving the halting problem. Piracy wars are solved by making the other poor bastard solve the halting problem..."

    This is actually a really clever and somewhat unexpected approach that the BluRay DRM folks have hit on. Rather than doing DRM, have a program and basically force those who are cracking the disks to crack every title differently. Its basically force those who want to develop ripping software to do AV style analysis on every new disk that comes out.

    Yes, the DRM on any individual disk will always fall eventually because all the data must be on the disk and recoverable from the disk by the player. But it makes it very VERY annoying for those writing the unauthorized decryption software.

  • There are certain reasons people want to switch to a new format (eg. VHS -> DVD or DVD -> Blu-Ray)

    1) Convenience - VHS had to be rewound, you had to wait for it to fast forward in order to skip parts. DVD can be repositioned on the fly. Blu-Ray is similar to DVD in that regard, so no win.
    2) Quality - VHS degraded over time and DVD had a much better resolution. Blu-Ray is supposedly better only if the original source was better than DVD. A lot of small studios don't have 1080p camera's, a lot of consumers don't have 1080p TV's. 720p or 1080i is the current budget format and unless you're going larger than 42" it's not really noticeable.
    3) Price - Maybe that should be on top but DVD in the beginning was just as expensive as Blu-Ray. The only reason it took off fairly fast was because of 1 and 2. DVD only killed VHS when the prices had come down so low that there was no real difference between a VHS or a DVD player and a VHS tape or a DVD disc. By then DVD was cracked by a certain kid named Jon.
    4) Features - DVD had features that VHS couldn't give (commentary, different audio tracks, extra's) and Blu-Ray has the same exact features. However the added features of Blu-Ray (internet connectivity etc.) will hardly be used because of the inconvenience of having to put in the disk. DVD's have the capability of similar features like games etc. on some discs but again hardly anyone uses them.

    The problem that Blu-Ray has which will leave it dead is that the price can never be on par with DVD if the studios are trying to keep control over the Blu-Ray format. How much does it cost to keep re-encrypting, offering firmware, fine-tuning the DRM? You can put it on a DVD and press it for cheap with or without the encryption. Blu-Ray already costs more to press it but now you're going to have to keep remastering it as well and then you'll have to contact all the vendors and let them update firmware in their current stock, at the customers' side, deal with complaints and keep exchanging units where either flashing went wrong or the customer is too incompetent to do it themselves. This will keep the cost of both players and media high and then the customer will complain to their friends that Blu-Ray players are always having issues.

  • To paraphrase Tyler Durden... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tholomyes (610627) on Wednesday July 01, @10:41AM (#28543155) Homepage

    Man, I see in Slashdot the smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation fighting encryption, cracking protection; slaves with DRM collars. Advertising has us chasing movies and music, using formats we hate so we can watch movies we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose of place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a format war; our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised by technology to believe that one day we would have universal formats, backwards compatibility, and ease of use. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

    • Re:Blu-ray? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sir_Lewk (967686) <<sirlewk> <at> <gmail.com>> on Wednesday July 01, @08:56AM (#28541665)

      You managed to buy that disk for only $9 because the format is dead. That's like me saying VHS is better because I can pick up tons of cassettes for pennies at yardsales.

      • Re:Blu-ray? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jedidiah (1196) on Wednesday July 01, @09:12AM (#28541847) Homepage

        This is 2009.

        As long as you can get the data off of the media, and onto a computer the format will never really die.

        That's the real problem of "effective" copy protection
        methods. There is some risk that works will be lost
        because no one can copy them. Works being copied by
        people other than the author/publisher are the most
        effective means of preserving them.

        Far too often the author/publisher doesn't care.
        They are content to let works just "rot in the vault".

        If I wanted to spend 25G per title in disk space I would
        be snarfing up those HD-DVDs myself. I haven't watched a
        movie on it's original disk in 2 years and haven't played
        audio CD's directly in more than 10.

        Nevermind the pirates. Sony needs to worry about it's own back catalog.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by johnthorensen (539527)
      This is why HDCP exists. It ensures an encrypted pathway all the way to the electronics that drive the display pixels. You could capture at this point, but it would be a mammoth task in terms of data-acquisition. That said, HDCP is evil.

      • LVDS isn't encrypted at all, and it's usually how the bare LCD panel is driven - there's usually two (or more, but usually two for logic) PCBs in an LCD display of some kind. One takes inputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc., etc.,) and outputs LVDS. The other takes LVDS and controls the individual pixels.

        Not to mention, the LVDS protocols used by LCDs are simpler than TMDS, IIRC - it'd actually be easier to get the content from LVDS instead of DVI/HDMI.

        Of course, DisplayPort is pushing for an internal DisplayPort standard, which would give HDCP straight to the controller driving the pixels directly.

    • Re:It's not a charity (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dotren (1449427) on Wednesday July 01, @09:23AM (#28541975)

      Why can't people realise that movie companies aren't running a charity? Companies release films to make money! How many of those people who are complaining about the encryption here even pay for their DVDs these days? I'd love to place a wager on that!

      I don't think most people here are arguing against them making money. This is much more about fair use AFTER the physical media has been bought. Given the ability, these companies would charge you for the physical media, the hardware it plays on, AND another fee for each time you watch the movie. Hell, if they could figure out a way to detect how many people were watching it, I'm sure they'd want to charge a "movie watching fee" to each person too (as it is, I'm not even sure you can legally have a "movie night" at a university campus anymore without a license to show it, even though you've already purchased the DVD).

      Sure, the companies want to make money, and I don't begrudge them that AS LONG AS they actually continue making something worth buying and don't resort to trying to destroy fair use rights to get people to buy multiple copies of the same movie or multiple movie players just to watch something they already own or trying to charge for use of the media after its already been purchased.

    • Re:Care? (Score:4, Informative)

      by CRCulver (715279) <crculver@christopherculver.com> on Wednesday July 01, @09:23AM (#28541991) Homepage

      (*) A good sign that they do not is this old Redbook CD-DA Logo. Manufacturers are only allowed to put it on if they adhere to the spec. DRM is a spec violation, so no logo!

      A number of major labels have decided to no longer put the logo on their packaging even when the disc conforms to Redbook specifications.

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