BD+ Resealed Once Again

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+."

Re:Dear Sony

[IamTheRealMike]

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.

Re:Dear Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure all this new anti-anti-anti-copyright infringement encryption technology...

There, fixed.

Re:Decrypted at some point

[johnthorensen]

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.

High Cost?

[pdmd]

For those complaining about the "high" cost... You can now get Blu-ray players for Walmart starting from $125 meanwhile Amazon is selling disks starting at $13. Sure it's not as cheap as DVD, but it's gone down in price significantly over the course of 1 year.

Re:I win against blue ray every day

[plague3106]

Why the hell would I pay $1000+ for a HD tv

Well, you are aware that HD content can come from sources other than BluRay, right?

$300+ for a blu ray player

Um, BR players can be had for as little as $75. http://electronics.pricegrabber.com/blu-ray-players/p/2065/st=sort/sortby=priceA [pricegrabber.com]

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I win against blue ray every day

[karnal]

The Toshiba HD-A3 plays HD-DVDs, not BR. The lowest price your link shows is $141.69 for a Samsung BD-P1500. That, combined with the fact that to purchase the same movie in BR format costs more as well.

Re:The summary is missing something...

[overlordofmu]

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:Any "bricked" players out there?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes it has happened.. I remember my friend telling me he couldn't play I think it was Iron Man the first day he got it... then I read about a lot of people couldn't because the "dial home" servers got overloaded from the players updating the firmware and confirming the units were legit.

Re:The summary is missing something...

[sexconker]

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.

Re:The summary is missing something...

[Vektuz]

You're missing the fact that the chip itself gets an encrypted HDCP stream (that's the whole point of end-to-end encryption) and thus needs to be blu-ray (HDCP) compliant and needs to do decryption and thus have decryption keys from sony. To get those keys you (as a chip manufacturer) need to sign a ginormous 'you're screwed if these ever leak' document that is very scary.

I'm surprised BD+ is not used more than it is

[DrXym]

BD+ is not uncrackable but it makes it very difficult to extract the disk's volume key because a machine is required to run a program to obtain it. BD+ programs can be model specific and involve memory or timing tests making it difficult to emulate. Slysoft has just been able to cope so far because relatively few disks used BD+ and did so in relatively unsophisticated form. But if more studios come on board Slysoft is going to have severe trouble keeping up. This is ultimately what BD+ is meant to do - to delay and impede piracy (and fair use). The more disks that use it, the more cracks appear in the supported disk list. It's not inconceivable the big studios are planning a "big bang" where suddenly and in a coordinated fashion they all go BD+. Then it's lights out for AnyDVD. It will never recover from that.

Re:Dear Sony

[gad_zuki!]

Are you sure your external screen is HDCP compliant?

Have you bothered calling Hp about this? The geforce 9600 is HDCP compatible. According to this its a bug [cnet.com], not an HDCP issue. Who knows maybe they have a fix for this already.