BD+ Resealed Once Again 460
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+."
The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
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..
Dear Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Here's the real question (Score:3, Insightful)
don't buy it (Score:2, Insightful)
It's clear that it certainly isn't a straightforward thing to buy a BluRay movie (quite legally) and "just play it" - say, in your Linux PC. It's locked down as tight as they possibly can lock it down.
So, why would anyone buy something designed to be so restrictive to legit owners? I say: don't buy, don't pirate, just ignore the damn thing entirely. The only way the industry is ever going to change their draconian ways is if no one buys their crap.
You might say, "they'll just chalk it up to piracy!" But if no one is pirating either, it hardly matters. They will either go out of business entirely and a new thing will pop up to fill that market niche, or they will change their tune. Either way, it is consumers who have the power *if we are wise enough to use it*.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Here's the real question (Score:2, Insightful)
or 4.3-6gb 720p encode of the 50gb Blu-Ray rip that I can't tell the difference between the 720p encode and the 1080p source on my 43" TV?
Re:Here's the real question (Score:5, Insightful)
I win against blue ray every day (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Blu-ray? (Score:4, Insightful)
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:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 Blu-Ray sure beats the pants off of cable or downloadable content, even those that are terms "HD". It's all about the bit-rate there, and few other sources have even a quarter of Blu-Ray's capacity there.
Re:Blu-ray? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
troll article is trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Dear Sony (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I win against blue ray every day (Score:3, Insightful)
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:It's not a charity (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Wrong professionals (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
Wouldn't that require starting over?
Piracy Wars and the Halting Problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
"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.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
Most consumers (not nerds) care about convenience, price and quality - in that order. DVD scored massively over VHS on convenience, the price premium was small and the quality improvement was a bonus. So DVD was a massive success.
Blu-ray is less convenient than DVD. Most blu-ray users have only one blu-ray player but several DVD players. If the kids want to watch a blu-ray movie, the parents get relegated to the small screen in the kitchen; result: unhappiness and no more blu-ray sales.
The massive price premium is a second problem: why would I pay so much more for something that's less convenient?
And, in the UK, the quality uplift isn't so important. PAL DVDs are higher quality than North American ones, so Blu-ray offers less of an improvement. Also, we have smaller houses and smaller TV sets - almost all of my friends have bought LCD or plasma sets in the past few years, but very few have gone above 32" as that's the largest size that fits comfortably in the fireside alcove of a traditional UK propety.
I can't see blu-ray ever reaching a mass market. It'll be obsolete before it reaches critical mass.
Re:Dear Sony (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I win against blue ray every day (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I win against blue ray every day (Score:4, Insightful)
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:1, Insightful)
Well it sounds like you identified the problem fairly quickly. Since they give you 90 days, why didn't you just return the laptop to Costco? One of the most effective methods of showing your displeasure is to vote with your money.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't mean to be offensive, but a 25 year old movie on Blueray for $10 doesn't mean that Blueray is ready to take DVD's place yet.
LK
Blu-Ray was dead before it started (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:5, Insightful)
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:I win against blue ray every day (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dear Sony (Score:4, Insightful)
Your vacation cabin in the woods, where you want no internet access, has a blu ray player and an hdtv?
You're doing it wrong.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are many wonderful films made. Most are not making it to the screen at your local theater, but I assure you they are still being made. For instance, may I recommend "Let the Right One In"? It is a Swedish film made in 2008 and it is available on Blu-Ray. And there are classic films such as "Lawrence of Arabia", which is also available on Blu-Ray.
If you think the DVD and the Blu-Ray of "Lawrence of Arabia" are of the same quality then there is no point in continuing this discussion. We should instead start debating whether Milwaukee's Best is really the best beer in Milwaukee (it isn't). Is a good beer worth the extra price? If it tastes much better it is! Yes, they both contain alcohol. If all I wanted was to get drunk, maybe I would buy the "beast". But I enjoy beer for its flavor.
I pay more money for good beer and I pay more money for good films. I suppose it all comes down to a matter of priorities . .
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you reconcile that SlySoft can provide high quality rips of all but 19 Blu-Ray disks with the statement "Blu-Ray has not been cracked?"
Re:Any "bricked" players out there? (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that every single Blu-Ray player made up until that point would need its own separate firmware copy/version on the Blu-Ray disc, don't you?
This is a lot different than the Wii, my friend.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think the most important attribute in determining the quality of Lawrence of Arabia is the ability to count the hairs in the main character's eyebrows, I agree.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many wonderful films made. Most are not making it to the screen at your local theater, but I assure you they are still being made. For instance, may I recommend "Let the Right One In"? It is a Swedish film made in 2008 and it is available on Blu-Ray. And there are classic films such as "Lawrence of Arabia", which is also available on Blu-Ray.
Are they available in regular DVDs? if so the point is moot.
If you think the DVD and the Blu-Ray of "Lawrence of Arabia" are of the same quality then there is no point in continuing this discussion.
They're not the same, but they're *practically* the same. One's a good movie in 480p, the other's a good movie in 1080p. Either way its still a good movie.
You aren't paying for better beer, you're paying for the same beer in a nicer bottle. The package is shinier, but the content itself is still the same and, since all I care for is the beer itself, I'm going with the cheaper (and easier to find) package.
Re:The summary is missing something... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
>
That's a pretty big assumption that so far has not happened in reality. One of the beauties of BD+ is that it can completely eliminate an untrusted arch and even change the encryption stream through mandatory updates. You can choose not to install those updates, but then new titles won't play.
The content industry has shown that they're not afraid to revoke all keys for a particularly weak player.
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.
I think they're pretty satisfied with how things have gone so far on the Blu-Ray front.