Good News: Blu-Ray DRM Cracked

nem · Post by **nem** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:05 pm

Awesome name for a company.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:03 pm

What does it mean for us blu ray owners though?

Post by **system11** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:34 pm

Nothing really unless you plan to copy them.

It'll be proper news when they start breaking the region coding properly - currently only a few players have hacks, and it involves modification with 2 firmware chips you switch between while on standby.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 3:44 pm

"However, it was decided for strategic reasons to wait a bit for the outcome of the 'format war' between HD DVD and Blu-ray."

Motherfucker...good to see it's been broken, but I don't think that was the right choice.

Also, yeah, region coding fixes will make me more excited. The "limited region changes" foolishness with DVD never made me very happy.

Ars also has a post up about a recent paper which describes the internet habits amongst various economic strata:

Over half the high-income parents, however, used Google, while only 8 percent of low-income parents did—they apparently preferred AOL search.

I guess it's official - old people are lower class, hmm?

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:31 pm

Nevermind, I'm a tard. They did it to make sure that only one format would be around and that it'd be cracked. I didn't have a horse in that race anyway

Specineff · Post by **Specineff** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:06 pm

LOL, Sony.

I'm kinda glad it was their format that won the war because so far there hasn't been any Sony-created encryption that hasn't been broken. Region-less for the win.

bloodflowers wrote:Nothing really unless you plan to copy them.

Right, but there's nothing wrong with me copying movies I already own in order to watch on the road, right? (And yes, I do delete them once I'm done with them)

thegreathopper · Post by **thegreathopper** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 10:48 pm

neorichieb1971 wrote:What does it mean for us blu ray owners though?

Bad news.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 5:46 am

Not really.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:23 am

Why not?

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:27 am

It isn't a smart business move to inconvenience consumers (even more than they already have) to prevent a minority of people who pirate discs from playing them. Word of mouth can be the biggest deterrent to adoption and they're not going to try doing something extremely rash that causes false positives at this point in time.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:34 am

Being able to make backups was one of the reasons why I went with DVD. Being able to copy BD will certainly not deter any consumers, on the contrary.

djvinc · Post by **djvinc** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:52 am

It's sad how many companies claim to have hack-proof protections and turn out to be wrong.
I guess more money has to be spent on (true) engineering and science instead of marketing and commerce.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:56 am

Well, they are obviously spending enough on marketing; otherwise people wouldn't call it "protection" but "restriction".

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:11 am

I wish they'd spend more money on the content that went on the discs, and less on the discs & technology themselves.

Ceph · Post by **Ceph** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 8:43 am

Don't tell me you are getting tired of watching sequels, remakes, mass-produced Hollywood crapfests and movies based on 20-year-old tv-shows? Now in high-res?

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 9:20 am

You forgot shitty games (also in high res).

Post by **system11** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:10 am

I will kind of defend HD video here. I've bought several things I owned on DVD already, on Blu-Ray. In this way, yes - it's just another repackaging of the same content they've fed us for years, but it's far from one sided. For more recent films the difference is obvious, but not in any way that would make you feel short changed by previous viewings. For older material which has been cleaned up, or originally appeared on VHS, the difference is absolutely stunning.

I watched Mad Max 2 and 2001 last week. I've never seen either film look better, in places it's like they were filmed yesterday. MM2 had one scene at night which was full of noise and light artifacts, I'm guessing they simply don't have a clean enough version of that scene to work with, the rest was dripping with detail. Things I'd never seen before came into view, mostly lost background detail. Very, very happy with the result.

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:33 am

GaijinPunch wrote:I wish they'd spend more money on the content that went on the discs, and less on the discs & technology themselves.

I don't think the problem is that they spend too little money, but that they spend too little thought -- and usually on the wrong things. But if they keep making money on it, it's hard to blame them.

I wasn't really for or against either of these formats. I doubt that most people will find BD to be a really compelling upgrade, though. DVD brought much more than just a resolution bump. Compared to VHS, DVDs are physically smaller and cheaper (which enables greater selection/availability, especially since it allows small packaging of TV series), more durable, and capable of random access, in addition to having higher picture and sound quality. BD can't offer a similarly broad upgrade from DVD. Sure, it increases the resolution, but I think most people have TVs that would benefit more from proper brightness/contrast/color calibration than from higher res.

Necronom · Post by **Necronom** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:38 pm

GaijinPunch wrote:I wish they'd spend more money on the content that went on the discs, and less on the discs & technology themselves.

In the face of absolutely stunning HD releases like Pan's Labyrinth, No Country for Old Man or Moon to (aka Protege) your statement seems simply bizarre.