HD-DVD Copy Protection cracked....now what? (1 Viewer)

[HDMS Carl Mulder]

Wow, that was quick.

 

[ppltd]

That is certainly not what the artical said. When it came to playback of the copied content, it had not been verified. This is much ado about nothing.

 

[JediFonger]

if you view the youtube.com the claim is that he is able to PLAY content back from the hard disk. we already know HD-DVD files can be copied to the disk, but playing unprotected 1080p video files BACK from the hard disk only is the trick here.

 

[Pete T C]

Before we get started, its worth saying that there hasn't actually been any third party confirmation that this "crack" actually works...

But that being said... I found out about this earlier but did some research before posting this time as the last reports of a Blu-Ray "crack" on PS3 I posted were bunk (thanks to news reporters who didn't do their research).

Here is the OP of the utility maker:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=119871

Unfortunately for us, even if it did work though as described by the author it does not "crack" HD DVD/Blu-Ray's AACS in the same way that we think of DeCSS or DVDecryptor "cracking" DVD's.

Looking at the post of the author of the utility, it appears one of the recently released software HD DVD/Blu-Ray players did not sufficiently encrypt the actual movie title keys in memory when playing back the movie (let's say PowerDVD 6.5 in this case). Therefore, this utility allows the user to "decrypt" and play current movies (with some footwork - you need to find the keys for yourself - it doesn't just run automatically) using a title key found within an active PowerDVD 6.5 session memory dump - however future HD DVD/Blu-Ray movies & drives will then add PowerDVD 6.5 to their blacklist and PowerDVD 6.5 will be unable to access future HD DVDs and therefore title keys will no longer be obtainable using the insecure player software. Your drive will be automatically updated with the latest blacklist via standard movie discs.

Therefore, if it is legit at best this crack only allows hackers to "crack" both HD DVD/Blu-Ray content released this year. Next year's releases will revoke PowerDVD 6.5's decrypt deviceID and hence everyone will lose the method to find the title keys using this method for HD DVD/Blu-Ray discs authored/reauthored in 2007... Unlike CSS (which had a very limited set of keys), using this method with AACS is more of a cat-and-mouse game, with each new movie able to ban an unlimited number of insecure players/devices.

When AACS will really be cracked is when they are able to bypass player revocation, but that has not been accomplished... yet!


AACS is Blu-Ray's main line of defense. BD+ and ROM-Mark are pretty worthless if AACS is compromised.

 

[MarekM]

yeaaaaaaah, of course, it's just nothing....., they are totaly useless, worthless,... you can add what ever you want....

Marek

 

[Ryan-G]

With so much focus on updatable firmware, even with comprimised keys, I suspect that the damage can be minimized fairly easily on both sides.

I also think that atm the file sizes are too prohibitive to make piracy an issue. 30-50 gigs is more than enough to prevent it from going mainstream. We're talking 10-20 hours under ideal conditions of 1megaByte/sec(For most), and filesharing rarely cracks 300-500kiloBytes/sec in most cases. So the number would be more likely between 20-50 hours or so for a single title.

On top of that, a dedicated person with a 500 gigabyte HD would only have sufficient space for 10 movies, and at some point the cost of the drive outweighs the gain of pirating. BR drives and discs are too expensive as well.

By the time these obstacles are overcome, IMO ATM, VoD by MS and others will have made it a moot point. As Itunes has shown, a well done On-Demand infrastructure can make piracy the minority.

 

[Carlo_M]

Ditto what Ryan said. 20-50GB per movie? That's a crapload of internal HDs. 250GB HD is, what $100? That's for 5-10 movies? And then there's the matter of either having to rent the title to rip it to your HD (another cost) or to download 20-50GB chunks. Now I have 3MBps speed on my DSL, and anything in the hundreds of MB already feels like a waste of my time. I've only downloaded a few things that come close to 1GB and those seemed interminable. Now multiply that by 20-50X? No thank you.

Until Multi-Terabyte HDs are cheap, I think this will be cost-prohibitive. What it might do (to the consumer's benefit) is push down the high cost of the discs to make them competitive. $34.95 for some BD titles is too much. They should mirror what DVDs cost, with maybe a $5 price premium, to be fair.

 

[Marko Berg]

I agree with Pete. What good is ROM Mark for Blu-ray if there is no need to burn or press pirated discs? If AACS is cracked, unecrypted content can be distributed over the Internet thanks peer-to-peer networking. If true, this is bad news for Blu-ray as well as HD DVD.

 

[MarekM]

very soon prices for media will go quite low....... and you will be able to burn Blu-ray disc easily...

for example... prices here....

BR DVD-R IMATION SL 25GB - $17
BR DVD-RW IMATION SL 25GB - $21.5
BR DVD-R VERBATIM SL 25GB - around $16.2
BR DVD-RW VERBATIM SL 25GB - around $19.5

HD-DVD-R IMATION SL 15GB - $11.8

I can buy 50GB DL disks too, but there are soldout, and I don't have price now..., and most cheap BURNER is from LG for $690

peer to peer alone can't do demage.... can you imagine to download 30-50GB file ? it's too much even with very fast link....

Marek

 

[Marc Colella]

This won't have any affect. It was only a matter of time that it gets cracked.

HD DVD and BD are too small a niche for this to make a difference, and by the way consumers are reacting to it - it'll stay that way.

For those that will pirate these HD movies, they'll be in extremely small numbers. The blank media is too pricey, very few people with HD-DVD/BD burners, and the data is WAY too huge for peer-to-peer sharing on the net.

 

[Shawn Perron]

I don't think this is about what consumers do or think they will do in terms of piracy. I think this will be more about HD-DVD and AACS proving they can in fact update the security and protect future releases. I think AACS has one chance to prove thier protection scheme is going to work. If new titles with updated protection are unencrypted again, studios may just stop releasing HD-DVD titles. I don't think there is currently enough money being made in either format at the moment for studios to consider allowing unencrypted 1080p digital copies to be freely available.

 

[MarekM]

yes, data size, price of media and few burners, means very small numbers.....

Marek

 

[dpippel]

This is probably the best REAL copy protection going for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray. The DRM stuff *will* be cracked, no doubt about it. Moving those huge files around is the real stumbling block to piracy.

 

[Chris S]

Data size and alternatives. And by alternatives I mean regular DVD piracy. I do know some people that pirate video and most of them could care less about the quality. Take YouTube as an example. It's low quality but the video is very quick to load. The need for instant gratification will keep people from waiting 2+ days the video to come down.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I don't see how this is any different than DVD-Rs were back in the late 90s. Burners were expensive, media was pricey, etc. Prices took a nosedive rather quickly a few years ago.

Also, I wouldn't say that the data is too huge for sharing on the net. I'm not sure what the file sizes are compared to an HBO broadcast (it has to be larger, although HBO-HD is MPEG 2..so maybe not) but I know that HD stuff has been shared on Usenet for years.

 

[Marc Colella]

These HD downloads currently on the net are ripped from HBO and such and massively compressed to 700mb or 1.4gb in size. Compressing 25-50gb to that level is pretty pointless as the quality would be similar to HBO's feed.

Internet speeds have increased to make 700mb and 1.4gb downloads bearable, but DVD-5's and DVD-9's still quite time-consuming and not that many people download them (even though they do exist). A 25-50gb download for just one movie really isn't worth the trouble - especially with ISP's setting download limits. Internet speeds will improve over the next few years but only marginally for most people.

 

[Vincent_P]

..........

 

[Ryan-G]

I've seen as high as 4 gigabytes shared on Usenet, and we're talking thousands of seperate posts that have to be d/l'd and combined. Without a dedicated newsreader, just 1 single missing piece of a piece can tank the whole thing without PAR's. Many ISP newsreaders have retention rates in days, or cycle the group every X number of posts, and most ISP newsreaders have are terrible about getting all of the pieces. We're talking 5 to 12 times the number of files now, we're talking tens of thousand of posts, potentially a hundred thousand posts, for a single title. I'm not even sure dedicated newsreaders have the capacity to handle this kind of posting.

As far as P2P goes, it's actually starting to reach a point of diminishing returns. Torrent-like piece-by-piece sharing is just hamstrung by this size of file. Torrents work by the original uploader sending out pieces in a certain pattern, expecting the d/lers to spread them amongst themselves in order to maximize speed until there are more seeds. Most of the time it's pretty effective as the early people keep the later people caught up, while getting their remaining pieces from them. But sometimes, when the uploader is bandwidth limited compared to the downloaders, or if the uploader goes offline for a few, the d/lers all catch up together and are all just waiting on each piece the uploader sends.

This is where files this size will end up initially. Since downstream exceeds upstream by a very large margin in most cases, the d/lers will all be waiting on each piece. At that point, the intent of the P2P has broken down and it's essentially the same as a direct transfer. With most files today the size is small enough that even if a catch-up occurs, it sorts itself out fairly quickly. But with 20-50 gigabyte files, this is going to be the rule.

So, in short, at 20-50 gigabytes, it's very reasonable to expect the maximum throughput to be ~40-100kiloBytes/sec.

Or in terms of time, approximately 56-142 hours. 56 hours if it's 20 gigabytes and if the uploader has a godly 100kB/sec. 142 hours for 20 gigabytes at 40kB/sec or 50 gigabytes at 100kB/sec.

Well out of the range of tolerance for most people. At that point, for what you spent leaving your computer on, you might as well have bought the dang thing.

 

[Travis Olson]

It was only a matter of time obviously, but I think they're pretty safe for now. As has already been said, the file sizes are way too big for the average pirate and the cost to duplicate is too high right now. I'm sure the cost of equipment and blank media will remain that way too for at least 2-3 years depending on the market saturation of HD-DVD. Heck, dual layer DVD-Rs are still a couple of bucks a pop.

If anything good comes out of this it will be media attention for HD-DVD. It's already on the major tech sites so hopefully it will raise some awareness for people that didn't care or know about the format before.

 

[Pete T C]

Let's hypothetically assume ROM-Mark works 100% perfectly as advertised and hasn't been cracked also (i.e. modchip). In Blu-Ray's case if AACS is compromised (and its not at this point for either format), the movie will be ripped off the original Blu-Ray disc, decrypted, transcoded & burned to HD DVD-R for playback on HD DVD players ...or compressed to a smaller filesize for distribution over the internet (i.e. 720p). The studio still loses just as badly because it is the hidef content itself they are trying to protect, not any particular format. Although, this would be an upshot for HD DVD consumers w/ BD-exclusive studios