Blu-ray / HD DVD War...the end is near: - Page 9  

Both blu-ray and HD-DVD will use the AACS encryption method.Each device uses a unique key. If this key is revoked then the device will not be able to encrypt the data on this disc. All they have to do is revoke
the key. This key can be revoked either through on-line updates or through the discs themselves. This is already a part of blu-ray and HD-DVD specifications. The reason this is a circular argument is because some choose to dispute this fact.

Secondly, I did a funny thing last night. I taped a tv show on my vcr. Would someone like for me to send a copy of it to them so I can prove that it can be
done? I assume people are familiar with vcrs. It also cost me nothing. Cananyone make that guarantee with
HD-DVD or blu-ray?

I would suggest that some need to buy a sense of humor. I guess the phrase 'make a deal with the
devil' is offensiveto some. There's a movie called
'Beat the Devil' and it doesn't have the devil in it.


I would laugh it off because I would assume it was a joke. I've had people joke to me about owning stock in a company because I am gungho on something. I have
never verbally assaulted someone for that joke like others have chosen to do.

Ryan-G, I thought your post was very well done. You can callme cynical and you can call me crazy but I
don't think this is about piracy. I think piracy is the excuse. What Hollywood is interested in is alternative streams of revenue. Their ability to control the dvd with AACS and other copy protection controls could be used to create new streams of
revenues on activities that are free right now.

Except that it's not an indisputable fact that either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD will choose to implement all of the features of the AACS specification.

"Pan & Scan on the fly", seamless branching and multiple angles are all features of the DVD specification that are rarely, if ever, implemented. You're problem has been taking "can do" and interpreting that as "will do."

You will be able to record broadcasts on your HD-DVD or Blu-ray recorders; you can in Japan today. Why on earth would they include recording functionality if this wasn't the plan?

What you will not be able to do (without some impressive hacking) will be to direct copy an unprotected video stream to a PC and downconvert it to, say, Divx codec. Or, more precisely, you will not be able to do this without permission from the content owner.

Which is the exact same case as today, with two exceptions: 1) the DRM is better than CSS, so breaking the law will be harder and 2) they are providing a legal way to do this with HD-DVD and Blu-ray, so you don't have to break the law. Maybe for a fee. Maybe not. It's up to each individual studio.

People with HTPCs who want to use ffdshow or ZoomPlayer or even Theatertek may have a legitimate beef here; the ability to get into the market with non-standard player technology is going to be curtailed. But not being able to record broadcast TV? I can posit some theoretical mechanisms which could be used to make that work, but I can pretty much guarantee they won't be in the first several generations of players. And no one in the industry has in any way implied it will be the case.

I have heard this (on the discs themselves) a few times in this thread, how does this work?

The problem is that firmware updates is enough to create problems for some.

A new Blue-Ray disk could have a small program to check if your player has been hacked and make the movie not watchable because of it.

Let's say you modified your player to be region-free, something quite a few on this forum have done. Studio decides they don't want this so they make a small addition to their next release that can detect if you have such a player and voila! They could do anything from turn off your player (I doubt it) or simply not allow you to view this release. frustrating enough but this could also mean a restriction of all subsequent releases from this particular studio.

this is just one example but the precedent would be there.

Thanks PeterTHX for the reassurance that VC-1 content won't be a contouring/banding/dithered mess.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6273127.html

"High-def arms race"

That totally sucks monkey dick. I personally own a digital television with no HDMI. Then again it is only a small EDTV (I was lucky to convince my parents to go that far) with resolution of 800 x 540 resolution. If they do offer High Definition over components it will only make a 30% difference for me. I am now saving up and waiting for a true 1080p model. Still I think Hollywood is making a mistake. D-VHS offered high definition over components. The early adopters who have the older component HDTVs are probably the first to by the new formats. Whatever money lost by the component copying has got to be signifigantly less then then the money lost from pissed off early adopters.

Nothing new about that news.

At least Fox and Disney have mentioned that they have no intention of downrezing HD over component, which the editorial fails to mention. Hopefully other studios will follow suit.

Officially only the HD-DVD group has mentioned component downgrading. The Blu-Ray group has not. It has been assumed and strongly rumored but not confirmed. If Fox and Disney truely do not want component downgrading the Blu-Ray group might allow components. As if the HD-DVD group isn't in bad enough shape as it is imagine how bad it would loose if Blu-Ray allowed 1080i over component and HD-DVD didn't. Could somebody provide a link to the Fox and Disney thing. I haven't heard of them mentioning such a thing.

It's not that HD-DVD doesn't allow HD over component; it just gives the option to studios to flag their releases for downrezing. If a studio doesn't want to alienate the HD early adopters, they don't have to use the flag on their releases.

I don't remember where I originally read about the Fox/Disney thing, but Peter mentioned it a few posts ago. Maybe he has a link.

Well the way I see it if only certain titles allow component high definition on either format you can bet your ass that those titles will have higher sales and it will probably convince the remaining studios to do the same. Really I hate such measures that punish the many because of the actions of the few. Not to mention since all 1080p televsions have HDMI I just allow 1080i and 720p and people will still have to use HDMI for full resolution.

This is where the problem starts though Rolando.

For this to occur, two things must be built into a Player.

The ability to read a program into the Player, and the ability to execute the program on the Player. This also means that somewhere in the Player is a Processor and some amount of memory.

The scenario you explained also means that the Processor and memory have access to the Firmware at a minimum, and potentially more.

That's all that's needed. From there all the Hacker has to do is code within the constraints of the existing memory, burn it to a disc, and let it execute on the Player. Depending on the Player, and what's contained in the Firmware, it's entirely possible, even probable, that the Hacker could hack out the ability to lock down the Player.

Further, this gets even more dangerous in that this kind of access could potentially comprimise the encryption/decryption key, allowing the entire encryption scheme to be broken in record time. If that processor can, in any way, access the encryption key then the possiblity exists that the Hacker can devise a way to display that key.

It's just never a good thing when you create the ability to execute code openly, especially on something that needs to be secure. If it can execute code openly, it can be hacked.

Both approaches, if they were used to lock down Players, would easily result in safeguards being broken in record time.

Bad news folks. Heres something I found on yesterdays HD-DVD demonstration.

"Warner Home Video wasted no time Wed. in contesting a report it had joined the Blu-ray camp and would support that format as well as HD DVD. "We have not made any announcement about Blu-ray," a spokeswoman told Consumer Electronics Daily in response to our query about a report in online journal The Register Wed. that Warner had added allegiance to Blu-ray.... "Absolutely nothing has changed since last week," the executive told us, requesting anonymity. "

Warner is not yet a blu-Ray supporter but then again they never said that they wouldn't support Blu-Ray. Still we were told they would make the announcement last week and we have yet to get a definitive announcement of Warner switching sides. Most believe when Warner does announce it will be the end of HD-DVD. Even though I personally considered it over when Sony revieled the Playstation 3.

I heard by the end of the month, not the end of last week.

Warner is going to stretch this out as much as possible in order to bait the Blu-Ray consortium into sweetening the deal for them (ie Sony underwrites a bigger percentage of the disc production costs). They're like the reluctant car buyer who the salesman/dealer always ends up catering to with a better "final" offer.

Yep - last I heard Warner was supposed to announce by the end of the month.

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6266816.html?

The main question is if Warner does switch and especially if Universal follows will HD-DVD even bother to launch. With twice the studio support, the Playstation 3, and technological superiority of Blu-Ray will HD-DVD even try. I agree Warner is probably going to drag this out for a while. Personally the suspense is killing me.

Depends.

If Toshiba's able to make it to the Market significantly before Blu-Ray is ready, Toshiba will likely ship HD-DVD counting on the Uninformed, the "Too much money for their own good", and the "It gives me STATUS!" people to buy their Players. If a miracle happens and HD-DVD succeeds, great.

But if it fails as expected, those people will at least let Toshiba recover some of the development costs, and then Toshiba's "Admits defeat" and goes Blu-Ray with everyone else.

At this point, Toshiba may very well decide to ship and admit defeat later, just to try to recoup some of the costs. They really have nothing else to lose now, as it's pretty clear they're on the losing end.

Only way this scenario can be avoided is either if HD-DVD isn't able to ship significantly before Blu-Ray, or if Sony offers some compensatory package that lets Toshiba recover some of their expenses, like lower licescening fees for the Blu-Ray tech, letting them go to Market with cheaper Blu-Ray players than everyone else for a short time.

Toshiba could ship players today, but, without product to PLAY on those players what is the point?

Sweet Jesus, that's the best news I've heard this month (if it's true, that is). Not that I care too much about Disney, but Fox....that means Star Wars in HD over component. Excellent.

Even going to the market will require Toshiba to invest further dollars into marketing and advertising that they might not recoup. If Warner jumps, it's probably in Toshiba's best interest just to cut their losses and get in on the emerging Blu-Ray player market as soon as possible. If I were them, I'd try negotiating some sort of concession deal with Sony.

Well, Lucasfilm may have something to say about that one ...

Personally, I feel it would be great if Fox and Disney take such a position and follow through with it, but I remain skeptical that they will. I'll believe it when I see it.

Yes, if Lucas shows the same attitude he had with DVD, those who are waiting for Star Wars on HD will be waiting a LONG time. So long, in fact, that they'd better be hoping the HD winner acheives mainstream success, else Lucas won't even bother.

Laserdisc never achieved "mainstream" success.

Heres a question where does Dreamworks stand on this war. They seem to be the only major studio not to commit to either format.

Dreamworks probably won't even exist as a studio in a year. They're in the middle of dealing with Universal/Paramount to sell off their library.

Here's a link.

That link wouldn't work for me. Dreamworks has a a lot of important titles and at the momment hasn't offically commited to either format. If Dreamworks is being sold off that we will see which studios get which titles.

Link works when I click it.

The gist of it is that Spielberg has good relations at Universal, and the two studios have made a good number of cofinanced films together, but at the last minute Univeral balked at Dreamworks' $1 billion asking price and reduced their offer to $900 million. Geffen walked away. Paramount then apparently approached Geffen, though this hasn't been announced publically.

Now Universal is coming back with a new offer after consulting the rest of the GE/NBC conglomerate heads.

If Dreamworks agrees to the offer, the deal won't close until after the first of the year though for tax purposes, meaning Universal would control the Dreamworks library.

It would be meaningless for Dreamworks to announce support for either format since they won't be around to support them anyway.

DreamWorks being as small as it is has very complicated distribution rights. For example, Fox owned the theatrical distribution rights to Minority Report which it co-produced with DreamWorks, but Universal owns the video distribution rights.

Since 1995 Universal has secured the worldwide home video distribution rights for most of DreamWorks's films. Their current contract with DreamWorks extends through Q3 2010.

In addition, Universal has co-produced several films with DreamWorks such as [i]Gladiator[i] and Seabiscuit.

Currently NBC (who owns Universal) has been the only company with any serious interest in buying DreamWorks, which is currently deep in debt. DreamWorks was asking for $1 billion, plus the assumption of $500 million in debt which NBC rejected and made a counter-offer of $900 million plus an unspecified amount of debt. DreamWorks turned it down and broke off talks with Universal two weeks ago. Since then NBC revised their offer and submitted it to DreamWorks on Friday. We will likely know by Monday if DreamWorks is going to accept the new offer.

Paul McElligott, you wrote:



That's because the players and discs themselves were physically very large, something that many videophiles didn't like. Because DVD's are the same physical size as Compact Discs, that meant smaller players and vastly improved ease of storage.

By the way, if Blu-Ray discs when they finally arrive in the USA no longer need the protective caddy like they do now, that could open the door for an optical drive mechanism that supports both formats on the same drive. I could see combo players that have HDMI w/HDCP outputs arriving as early as late 2006 in time for the Christmas season.