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VideoNOW PVD Reverse Engineering
Zoc_All_Alone writes "In mid-July, Hasbro released the VideoNOW, a portable media player for kids. The disks are specially encoded ~3 inch audio CDs. We have started a project to reverse engineer the format, and have made considerable progress. More information about the player can be found at the Hasbro website."
I have reported you to the authorities for reverse engineering this. Please remain at your location; the SWAT team is on the way.
The VideoNOW Linux Project can't be far behind.
I'm sure Hasbro will nip this in the bud as soon as they realize someone could market their own shows for it. (Or, god-forbid, porn!)
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
We found it in a tranquil time of computing, with many steps and columns
Then, in the absence of Abe Lincoln, we brought back a Speak N Spell
We have started a project to reverse engineer the format, and have made considerable progress. So far we have been sued for $10 million, and we are posting in hope of gaining even more attention to our work.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okBy buying units, and making certain the manufacturer knows we're buying them as a result of the project, thereby preventing a DMCA lawsuit that would only result in massive boycotting on our part.
On the other hand, it's easier to just sit and type about how much the DMCA sucks and how cool reverse engineering is.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It is freakin grayscale for christsakes. Most people gave up on Black and White video somewhere around the Nixon Administration in the U.S.
Its cute and all, but go buy a portable DVD and go find a project where you are not going to run the risk of being sued into oblivion by the borg of Hasbro.
After reading through the couple of updates they have, I get the impression that the format is actually a standard used somewhere but these guys just haven't figured out what it is.
They seem to be wasting their time grabbing frames and converting from jpegs etc. They should just try work out what the standard is. Afterall, why would the developers of the VideoNOW spend the time and money developing some new format when there are heaps out there already. They are already using a non-standard CD size to stop people just playing the discs on their own machines, and people wouldn't pay $8 for a few b/w low res cartoons to play on their own machines anyway. - so why use a propriety format?
I.O.U One Sig.
I don't think that the goal is to copy their content -- 'tis to create new content, or to be able to use the player for my own content. If I have a recorded television show (time-shifted, if you will), why shouldn't I be able to put it on the appropriate media and watch it on the bus with this little thingamajig? Why should I respect a lock on hardware that I have purchased?
-30-
It's just video in the standard duh-duh format, replacing the right audio channel. It's uncompressed, and the screen is 80x80, so there's only so many combinations of fps, bit depth to choose from. I wouldn't call it a standard, it isn't really encoded at all. The bitmap data is just, kinda there, like PCM audio.
They don't list an extraction step, but I assume it's CDDA. The mysterious packets in the audio track "left channel" might be used to help that extraction process on a cheap playback device, or provide error correction information that would normally be present in a Yellow Book format.
I don't think there's any standard out there for cramming video in an audio channel in a strange packeting format with a hack to read timing information out of the other channel. These seem like very hardware-oriented, cost based design decisions.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
16 shade greyscale on an 80x80 pixel 4"x6" LCD? For fuck's sake, that's like watching video on a TI-8X calculator! (which, incidentally, you can do) Sure, it sounds like a fun project and all, but I don't think geeks will be rushing to encode their movies to this format so they can be played on this dinky little player. On the other hand, the player looks VERY portable and runs on 2 AA batteries. So I guess there is some potential for a low cost low resolution video/picture/text? viewer. It is interesting, at least.
It sounds to me like this little gadget is the modern implementation of a narrowband television. There are still guys who dink around with this stuff (indeed, I've started to assemble the parts for one myself), for fun you could try the Narrow Band Television Association website.
That being said, it seems like the format can't possibly be that difficult to determine. If the authors posted .wav files of some of the audio tracks, I suspect that an afternoon's worth of work by someone familiar with NBTV would crack the modulation wide open. After all, the box itself is obviously very cheap, it probably has very little CPU power, it can't be that
complicated.
It's a pity they don't use the normal mini-CDs, if they did I might buy one just for the novelty of being able to make my own CDs. I think they missed a bit of a hacker market by deliberately disabling this possibility.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
I hope you get sued and you go to jail.
Unless you are posting to slashdot using your original IBM PC and a 300 baud Hayes modem you are a hypocrite.
Reverse Engineering has brought you most everything you use in your life, from your television to your sneakers.
Since reverse engineering is legal, neither criminal or civil penalties apply.
BTW, being sued does not lead to incarceration.
"Okay Johnny, see how daddy bypasses the cryptography algorithm on this special "Sing Along Volume 5" disc? This is what us grownups call 're-verse engine-neering'" ...
"But Daddy, why are you wearing an orange suit and sitting behind that glass?"
This seems to be a very dumb device, just displaying 15 pixmaps a second. The DMCA's anti-circumvention applies to encrypted or other anti-copying measures. If you have a data stream that's this blatantly out in the open, I would imagine that the DMCA need not apply.
mewyn
this isn't intended to be flaimbait.
Either it IS flame bait, or you are an idiot.
And yes they are hurting Hasbro's ability to make money.
I doubt that, but for the sake of argument lets assume that is true. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Every time i go to the library I am hurting someone's ability to make money. Every time I loan something to a friend I am hurting someone's ability to make money. Every time I open a store and sell something I am competing with someone else and hurting their ability to make money. Every time I take a broken item, open it up and fix it my self, I am hurting someone else's ability to make money.
Anyone who bought a car has every right to lift the hood, look at it, and try to understand it. Anyone who bought a VideoNOW PVD every right to lift the hood, look at it, and try to understand it. They have every right to use teh player however they like. They can create their own content for it or even use it as a flowerpot. If they buy disks for it they have every right to read those disks in their computer or to use them as frisbies.
They wouldn't have made the CD format difficult to udnerstand and use if it wasn't part of their marketing plan.
I bought a product for my own reasons and I'll do whatever I like with it. I don't give a damn what THEIR PLAN was. Once I bought it I own it. If Gillette Razors gives away 5 cent razors with the business plan of selling disposable blades I am perfectly free to take the razor and either clean and re-use the disposable blades, or even to make my OWN blades to put in it. Or I can use them as paperweights. Once they have SOLD the product their plan is irrelevant.
Just because I have a business plan / marketing plan to sell SnoCones at the South Pole does not mean I have any right to make a profit doing so. There is no 'right to make a profit'. Hasbro's rights are not being infringed in any way whatsoever. It is YOU who wants to infringe the rights of the buyer.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The specs sound really poor. I don't see what the fuss is about! 80x80 pixels 'quality picture' ...
I've made some 160x160 pixel movies (in color, using TealMovie) for my antique palm IIIc, and even that resolution, with four times as many pixels as the VideoNOW toy, was worthless for video.)
Fifty bucks for the basic VideoNOW unit seems pretty steep considering how little you actually get and how much they're gouging the kids for the content discs - 'collect them all!'
Judging from photographs of this unit, it's just a very basic (non-backlit) LCD screen with crappy contrast and slow refresh. Throw in awful resolution, 15fps and 8-bit sound technology from the 90s, there's just nothing in this worth much effort - the novelty value won't last long, and the actual content enjoyment will be nearly nil.
You might compare this with the antique PixelVision thing from Fisher-Price, which is pretty cool and has a sustained cult following even to this day, but I think mostly because it's a capture system with a unique 'lens' (plastic bubble with nil-to-infinite fixed 'focus' range) and very very strange image processing. Even that thing, 15 year old mostly analog toy, has much better resolution than the VideoNOW.
I dunno, maybe I'm just getting old, but this stuff doesn't seem very exciting to me. I can't imagine my 5-year-old nephew would be very impressed either, since he has one of those GBAs with bright backlit color screens.
At least it doesn't seem too heavily infected by DRM.