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HD-DVD Wins Support of 4 Studios
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like HD-DVD has won the latest round in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war. Toshiba announced today that 4 major studios (Warner,Paramount,Universal, and New Line) have endorsed the HD-DVD format. Toshiba also said it will use AACS for content protection, which is basically just CSS with better crypto & no ability to recover from security failures."
Since both HD-DVD and blu-ray are using the same blue lasers, will this 'war' eventually turn out to be HD/BR-DVD similar to the DVD+/-R standards.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
That instead of competition leading to advancements and improvements for the consumer, it's more often competition AGAINST fair USE for the consumer.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
or at least the monkey poo fight we will see in the next few years. Anyone know which one the porn industry is backing? I'll put my money on that format.
Just a reminder: Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray now require the implementation of Windows Media 9 (now VC-9, or VC-1 depending on who you ask). This means that anyone using a computer to play DVDs may be subject to Microsoft licensing restrictions. Current DVDs use MPEG2 and the there doesn't seem to be much of a problem with non-profit use of it. I don't know that Microsoft is going to be so benevolent. Have they made any statements about open-source usage? They do seem to be a bit down on that lately.
Also, anyone know how the decision is made to encode a DVD using MPEG2, MPEG4 or WM9?
The mandate makes absolutely no requirement that broadcasts be HD (High Def) - only that they stop using analog transmission and go to digital. The FCC's motiviation is to get a lot of spectum back, and MPAA/broadcasters motiviation is they get the 'do not copy' concept.
While I wouldnt mind if the spectrum was freed so that there could be some unlicensed bands to enable 802.11 style equipment for consumer use, I'm sure licenses for the newly freed TV bands will be auctioned off to megacorps instead. I'm just hoping that they dont just sit on them to prevent competition for high speed services.
Why do so many people confuse High Def and Digital - they are *NOT* the same thing, nor do they always go hand in hand.
You *CAN* broadcast HighDef in analog, and you *CAN* broadcast digital, and still be using standard definition (and if stations are forced go digital, it isnt all that likely that they will switch to HighDef)
I predict in 10 years you'll see 3rd-world pirates using fully-digital screen-scrapers to bypass otherwise-unbreakable encryption.
Scrape. Store. Burn. Sell on the street corners.
The studios will never "win," they'll only be able to manage their losses.
In the USA, it will be less of a problem as most middle-class people move to a subscription model, where they can watch what they want when they want to for a fixed monthly fee. This will take away most people's economic incentive to buy bootleg copies.
Sure, you'll still have some domestic piracy, but if the studios price things correctly, it will be drawfed by legitimate users.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Unfortunately, pirates will attack high-definition disc formats.
It should be noted that the DVD content scrambling system failed not under the attack of pirates but due to legal owners of encrypted media striving to play them on an open source operating system. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
I started at that for a full twenty seconds thinking, "What the hell kind of crypto is involved with cascading stylesheets?"
--- Ban humanity.