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New DRM Scheme To Make Current DVD Players Obsolete
Oneflower writes "ExtremeTech reports that a proposed new DRM scheme could make current DVD players obsolete. The scheme, from Hewlett-Packard and Philips, targets DVD+R and DVD+RW and is an attempt to enforce the FCC broadcast flag on DVD recorders."
New DRM Scheme To Make Current Slashdot stories Obsolete
liqbase
Yet Another Star Wars Boxset to buy!
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
DVD-R is the preferred recordable DVD flavor for movies these days. It's cheaper than +R and more compatible with DVD players.
FU CARLY
This is never going to happen, no one is going to go and buy a new DVD player for some new crappy wannabe-standard. They'll try it and fail, next please!
I like muppets.
And a hack will be made, a firmware update released and in the end we will be back to what we are doing today. Not to mention this will take a LOT of time until it comes out and becomes mainstream (how many people are going to change their dvd players/recorders....meaning they won't be buying this new media format for a while)
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Three people shocked by news of planned obsolescence in consumer products!
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
from the article, emphasis mine: Hewlett-Packard and Philips said Wednesday that they have developed a content-protection system for DVDs, designed to protect users from burning "protected" DTV broadcasts.
How on earth does this "protect users"? It only tries to protect the bottom line of media megacorporations. Being manufacturers of the physical drive units I don't doubt they may try backtracking and manufacturing drives for stand-alone DVD players which only play +R(W) media, too, thus locking out the -R(W) media which won't work with this new scheme.[0]
Fortunately the general public seems to be getting more tech savvy (the refusal to accept Circuit City's Divx scheme, rising awareness of spyware and solutions, etc) so hopefully people will see this as it is: a money grab.
[0] - a bit of irony on Philips part there I think; I just picked up a Philips DVP642 DVD player which can also play divx and xvid on cdr/dvdr/etc. Surely they know the great bulk of those are downloaded.
Trolling is a art,
It's not like I can't just stop watching DVDs.
There's a threshold to just how much crap people will put up with it. Mine and some fellow geeks may have lower thresholds, but eventually the public threshold will be met as well and the companies that keep pulling these silly stunts will get a thrashing in the form of competition that treats customers like customers, not like crooks.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Lets sue them for making me have to buy a new DVD player
It can be recorded/copied.
When are they going to learn?
People Talking in Movie shows.. people smoking in bed.. people voting republican.. GIVE THEM A BOOT TO THE HEAD!
In order to secure our profits, you must go out and buy new hardware.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
...and they will drop this like a hot potato. Any recorder that does not allow you to get round this will be dead in the water.
The same thing has happened with multi-region DVD players here in Europe. If it doesn't have a way to get round the illegal-restriction-of-trade technology, then people simply won't touch it.
Every player in every store now has a hastily applied sticker saying "Multi-Region!". Once the new recorders come out, word will get around about any models that can be bypassed, and sales will take off, leaving others face down in the dust.
And, of course, since US companies aren't allowed to do this, only overseas companies who deliver to several markets will have a legitimate excuse.
So, congratulations, once again US legislators are outsourcing American jobs and increasing the trade deficit.
Well done!
Sean Ellis
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... to buy a shedload of cheap DVD players and VCRs unencumbered by any of this crap. Keep 'em in the loft 'til they're needed, wheel 'em out one by one as they break.
Unless... this is a scheme to make us buy shedloads of cheap DVD players and VCRs. Argh! What's the conscientious paranoid supposed to do with himself nowadays?
First of all, the standard is not going to catch on. People are not going to run out and buy a new DVD player so they can buy new movies that are the same quality as the ones the already own. The only way this might work would be to outlaw the selling of the old DVDs. Thats not going to happen. Secondly, this is stupid anyway because it doesn't do anything to stop VCD/SVCDs. The majority of the downloads I see on bittorrent sites are not 4GB, they are more like 1.5 or 1 GB and they are usually Mpeg format, for burning to VCDs. I am sure some manufacturers will be able to make a version of these new DVD players that play VCDs, and they will sell! Just like the old players. The people behind that anouncement are probably just trying to appease a bunch of idiots in Hollywood.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
Why exactly would I buy DVDs that I can't play on my existing DVD player? Oh yeah, in a few years they simply won't make DVDs that do play on my existing player.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...I'll go along with their shiny new DRM standard, if they'll replace my DVD player for free. By which I mean, pick it up from my door, and give me an equivalent player with the DRM, for absolutely no cost to myself.
However, I bought a DVD player, and if it stops playing DVDs for no good reason, I'm not going to be enthusiastic about buying another...
Horseshit.
The media companies are trying to find ways to curtail not just piracy but legitimate fair use. They fought VCR's when they first came out and the movie studios fought television when it first came out.
They are short sighted and almost always fight what ends up making them a lot of money when they lose. The danger is they may not lose this time.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
You break my DVD player, I'll just go ahead and steal some of your movies from DC++, asshole. Don't you people get it? I have a finite space in my budget to spend on your shit. I don't have any more money for you, and if you make me start spending it on new hardware for your ridiculous new standards, then I won't have any left to buy your IP with.
...you insensitive clod.
I'm still waiting for two features they never brought over from VHS:
1. A format that will ALWAYS fast forward when I hit the fast forward button. (same with rewind)
2. A format that will withstand the destructive force of a toddler. (Though I do applaud the DVD's resistance to heat from a car.)
If this new-fangled DRM standard player would provide me with those things (and have a low cost), I'd look into buying one. I'm not holding my breath.
There's enough people out there that don't mind the digital to analogue step down process. Take CDs for example, DRM only works when you can check against something that somewhat resembles the original digital format with watermarks, key points, etc. If someone has simply hooked up a 3.5mm jack plug from their audio out to the mic on their soundcard then they can easily rip music into mp3 format. The same is true with DVDs, there are still plenty of people that won't mind the minute subtle changes that come in to play from using the analogue step down process.
To get around this, companies would have to then have to figure out how to pick up traits in the music/film as opposed to relying on actual markers. This too can be easily overcome though for example for the case of music, the pitch can be altered by less that 1% and for most people the difference would be virtually nill.
What I resent is that film studios and distribution companies are making a fortune here, while something which was one of the basic given rights, to make a legit backup, is being taken away. I'm sure as hell not going to be spending another $70 on some box set when some rugrat happens to scratch one of the DVDs. If film companies were really threatened by piracy and weren't using this as some kind of "anti-double jeopardy" thing they'd have some way that you could prove that you'd bought the original and they'd send you a replacement if you damaged yours for a minimal fee. After all, the media costs literally pence to produce and it is the content that we are actually paying for.
- Better picture quality
- Better sound quality
- Additional extra's
- No need to rewind the tape
- Ability to skip to certain sections of the film
- Smaller physical size of the DVD medium
There are 6 keys things there that satisfy the "what is in it for me?" factor.Having a new format with better DRM fails this test completely. The only way it will ever get adopted is if people are forced to change - and there will be public uproar.
In short, if they're going to want to introduce it, then they have to come up with some other features that really will make people want to "upgrade". If not, then it is pretty much dead in the water from the beginning.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
They already are getting that competition in the form of the Internet. The average American spends 30 minutes less time watching TV on a daily basis because of the Internet.
Ultimately, TV and Movies are just another form of entertainment. If they make access to these things expensive and inconvenient, people will simply choose another way to be entertained. They'll go watch the latest e-mail from strong bad. They'll download some fan produced star wars movie. They won't have to pay a dime and ultimately they'll be as entertained, if not more so, than they were from TV and Movies.
So go ahead mega media empires. Go ahead and DRM and freak out about all of this, and watch it all crumble underneath your feet. We are your CUSTOMERS, and you are supposed to provide us a service. If you actually think that intentionally introducing confusing, complicated, and inflexible products will make us more willing to give you money, you need to get into rehab.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Maybe it's getting lost on the manufacturers out there, but usually if you want someone to buy your new product that is supposed to supplant an older-yet-functional product, you have to have some kind of compelling reason.
DVD worked where LaserDisc failed, because the electronics became cheaper, and the quality was much better than VHS, while not taking any more physical space than VHS.
Better quality + same price point = commercial success
However, if this new stuff requires consumer purchase without consumer gain, it will be relegated to the halls of failed products, in the display case between DIVX (the single use disc, not the codec) and SunnComm's CD copy protection which could be bypassed through the use of the shift key.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Uh... No, not confusing acronyms. DivX was a Circit City invention of a variant on DVDs that required you to pay money for everytime you watched a disk after the first three times. The players would dial home to a central server and bill your credit card. The idea failed miserably and in its honor the DivX codec was named. I have had troubles with this at work where people thought I was talking about the circuit city product and not the codec.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Yah, that's why I still have a lot of laserdiscs lying around. The video quality is pretty good (slightly less than DVD), the sound is incredible (uncompressed PCM, and sometimes even AC3), and they work in every player ever made. And the extra neat bonus is that they don't have any Macrovision, or any other form of copy protection. I kinda miss the laserdisc days, since they really cared about compatability. When laserdisc started to implement Dolby Digital, they decided that they needed to do it in a way which would make sure that older players weren't obsolete. Instead of just telling everyone that in order to watch a newer movie, you had to buy a new player, they instead created discs that stored mono analog on one track, modulated Dolby Digital on the other track, and then Digital PCM on the digital tracks. Thus, all generations of players (Analog, Digital and AC3) could all play the same discs. Truly impressive.
A few years ago, SONY decided to "protect" its movie/music assets by designing all of their home DVD players to reject recorded (instead of stampted) media.
SONY must have thought they were the only company in the world producing home DVD players. To no one's suprise, Pioneer (made players that played anything you threw at them) had a banner year in home DVD player sales.
As far as "non-compliance" with DVD standards goes - who cares. The music industry is pulling this crap right now saying DRM protected CDs are not really CDs - so they can ignore the standard.
It only takes ONE hardware manufacturer to decide that it is not in their best intrest to sell bastardized hardware for this plan to fall apart. I'll bet there are a lot of hardware manufacturers that don't own music or movie companies that would love more hardware marketshare.
-ted
Actually, from R'ing TFA, the article headline is very misleading. This will not make any change to current DVD players. It makes changes to make the recorders obey the evil bit/broadcast flag.
The fact that they expect the media and the players to cost more once this is in place (so Hitachi can get their royalties of course) is going to slow adoption of this.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What's an FCC?
Federal Censorship Committee. You guys should really look into getting yourselves one. They're great!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
The author suggests that IFF an activity (copying) is prohibited via technical or practical means, it follows that activity is restricted by copyright law.
This is the view that the **AA has been promoting for some time now, through propoganda and the DMCA.
That is--if it's technically difficult, it must be illegal. And, via the DMCA, that we, the **AA, will decide what's legal and what rights you have. You will be informed of our decision after you buy our product.
Folks, it doesn't work that way. Fair use has not been repealed. Not by the unelected and un-apointed **AA, and not by the passage of the DMCA.
The DMCA gives a group of unelected people the practical ability to make certain legal activities illegal. Our constitution doesn't allow that. The power to pass legislation comes from the whole of the people. The select group that we give this task was ostensibly elected by the whole of the people they represent. Not by a small group.
A person (or corporate "person") who wishes to apply for this sort of protection should not be allowed to arbitrarily remove rights from other persons.
I propose a test:
"If you want your RM system to be protected under the DMCA, you must submit it for approval. (leaving the approval process and challenges to improperly approved systems to another discussion). If your system inhibits legally protected activities, your system may not be protected under the DMCA. You may implement the system, as long as it doesn't break existing laws. But if someone chooses to break your system in order to exercise their rights in an otherwise legal manner of their choosing, the law will not stop them. However, if your system ONLY inhibits those activities in a manner you are already legally entitled to control, then it may be protected."
Seems to me a fair test--Everybody's existing rights are protected. No unelected person gets to make arbitrary decisions for the rest of us, then use the penalty of law to enforce those decisions.
It removes the power to enact laws from the **AA and the puts it back into the hands of the legislature where it belongs.
This assumes, of course, that legislators answer to the will of the majority of the citizens they represent--not to the citizens offering the biggest bribe.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
DVD-R is the preferred recordable DVD flavor for movies these days. It's cheaper than +R and more compatible with DVD players.
ROFL. Slashdot man speaks with forked tongue.
DVD+R was designed specifically to have a format that is compatible with the DVD-movie standard. In other words, a DVD movie player doesn't even need to know about DVD+R to be able to play movies written to a DVD+R disk. It's hard to get more compatible than that, and I'm proving the compatibility daily on my antique DVD movie-only players.
No other DVD format is compatible with DVD movie in this way. All the other formats require the player to have been programmed explicitly to handle them.
Frankly, were I a lawyer, as soon as these things started being sold to the channel, I'd try to put together a class-action lawsuit claiming harm to the class of people who previously purchased recording devices that were being legally used that now had to go out and purchase new units.
Also, the fact that these new units would cost more due to the implimentation of this copy-protection scheme creates additional actionable harm.
I would add, for the benefit of karlandtanya that the term fair use also refers to the permission to exhibit or broadcast copyrighted material due to a news event, like the death of a person connected with the material, a photograph of a person and so on. Fair use in the United States exists for a period of 48 hours and then it expires. In that event, one might be able to use one's home-digitized material on a blog as long as the link was removed in 48 hours, though this has certianly not been tested.
What he is referring to is home copying, which is legal as a result of the Sony Betamax Case that specifically allows home recording and copying and storing of material for personal use.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
+R is significantly less compatible.
I feel like I'm going to have to keep saying this 'til the day I die...
;)
All these DRM/Copy protection schemes are an attempt to return us to the days before the Gutnburg printing press when an elite group (in those days the Church) were the only people who could read and write the Latin books and hence the only people that could interpret the Bible for you.
Add to this the fact that with a closed proprietary format then in X years time you may not be able to view content you've paid for (the hardware is no longer manufactured, the format is proprietary and the skills/information needed to decode it have been lost/forgotten)
What we have with all these schemes is utter barbarians trying to appropriate culture for their own use and profit.
Monopolise the means of production the means of distribution (digital certificates, DRM) and kill any minor players (independent producers who are priced out of the process) These people want an Eastern Bloc style Communist entertainment industry ! "The party makes good stuff huh and you will buy".
What cultural inheritance will our current generations leave for future historians ? Nothing at this rate (min you that could be a blessing for the ones to come
All together now.... vote with your wallets and just say no.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !