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Blu-Ray To Punish Users for Modifying Hardware
datemenatalie writes "As reported on Engadget, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely. As the article asks, "Are they talking about PVP-OPM techniques and rejected HDMI keys, or something else far more sinister? Because apparently "A hacked player is any player that is doing something it's not supposed to do," which open to a pretty fair amount of interpretation--most of which egregious.""
You have been watching too much porn your dvd player has been locked to watch G rated movies from now on.
Enjoy bambi!
The world's smartest bug zapper www.zapstats.com/kickstarter
When we tell kids about a time when it used to be possible for people "own" things.
Savage times, those were.
Just hack it to not report certain of its hacks
Verification systems that require any work on the consumer end will never work 100%. It's just too easy to get around.
And why am I buying the assinine secured player instead of the grey market Chinese one, exactly?
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
I think this is where this has to be stopped ... under such conditions everyone will be locked down by DRM and will be puppets to server their master, the corporations ...
But unless all the consumers band together ... I dont see anything else stopping this :-(
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
Pick at Microsoft all you want....I think RIAA and the rest of the entertainment industry are about 100 times worse.
Can someone explaine to me why its not illegal for a company to punish a consumer for tinkering with a product that that consumer had purchased?
And why, if your going to be tinkering in the first place, you don't just remove the internet connection? Does it serve a purpose? Or is it more like the DirectTV systems, making sure your only getting what you paid for?
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
How the hell do they want me to connect my future DVD player to the internet? I don't have a wireless router and screw them if I have to get one. DVD will live on for a long, long time.
Is it legal to program a Linux server to emulate the player, then respond to any unrequested IP packets from the manufacture with the II'm hacked' message whatever it is? Who owns/controls/deterimine what is legally acceptable hand-shaking after all?
Software freedom...I love it!
The Blu-Ray player has to be connected to the internet to rat on the modders... so couldn't one just unplug the ethernet cable in the back and enjoy a Blu-Ray disc from asia?
... before the term was co-opted.
Any tethered, DRM-laden DVD player will be about as successful in the marketplace as a 220-volt rubber duck.
Do they just not care if they sell any of these, or what?
Do they really wanna start this war? In the end, people they're paying good money to are going to be fighting against a relatively big army of tinkerers who have no problem spending all their free time defeating crap like this. Plenty of EEs need senior projects.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
It's very ironic to me that one of the industries that benefits most from globalization makes such a concerted and futile effort to hamper trade in their own global market.
As a person keen on foreign films, I know I won't be buying a Blu-Ray that can't be made region-free. If no such player exists, I'll just end up pirating films released exclusively on Blu-Ray.
I mean, the industry doesn't care about a few geeks. But when Joe Sixpack has enough of all those restrictions, that's when it'll hurt the industry. The question is, how much will it take?
:)
Anyone taking bets?
I just won't buy one . . .I'm pretty sure that's how this whole consumer market thing works? I think?
I just find it interesting that they feel the can change something I have already purchased because they don't like what I do with it. I think I should be able to reciprocate, that is fair, right? If I don't like their business practices, maybe it should be ok for me to disable their email.
What next? Hand held massagers being disabled because they aren't exactly being used to massage?
Looks like I won't be getting a Blu-ray.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It appears that it is time for "DVD" Jon Johansen to prove that he deserves the title he has been granted by all of geekdom.
Oh whne wil I learan how to hight the preveiw buttojn! Curse me and my horrrible lasiness.
Are they TRYING to make blu-ray fail?
Is the player going to be required to be connected to the internet? If not... I don't see any reason to connect to the internet... Oh, so they can deactivate my player if I do something wrong? Nah, I'll stay unconnected, thanks...
Makes no sense.
if remote servers are capable of disabling the player remotely, then why not just reverse engineer it to enable it at will?
i'll wait till someone can figure that one out.
Cause when I want to tinker with something, especially when its hardware that I buy and own, I tinker with it. Any prevention of such activities will result in me not purchasing said equipement.
Side note: It's nice that the link in the /. article goes to yet another summary of the article. Here's the real article linked to from the summary. The bit about "punishing" the users is a small paragraph toward the end.
(wait for it)
.. if you can do without the value-added services that they'll throw at you for a small subscription fee, that is ..
Don't plug your DVD into the internet.
(I can)
Funny how private ownership applied less and less to things high-tech.
-- L.
And they actually think they will be able to sell a device that not only requires full time network access (limits the potential customers) and can be disabled remotely (very good hacker potential here!)?
I know that the vast majority of people are not much more than cattle, but when they are asked to fork over several hundred dollars if not more for an entertainment device that they can do with out but have expensive restrictions built in most will recognize a bad deal for what it is.
If by some amazing fluke such devices become common it will only be a matter of time before a hacker finds a way to access those devices and shutdown them down for his own amusement. Now that will make headlines.
Do not buy Blue-Ray hardware from the following:
Sony
Matsushita
Samsung
Philips
Dell
Hewlett-Packard
Apple
Hitachi
Question everything
This reminds me a lot of the failed DivX format that would 'phone home'.
The original Reuters article is pretty light on details though. What happens if you don't have an internet connction? And where will these players be supposedly 'reporting' to? Not to mention who is going to be paying for this whole infrastructure of 'player monitoring'? This is one step away from becoming a 'service' rather than just a piece of hardware.
The Blu-Ray folks should remember why DivX failed in the first place.
Wow, yet another reason not to buy into that technology. They really seem not to have learned the right lessons from DVD... Now, they are already fighting over the next-gen format _before_ any disks or players even hit the market, and instead of dropping their ridiculous "it's called copy protection, but actually hurts only legitimate users" schemes, they introduce more of them.
Dog, I'm happy I'm still managing fine with CD-RWs...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Did NOBODY learn from Betamax? When will the industry learn that the ONLY thing DRM ensures is that the next high density optical disc standard will be whatever China turns out?
Wait a min.. that might be a GOOD thing.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
They tried this "internet verification" crap with divx players too. Everyone smelled the tremendous stench of "ripoff" and told the salesmen where to stick it. Anything involving internet connection for "verification" engenders some very strong language which quite frankly I don't want to put into slashdot, but even the average consumer will be saying "what the hell, NO!"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
If users can't get around rediculous, asine and frivolous DRM which everyone is used to ignoring like Region Coding (which in itself is a bad idea for the same reason as this... just not to the same extent) then they are just going to go and download the damn movie in HD over their future-internet-connection-when-we've-actually-dep loyed-broadband on Bittorrent or whatever.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
And life goes on everywhere else. Get over it.
I think that the concept of Regional Coding is largely dead now anyway since they tend to release everything at the same time to avoid piracy. Regional Coding was really a violation of WTO rules anyway.
I don't like the idea of hardware that reports back to base. If we go in that direction our TVs will report us when we channel flip to avoid commercials.
YOUR TV HAS BEEN DISABLED. SKIPPING COMMERCIALS IS THEFT!
Isn't this just Divx all over again? And tell me, why exactly do I want to maybe make the provisions,(router, cable) to hook this into my internet connection?
While I happen to have my A/V equipment right next to my box, and hence my connection, most people don't. Average Joe also does not have extra open ethernet ports either with stock DSL or cable equipment.
Slashdot already ran a story on this exact subject, and that contained much more information-- it appears that all this new story is is that at some point this week Reuters referenced the announcement from last month, and engadget, which hadn't heard about it the first time, ran it as a new story.
It's worth noting that at the time the last story was run, at least one slashdotter was disputing its veracity, but I don't know how much credence you can put in that.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It's the same shit is happening with German (and expensive) cars. You own the car but you can't even pop the hood, only a qualified technician (yes a technician, not a mechanic) can do that. It's time to start being the owners of our stuff and not the companies, or then they should make us sign an EULA so we can't modify our, and we can get security upgrades or patches just for a time, but not for pirated cars (would that be possible?)
I have pictures o' your momma and sista naked
Time to remotely kill all the DVD boxes out of warranty. They'll never know what hit them.
I've just bought an XviD-capable DVD player for my TV. I can now watch DVD-quality movies that fit onto a standard 700MB CD-ROM, courtesy of BitTorrent.
AFAIK, Blu-Ray and its equivalent (HD-DVD or whatever) are being developed in order to provide Hi-Definition video and/or longer video per disc.
Why would I want Blu-Ray? As soon as Hi-Def becomes standard (or even before), it'll be available via BitTorrent compressed to less than the size of a standard DVD at HD quality. I can then watch Hi-Def films on my existing hardware.
So if this hack-proof protection is designed to foil copyright infringers, it's going to fail. Copyright infringers will simply use their existing hardware to view Hi-Def on standard DVDs on standard XviD players. Why would we criminals buy Blu-Ray in the first place?
Argh.
Giving a company the power to decide if your paid for device goes *poof* one day is bad.
..
The first mistake they make, expect a suit.
Also, what about people that dont have internet, i guess they are just out of luck and cant watch movies at some point if blu-ray becomes 'the standard'?
and no i didnt RTFA.. it wouldnt load.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Can this thing be put behind a firewall that blocks the ports the players uses? If I throw water at it and it creates some kind of a weird signal which they can see what will they do, take me to court? Can I serve porn off it?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Keep it up, folks. If you continue to trade consumer rights and usability in your quest to kill the Great White Pirate, you'll end up with a product that nobody wants to buy, and Blu-Ray (along with all of the other great new media formats you want us to buy) will die a quick and well-deserved death.
What if I as the consumer don't hook up my internet connection to it? Will it then not play a video at all, or does it have to download an encryption key each time it plays a disc? Don't think I will buy one, in addition to other reasons, I don't like my stuff spying on me forcibly, by forcing me to hook it up to the internet so that "they" can monitor my video viewing habits.
The excerpt is taken from the bottom of this Reuters article from Sept. 2, 2005.
Heck, if something in my house that needs to be plugged in doesn't have a missing screw, then I automatically know it's broken.....I have to get inside and give it "more power". My wife insists that certain "toys" of hers are off-limits, but little does she know what 9 volts can do compared to 1.5.
If I open something up and tinker with it, then fine, I void the warranty. But for companies to think they have the right to monitor what we do with their products to the point that they can deploy countermeasures just has to be stopped.
I think it's time for www.{stop|avoid|donotbuy|FU}blu-ray.com sites to start popping up. As previous posted stated, hopefully this will go the way of divx (the old crippled DVD players divx that is).
Now of course this would have been a nice way to kill off the floppy drive...have it phone home when it detects user-modified DSHD.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Because as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no way that ANY PC-style computer is going to be able to even come CLOSE to implementing the kinds of "security" features that the Blu-Ray Association has been talking about, without the kinds of OS+hardware-level "DRM" that Microsoft has been promoting a move toward for the last four or five years...
The entertainment industry is running around shooting at people, and Microsoft just happens to be selling them guns
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Refuse to use Blu-ray if they plan on using draconian methods. the competing format is cheaper, and hopefully its custodians will not be as large of assholes.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
is go to, for example, the Sony store when they get their first shipment and ask the salespeople to explain how this works, and then say "so you mean I can't tinker with it even if I own it?" and then laugh as loudly as possible while leaving the store.
... will be the internet reporting system.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Here it is, and I know you Hollywood types are going to dig it:
Your Obsessive Compulsive Hardware
+ Your Intellectually Devoid Content
= Chapter 11 Bankrupcy Protection
Enjoy the show!
kulakovich
Can someone explain why I would have hooked my Blu-Ray player up to the Internet in the first place?
All the posters that say: "I won't connect it to the internet" - what if it requires a "free service subscription" that works like the CD-key thing on battlenet? Then hacking the box means violating a service contract and will be punished.
...I haven't seen anyone state the obvious:
If you don't like their actions, don't buy their piece of shit. Easy solution.
I bought a DVD player a couple of months ago, and it came with instructions for how to make it region free. This was a Philips, not some Chinese brand I've never heard of before. If it had been region locked I would have returned if and got a refund, and I would've expected the law to back me up in needed.
So what if the hardware malfunctions (or firmware has a bug) the cause the player to think that it has been modified?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
4 Years ago I bought a Sony Clie that still rivals the quality, resolution, of todays PDAs. The problem I had with it was the lack of hacks for it because of how locked down they made it. They didn't make it easy to be hacked and all the software for it was proprietary. They didn't release an SDK or anything. People want to hack their toys. The PSP is hackable and consumers find this kind of intriguing. Although Sony is fighting to lock the consumer out of doing this. I've observed that if people can do more with their toy than what is intended by the manufacturer this usually drives sales. Sony still hasn't figured this out and is setting themselves up to lose the media format war just as how they lost out keeping up in the PDA market(The completely stopped manufacturing their whole PDA line)
If I were to buy a car then I would assume the car is mine to do as I please with it - if I want to say change the color on it then I could have it refinished according to my own preferences. The same applies if I buy a electonical device; I assume it is mine to do and modify as I please - anything else sounds unacceptable to me. I would be majorly upset if this car then would automatically report that I had changed the color... But obviously I would never buy the car in the first place if I was asked to sign a contract that said "you can never ever open the motor room and look inside or change the color of the car"
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
If this thing can report back to the company about hack attempts, then it can report anything. I guarentee that if they were to become popular, video/music industries would be paying them to report users who have put in a burned disk of a video or music. And I'm sure that is 80% of their plan after all. Usually companies that make strange decisions like this do it for financial reasons. (Well I'm not really sure but it sure does sound fesible.)
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
When all this drm crap hits, I'll just stop consuming. I've got books, Go, and decades worth of games in the form of old cartidges, cds and dvds. I'll miss playing the new Morrowind game, but oh well. I'm just not going to work that hard so I can watch crap.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Get real! The linked article in the parent is nothing but ranting. There are no solutions presented or fixes for the existing system. Those complaining about the response must have expected all those troops, trucks, helicopters, and supplies to be prestaged somewhere and ready to roll minutes after the storm passed. The reality is that such operations require an assesment of what is needed, staging of those resources, and then execution on the plan. It is a horrible disaster, but the Monday morning quarterbacking by the media and other pundits is beyond ridiculous. I really feel for those people that were trapped in the city with out power or other supplies. I can understand at least a little of what they went through having lived through three direct hurricane hits last year. By no means was what I experienced even a fraction of what New Orleans is going through. But even here there were people in the neighborhood that were going around screaming that their power was not on.
So stop pointing fingers at everyone else and take some responsiblity. No one else is going to help you in such situations. Plan in advance what to do and have supplies on hand to last for several days or a week.
Seeing as how they're getting away with this shit, do you people still feel as though we should obey and respect the laws designed to protect them?
I don't.
See, I read stories like this, and regardless how many people tell me I'm wrong, I honestly do feel justification for all the movies I download.
I feel no pity for them. They've done this to themselves, and apparently they haven't learned their lesson.
If they can fuck us, then there's absolutely no reason for us to fuck them harder (ooh dirty).
Just stop buying the DVDs and download them instead. Do your part and fight back since none of us have billions to persuade lawmakers with.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
where this type of extremely anti-consumer idea was ORigINally HATCHed0 .html
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59298,0
(yes, i know. missing an R)
PC's with DRM, DVD players with DRM....software that gets automatically turned off if you unscrew the case..ect..
Don't the Major players understand that they are creating a market for for the off-brand Korean/Chinese/Asian manufacturers to sell consumer electronics without all this crap?
Unless the U.S. starts seriously inderdicting consumer electronics that don't meet RIAA/MPAA standards people ARE going to buy these things via mailorder from overseas.
The Chinese already don't respect copyright OR patents. What makes them think they will not see this as an opportunity to make money and jump into the market? They already make practically ALL of the components that go into the "Branded" versions that will go to the U.S. It's gunna be trivial for them to duplicate (in quality) a Blue-Ray DVD player without all the DRM crap on it.
Viruses could be expected to come to the rescue. Like one which screws-up the drive so it has to be sent back for warrantee repair. When manufacturers will be swamped with "defective" drives, they will soon throw the towel, either by refusing to fix them (and then pissing-off the customers with that technology) or simply no longer making remote-disablable drives.
I see no reason for a DVD player to connect to the internet. Good game, keep yer mitts off my electronics.
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
Shit. Can we say "1984", or THX-1138? This big brother crap is getting rediculous. There have been many posts already pointing out ownership rights, legality issues and so forth. All I wish to say is that I will NEVER spend a dime on any electronics device (or any device at all for that matter) that can be controlled by someone else in a babysitter capacity. Fuck that.
I was getting fairly excited about Blu-ray technology, but now I can see that I will probably never purchase it. It is not up to a corporation to tell me that I can't watch a region 3 disc on a region 1 player, or that I can or cannot customize the device that I OWN. If I am unable to do as I see fit with something I paid money for, then why pay money for it in the first place? I can understand not being able to run someone over with my car if I feel that it is a good way to excercise my ownership of my vehicle, but GM isn't going to remotely disable my engine because I flattened an old lady. Thats why we have law enforcement agencies (all jokes and bad examples of their ineptitude aside). It's not the private sectors place or right to enforce laws or rules.
I for one did NOT elect the head of Sony to the position of Whiny Enforcer of Nonsensical About-to-backfire Rules.
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
... comrade!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The bodies of 20,000+ dead people could give a good god damn about your network interface cards, your childish Lego models, your nerf toys and lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D addiction, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life"!!
Yeah, lots of people dead. People DO care about them being dead and have already taken it in consideration, or atleast some people have noticed and acted upon it.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Apparently, if it is fully disclosed to the purchaser that these players will "punish" you for altering them, then it is totally legal. I think these awful things are going to be pushed on us by computer makers and everyone's going to get f*#ked by Sony et al (because let's be honest - blu-ray will win the hd-dvd war).
"I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed." -- Bruce Lee
This is a new technology. The mainstream users won't pick it up until there is enough content product and there is a compelling reason to abandon their current DVD players. For that to happen, the product needs a sufficient number of early adopters. But early adopters are technically savy and won't put up with this type of stuff. So will this product ever take off if they do this?
Anything involving internet connection for "verification" engenders some very strong language which quite frankly I don't want to put into slashdot, but even the average consumer will be saying "what the hell, NO!"
Umm... Windows XP, anyone?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
You don't have an internet connection?
that the studios and merchants give those new high tech blu-ray players away otherwise it'd be a low down dirty shame if customers had their purchased physical products disabled because the vendors decided they wanted control of products after they have been sold.
oh wait...
somehow, HD-DVD doesn't look as bad now...
check the sig to see what i really think of practices such as this.
and before people rattle on about how you can take you money elsewhere... tell that to congress who in a miraculous moment, voted that car manufacturers couldn't encrypt vehicle chips and lock out non-approved mechanics.
owning one's own property... how an old outmoded tradition.
you are free to use any DRM or otherwise crippled products... but please don't lie and say it's freedom. we're all in one way or another forced to use things we don't like but be honest about what's going on.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
While Blu-ray association may provide this as a security option to the Studios to get them aboard the format. Since all this talk about self-destructive players and punishing pirates must be the MPAAs wet dream. However, its a support nightmare for the hardware manufacter. Most hardware manufacters don't directly profit from media content (other than the one's like Sony who own studios), most will likely forgo this feature or water it down due to the flood of technical support calls from enraged owners of their product. With the emergence of cheap Chinese and Taiwanese brands profits from hardware themselves is incredibly small, In reality, I doubt manufacters are willing to deal with potential law-suits, tech-support issues, and angry retailers that get returned players that people tried to hack.
Just another company thinking they are some sort of gods ... the shit will be hacked before it hits the shelves
If I buy something it's mine and I'll do whatever I damn well please to with it. Considering these players will be around $1,500 I wont twink twice before opening one up.
[ brakken ]
So the next question is : who defines what is illegal ?
Illegal meaning against the law, it's you government that should be deciding (with you help - sic) what is illegal...Not Sony and Disney (re-sic)...
Also, in the dvd mods I've seen, there are some people modifying the audio part of their dvd to get a better quality output just by changing a few parts...
From the companies point of view, you just didn't buy the more expensive model that have a better sound, and that should be illegal !!! You make them lose business here !!!
Also, region locking is illegal in some countries, and has never been brought to court in the other...
My dvd player is unlocked, and I am happy to buy from another country a dvd that I want. I'm quite sure this is covered under the free trade agreements that almost everybody signed...
The only problem is that to execute my rights, I might have to go to court, which, as a "nobody", means betting all I got on the court...So my best chance is to join the EFF or some other big association and hope my problem will be taken to court by them...
OR I could gently tell my deputy that this and this is illegal and should be forbidden to the companies, and, as this is an ideal world, he will hear me and act on it (LOL)...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
In Russia you own the DVD player; In United States, DVD player owns you....
When there's a software bug at the mothership and tens of thousands of players get disabled for no reason at all, maybe consumers will learn their lesson about buying electronics controlled by the Hollywood. Sadly, the inevitable class action suit will only get consumers with boat rock DVD players a five dollar off coupon for another DVD player.
What do you mean "movies that we own"?
What happens when someone hacks past the remote-disable stuff?
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
I think they should have all players registered to the owner^H^H^H^H^H user - it should be required to 'check in' through some kind of net connection or give the user a code every month that they can then give to the manufacturer to prove that the machine is still satisfied that it hasn't been tampered with. Any misuse or missing of a check-in will result in the player being recovered as per the contract, it will then be examined to determine if illegal use has occurred and appropriate legal action will be taken. Before you can play a disk in the machine you must have it registered - this will usually happen at the check-out where your driving license, credit card or other ID will be used to authorise your use of the disk on the central server, to play the disk the machine must contact the central server to check that you have indeed registered this disk - this will also have the added benefit of preventing un-authorised studios from producing disks without paying royalties. Of course each disk will be 'personalised' ie watermarked with a unique serial number in the video stream in such a way as to prevent more than a few seconds being recorded (either by video camera or cable) without the serial number present, this will also apply to the audio track. Any copies can be traced back to the individual who registered the disk - and signed the EULA waiving their legal rights. To begin with, players will be able to play on standard TV sets, however as time progresses, sale of these players will be limited and instead only specially designed TVs or monitors will be able to interface with the players - old players will be re-claimed and replaced under contract. The new TV screens will feature amongst other things, video cameras to monitor the audience for 'screen recording', you may be randomly monitored through the players net connection to ensure you are watching from the correct position and are not recording the screen, you may also be asked to remove items of clothing, lift cushions etc to further prove you have not hidden a camera. Failure to comply with these security measures will result in appropriate legal action as outlined in the EULA. The EULA must be 'accepted' each time a new disk is inserted, just before the mandatory adverts play.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think your new DVD player will see no reason to play DVDs in that case. Face it, the public will buy this and you will be left in the dark.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Which new DVD format I'm going to support. Although I expect HD-DVD to follow suit, they weren't dumb enough to annouce it. Of course, for most things, there's still no point to not just sticking with what we have, and show that we care via our wallets.
I don't know exactly how popular car DVD players are... I know they exist and some larger vehicels offer DVD players and screens as an option. Portable DVD players are available as well with tiny screens.
So if Blu-Ray requires some form of connection to a home base to operate, how the hell could they operate under the following conditions.
1. Car players
2. Handheld players
3. People who ditch their landlines in favor of mobile phones.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
When did you sign an eula when you bought a DVD player (or any other home electronics) ? ...
... it does, the unit is defective and you get a refund or replacement ... end of story ...
...
.... .... otherwise it is a port and part of the I/O system ... so if the user can kill the device the software is considered defective and there you go: refund ....
.... .... ......
.........
... did I break some eulas ? I do not know ... when i made the purchases I was never presented with anything to read/sign other than my credit card slip ..... if the device dies i take it back and demand a refund unless i opened the case and i added/removed hardware i am clean ...
.... just think of your xbox how many cool things can it do with a mod like play mp3, avi files or show weather info.... without that it is a dumb box playing games and cd/dvd (not even progressive scan without some image hexedit)
... just kill the ports or buy a hardware that does not phone home ...
e.g. button combination (that is used to disable region codes on many players sold in Europe or her in Costa Rica) kills the player than the unit is defective
I learnt that (pretty much first class) in programming class, that user action cannot and should not crash or destroy a program or the device
If you open the box to tinker, your guarantee is gone and they can refuse any guarantee claim
noh the gray area: if a device has a port for data entry and you make a software upgrade and the device dies (whether because the upgrade bricks the device or because it "calls home" and gets deactivated i feel it falls in the same category
If you put a port on the device the user can access, have a "roll back feature" for the case the unit bricks itself or the user uploads something bad (on purpose or by mistake)
When you mod your xbox you do not connect to Live or live bans your box (and does whatever else)
when you mod your player and you know that it is "calling home" you do not connect it to the net, or make sure that the device cannot call home
I mean it is no science fiction... e.g. a device talks to port 666 on whatever.com you just redirect the traffic or kill it on your router/box.... if you cannot do that you do not "tinker" your device the first place
lawyers might think differently but that is what I think
I put linux on my ipax, chipped my xbox, and installed a non officel HDD in my playstation
other view: i buy a device, it is mine,,, i paid my hard earned $$ and if i want i set it on fire, resell it, or drill a big-o hole into it....
DAMN comapnies should encourage users to modify their devices on the software level and put a "reset button" for original firmware rollback for the worst case scenario
nah
You're going to sell a player that will report any modification of itself back to HQ via the Internet.
1) What happens if it's never allowed to contact the internet? (i.e. the house has no internet, or the householder just doesn't plug it into the internet, like the UK Sky Digital boxes that people just let the installer install and then, when he's gone, remove the phone cable from the wall)
2) How is it going to talk? Broadband? Better be a secure networking device then and come Ethernet-ready. How many people have Internet-connected Ethernet as a percentage of the people who have a DVD Player? Modem? Not another gadget randomly dialling out (see above Sky Digital comment). Wireless?
3) If the device can be disabled remotely, do you have replacement rights? Faulty goods, not fight for the purpose for which they were sold etc.? How do you intend to PROVE that people were tampering in a court of law?
4) It took just over a year after DVD went "mainstream" for almost every single DVD player in the world to support Region-Free codes/hacks/options. How long do you think Blu-Ray "security" will last in a similar climate? And if it doesn't, how many people will buy it?
Granted, the first really obnoxious technology that does this sort of thing, people MAY buy into. But after that, they will get wise. People wised up to DVD Region Encoding quickly. The first obnoxious tech MAY get popular but after that, the market will simply refuse to buy without reading the T's & C's first.
I only read the blurb, not the article, but as soon as I read that it authenticates with a remote server to see if it's been screwed around with... here's a thought,
Couldn't you just tweak it out to authenticate to a server you have inside your home network, and have that box running a process that listens for when the player tries to authenticate. Then it's just a matter of scanning what packets a legit player sends and receives. Get the server to only send it the packets the player likes.
Or even easier, and probably slightly more practical, disable the "feature" in the player that causes it to stop working if the player is hacked? So then it can receive all the "/kill" commands it wants, but it would just discard them?
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
Don't buy it then. Put your money where your protest is. I know I won't. Fuck Hollywood, it's your purchased copy of their movie, and your hardware. Are we licensing hardware now? This is bullshit. They shouldn't even sell it if they want such control. Cunts.
I hate sigs.
Well, they'd have to get a decryption key (for the encrypted movie) if they want to make this player, and then Sony/whoever could just revoke that key and render all of them useless (like they did with that WinDVD version). If that's the way Blu-Ray works, anyway.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
If you just refuse to buy this shit. Encourage everyone you know to boycott Blu-ray. Remember Divx? No not the MPEG-4 compressor but the orignal Divx, the one from Circut City. It was to be the DVD replacement. Take DVD, remove some of the cool features and require people to pay per view. Hollywood couldn't stop drooling on themselves over the PPV idea, and the fact that consumers couldn't sell used discs. All the major studios cast in for Divx and most said they were only doing Divx, no DVD.
Well, an effective consumer boycott was organized. People were informed about how much Divx sucked, and so they didn't buy it. Their VHS tapes were good enough and they stuck with that. In the end, Circut City took a bath to the tune of $100 million and Divx died.
The same can be done here. DVDs are good enough for most people. Those without HDTVs really couldn't give two shits and even for those with, it's not like DVDs are an eyesore. Yes, I'd love to have more HD content, but I don't cry when I have to watch a DVD.
So work to convince consumers you know to boycott Blu-ray, they can keep buying DVDs, just no Blu-ray discs or players. Most importantly, convince the videophiles you know. These are the ones who will spend the money on the inital players that will allow the price to lower for the mass market. If the videophile community decides not to buy it, it'll be a major financial hardhsip.
That's all it will take. The electronics companies are happy to play ball with the media companies when it doesn't affect their bottom line. However if they are producing devices no one will buy, they'll get pissed and stop making them. They are also the ones with the real power, the electronics industry is FAR larger than the entertainment industry.
Worst natural disaster? There was this little thing called the "tsunami", on Dec 26 2004...
It's exactly this kind of paranoid, 'the consumers are our enemy trying to rip us off' thinking that is going to lead to the major electronics corporations losing very large amounts of money for the next several years. And I have no sympathy. They want us to buy new hardware because DVD players have become so cheap they don't really offer much opportunity for profit. Okay, but what reasons are they giving people to want to buy them?
"They have high-definition picture quality!"
So what? 99% of people don't have HD TV, and aren't likely to for at least 5 years, maybe 10, unless HD TV undergoes the same kind of astronomical price-drop that we saw with DVD players. So no advantage there.
"Er, you'll be able to get the definitive versions of your favourite movies!"
So the Original, Special Edition, Director's Cut and Ultimate versions that we've been buying for the past seven or eight years are just chopped liver?
"Oh, um, shit... I know! If you don't buy our pirate-proof new versions of movies you already own on boring old DVD, the terrorists will win!"
And since 9 out of 10 people wouldn't even think to buy pirate copies of DVDs in the first place, they get offended at being accused of being criminals. (And then some of them will think, 'Wait, I can get pirate DVDs? Where?')
Considering the dismal state of cinema at the moment, there's no 'killer app' for BR/HD-DVD. Are millions of people really going to drop the best part of a grand just on a player to watch the new King Kong in HD? I already have all of my favourite movies of all time on DVD. I have no intention of buying some expensive, DRM-crippled, home-phoning piece of kit that won't even offer better image quality without me shelling out thousands of pounds on a new HD TV so that I can watch them again with a sharper picture.
For most people, DVD is 'good enough', and that's how the corporations have made a rod for their own backs. It's the same reason why DVD-A and SACD failed miserably to replace CD. The increase in quality is negligible when weighed against the increase in price. It's not like VHS vs DVD, where all the failings of the old medium (low quality picture, tedious FF and REW, dropout over time, etc) instantly became obvious the first time you watched a DVD. With DVD vs BR/HD-DVD, the only way to tell any difference is to spend the price of a car on a new HD TV set. This may come as a surprise to the electronics companies, but very few people are willing to do that!
Also, slowly but surely, even Joe Public is starting to realise that obtrusive DRM that's there entirely for the studio's benefit is not necessarily a good thing. It might be something as simple as frustration when the tracks he got from Napster don't work on his iPod now, but when he wonders, "Hey, why the hell does my new DVD player need to be connected to the phone line to work? What's that all about? Is it going to add to my bill? What if someone tries to phone when I'm watching a movie?" as well...
And something that the studios don't seem to have considered - right now, they're making a huge amount of unexpected profit from releasing old TV shows on DVD. One problem: they won't be able to do the same on BR/HD, where the selling point is the better picture quality. Most of these shows were edited on video, so bar minor sprucing-up, that's as good as the picture will ever get. Sure, being able to put a whole season of Star Trek or Buffy or whatever on a single disc is convenient... but then trying to charge between 50 and 100 dollars/pounds/euros for just one disc (that looks no better than the DVD version) doesn't look like very good value to the punter, does it?
You must think in Russian.
All you'd have to do is crack the DNS box of whatever provider they're using.
Then you re-route their lookups to your own site.
Then all of them download the destruct code.
this is just stupid if they are allowed to do this. This is like Honda remotely disabling your engine because you modified the car.
A HOA isn't a company telling consumers what to do, it's owners voting on what to do. When you are in a neighbourhood with an HOA, you have a vote by owning a house. It's a fairly powerful vote, too, as there usually aren't many houses in a given HOA. Where I live, it's a 1/54th vote. Anything and everything about the contract can be changed by vote, including dissolving the HOA. If you have a problem with the way things are being run, it's easy to talk to the leaders, they are your neighbours. It's also easy to go around and try to rally people to vote how you want, also your neighbours.
The difference here is that consumers have no vote, no control. They are told "Here is how it is and there's nothing you can do." They won't give you your money back for your disabled unit, and since it's disabled you can't sell it, you have no recourse.
I'm not a huge HOA fan, but they really are different. If I have a complaint with my HOA, it's usually not that hard to come to a compramise. If I have a complaint with Sony, they'll tell me to pack sand.
So *when* the remote disabling protocol is cracked, someone will have much amusement locking out every blu-ray device on the planet. Should bankrupt them nicely!
LMAO
This is almost a repeat of Divx. It flopped and so will this connect the dvd player to the net requirement.
Never have so few words meant so little to so many people.
Expect widely spread remotely disabling unmodified players by those with malicious intent. The first motivation is competition. The second is will to remove such technology from the market.
There you are, staring at me again.
I Think technology companies are fooling themselves thinking any of the new stuff on the horizon is going ot be huge. I am a definete technophile/computer geek/etc and I have never once watched a DVD on any normal TV and thought "Man I wish this thing had better resolution". My dad still calls DVD's "VDD's". DVD's only overan VHS's because of all the obvious advantages. Some new format that requires internet connections, DRM, etc etc just wont be accepted, because it just adds to the confusion.
... yeah and I am always pissing on the fact that google news lists slashdot... it isn't a fucking news source.
News aggregators/link dumps/comment sites should link to news sources NOT OTHER NEWS AGGREGATORS. This multi-tiered linking causes games of chinese whispers, and this is serious:
3 out of 5 Slashdot article titles are completely misleading. And 3/4 statistics are just made up on the spot to prove a point.
cogito...cogitio...ergo sum...cogito.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
congratulations, the troll wins.
There will not be anything to interdict. When these items are shipped and cross our borders they will be perfectly legitimate. What will happen is that the "secret" of applying an "overvoltage" to a specific set of components/connectors will "accidently" disable the Digital Rectum Manacles (TM) and leave the normal functionality untouched will be "leaked", probably by selling the instructions on e-bay (preceeding business method patent pending). With the added benefit that such actions void the warranty and when it breaks 23 months later a new player will have to be purchased.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
If the transactions are encrypted for each individual player, you wouldn't know from traffic analysis exactly what the player was retrieving. It might be pulling back an applet to test whether it was hacked or not. If the proper response does not come back, you never get another disc key ever again.
This is not to say that the manufacturers aren't likely to screw things up again (or even several more times), but after a few cycles of lockdown and hiring some decent crypto experts they're likely to wind up with something like that.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The day my DVD player MUST be hooked up to the internet and MUST talk to a DRM server is the day I simply WILL NOT USE that format - and WILL NOT buy that player. Others should follow that example. There's no good reason, and no excuse. We don't have shit for rights or voice anymore. What you do have is your dollar... spend it carefully. If 75% of americans buy a blu-ray player with this setup doesn't that implicitly say to these execs that 75% of americans don't mind insane DRM? It shouldn't, but it probably does. And remember, boycotting the players is a lot easier than boycotting RIAA music for instance. It's tough to attribute a lack of player sales to piracy. It speaks a much louder message in this case that isn't likely to be misinterpreted.
PS: An assumption is made that the player must be connected to the internet to function... otherwise.. WHY!?
Why? Because this is how most people feel. They wrap this feeling in all kinds of intellectual packages, but this is how they feel. Even if you don't agree with this fellow's statement, mod it up anyway. It's insightful as the truth so often is.
I've made up my mind and now I've got to lie in it.
The first hack is for the player to always report A-OK. Then you are good to go.
If I hack my blu-ray player to not communicate with it's HQ, will my device be able to be remotely disabled?
Thanks, Blu-Ray. You just guaranteed I will never buy one of these players.
Good luck with your technology. Keep on blamin' piracy. Tell the eight-tracks I said hello.
I'd rather pay a monthly fee, say $30US, to watch movies and listen to music from a nearly all-inclusive library without having to own any equipment other than a PC. Maybe recent advances in bandwidth will make that possible...
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
Imagine if your automobile (or car as we Brits say) came with a Microsoft EULA...
We, Forgenchrymotor Corp license this vehicle to you on the understanding that you purchase it without any implied fit-for-purpose, and shall have no right for compensation if the vehicle at any time refuses to start, stop or turn; if the vehicle spontaneously explodes, you are responsible for reassembling the vehicle. We reserve the right at any time to render the vehicle obsolete and stop providing spares or service without notice. Should we think you have tampered with the vehicle we reserve the right to disable it remotely without warning or due process.
when I need them most?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
They assume all people have internet. Wouldn't it just be as simple as to download the cracked firmware, disconnect and install?
If the Blu-Ray player requires a telephone jack, then you'll be able to get software for any OS so you can plug the cable into your modem (if you have one) and ignore the whole process. Just wait a couple months.
*Owner* The person that will replace the unit after my son puts his peanut butter sandwhich in the drive.
::giggles:: I've got quite a number of things that need replacing. Care to send a check now, or file for bankruptcy ?
If the answer is "me", you better damn not send a self destruct command to my property.
If the answer is "you" --
Or what about the seriously disabled? They just don't want to work, right? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that no one in their right mind would ever hire them.
Americans are such monstrous, horrible people.
In my opinion they should be not be able to sell them, only put them out for rent. Because if they forbid this way, selling is a hoax. Thats like you buy a car and they say "if you change anything, we will stop it from working". Cool ...
...
Well, I don't own a HDTV anyway and it will be a damn long time until I might get one (not until my old TV really dies), so 100% no need to get blue-shit or hd-shit
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
> The worst natural disaster in recorded history occurred just a week ago in New Orleans ...
Funny, I would have thought that the 2004 Tsunami, with over 150,000 dead (that's about half the population of the USA), would better qualify at the worst natural disaster in recorded history but I guess since it didn't happen in America it doesn't really matter, does it?
Jackass.
Do not feed trolls. See nickname, posting record.
So they want to protect their region coding to protect their international price fixing scam. How long until they'll want to only play DRM-ed disks because the unencrypted disk might be a "pirated" copy even if it's your backup copy or a dvd you made of the show you recorded last night when you had something better to do than stay home and watch tv.
Stop the price fixing and make the DMCA like the 18th ammendment.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Off-topic, and probably not the place, but... I'd like to meet these so-called "kilohumans" the parent mentions.
Good job posting that link to God Hates America on here. Hopefully now the Slashdot effect will wipe it off the face of the Internet.
If the product, for any reason, stops playing DVDs as expected and the manufacturer will not accept the product for under warranty service, it will be submitted as a claim to Visa extended warranty customer protection for free replacement.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Jackass.
Hmmm... a box on every TV set, that connects to Sony's servers and reports back to big brother, and also can send back information that could disable your box, or worse. I think I know who Sony hired to design this...
The only people who are permitted to 'punish' me are my parents and a judge. No one else (and my parent's ability is somewhat diluted now). If our new Blu-ray overlords would like to punish me, they can speak to a judge. If they choose to take action against me without doing so, they can be sure I will speak to a judge about punishing THEM.
Companies can't just invent laws, yet. I'm sure they'd like to, but they can't.
Would a repair procedure performed by a mom-and-pop repair shop (read: not owned by Sony or whomever) count as a 'punishable' offense?
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Maybe not so farfetched, if they can get some PC OEM to agree to it -- it's certainly conceivable that the BIOS, or a TC-style chip, might be rigged to boot *only* with a "recognised" OS. If that happened to be Windows, that would be Ballmer's ultimate wet dream.
[has thought] What about those upcoming Apples with the x86 CPU? will they boot with a non-Mac OS?? I have no idea, anyone care to speculate?
Some Tandy PCs would only boot with their OEM version of DOS 3.x, because part of DOS was in ROM. So it's not like it's terribly difficult to implement. And what's in flashable ROM... well, that's not hard to remotely alter, if you can get access to the hardware.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I'm sorry, but that's not enough.. how about NOT INCLUDING IT.. and how about not going along with HD-DVD with the DRM content onlycrap while you're at it. Screw this, if you want to threaten me with remote destruction of my player, and build it so it won't play my home made video, then you can keep it, and I won't buy it, and I'll tell others the very good reasons not to as well.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
SO the real question is how anyone thinks they can sella player REQUIRED to be hooked into the network.
There's no way that will fly in teh consimer market. The revocation of keys on newly released media is about all they can do.
---> Kendall
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Savvyness in the AV world doesn't necessiarly translate to technology at large. I often help support professional video and audio people with computer issues, for example. So they may know and undrestand the video benefits of Blu-ray but not the DRM restrictions. Further, they might think them irrelivant and say "Well it's just hackers that will have problems."
Well what you explain to them is that in the case of ANY mod it might get disabled, espically mods they like to do.
The media industry is paranoid about people getting high-resolution digital copies of things, so it's all locked down. DVD-As won't play at full resolution via the digital out, they only play via the analogue outs. So what some A/V philes do is mode their DVD player to have 3 S/PDIF outs to get full resolution digital audio to their own high quality outboard DACs.
Same goes for video with Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The analogue outs will only do 480p, and the only digital out for higher rez will be HDMI. Well many videophiles don't like DVI/HDMI, they mod their players to use SDI, the pro standard. It has much longer cable runs (up to 1km if done right) and can be fitted to non-digital players and TVs with a converter. Again, making this mod could result in player deactivation. This means that none oftheir old, high quality SDI-mod displays will work, they'll have to buy new displays that suport DVI/HDMI with HDCP.
So, if you have friends in this category, just make sure they understand the full implications of this, that if it catches on, their right to modify their players to work with the gear they want will be taken away.
So if you have friends that might adopt this eairly, make sure they understand how in the long run it will affect them, not just computer hacker types. Make sure they understand what they would be trading in the long run to have higher def now.
An insightful AC said,
::giggles:: I've got quite a number of things that need replacing. Care to send a check now, or file for bankruptcy ?
:D Not to mention that it would probably cause quite a stir in small claims court. Seriously, this sounds like wonderful lawsuit fodder!
============
*Owner* The person that will replace the unit after my son puts his peanut butter sandwhich in the drive.
If the answer is "me", you better damn not send a self destruct command to my property.
If the answer is "you" --
===========
That's a damned good idea.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Before moderators click, yes this IS a re-post.......
I hate wars like this blu-ray vs HD-DVD, I hate them a LOT.
While both have their pros and cons, ultimately we the consumer are going to be the ones shafted until they get their shit together. (I don't even need to go into why we'll be shafted if there's 2 formats, readers of this comment will know already)
Problem is, even when they DO get their shit together and decide on a single format, we will STILL get shafted!
If it's not DRM for the files on the disc itself, it's these new rumours of no component HD support, since it can't effectively enforce DRM.
In other words go and replace your "old" HDTV which is missing those plugs. (sorry guys buy my Toshiba 36" is 6 months old and I'm not upgrading)
While you're at it, go replace that component receiver too, it doesn't have HDMI or DVI inputs....
The manufactuers also seem to be thinking the uptake on blu-ray and HD-DVD is going to be quick, they are very very wrong.
DVD took off well because it did SO MANY things better than VHS - on a huge huge level.
The disc is (theoretically) stronger.
You can fast fwd through 60 minutes instantly - no need to re-wind.
They put cute little menu's and extra's on the disc.
You can drop a second audio or third or fourth audio channel - giving you commentary or language options (easier for manufacturers convienience then too)
Quality improvements in audio and video.
Overall DVD, besides the convienience of easy recording is better than VHS in many many ways.
The new HD formats however, they are not so simple, these suckers might have a better picture but the disc size / shape convienience is the same, the fast forward / rewind is the same, menu's will likely be similar or the same.
Ultimately all they will do is either offer MORE content or better quality, which isn't a bad thing but it's no gargantuan leap like DVD to VHS
So I've thought a lot about this and I've come to the decision of being a bit of a neathanderal and sticking with the "old" format so I'm sticking with DVD.
DVD still offers a picture we've all been completely happy with for the past what 5? 8 years and a high definition, fine pitch set isn't going to do bad things for your DVD's.
DVD still offers DDigital audio and DTS audio, both of which are quite damn good with decent quality speakers and HT gear.
DVD is easily backed up, my neighbours have kids and trust me those disney dvd's DO get used a heck of a lot, sure you should teach your kids to look after stuff but saving your ass 20 or 30$ on a disney DVD from scratches = smart (and fair use as far as I'm concerned)
DVD is fairly easy to author your own discs.
DVD is small enough to backup a couple of movies on the laptop for that holiday, so you don't lose the discs AND save battery power only having the HDD working while playing them
Infact the list goes on and on, but ultimately - I'm pretty darn happy with the quality of my movies on my TV from DVD's - and the majority of the ones I watch are DVD-shrunk'd so to speak, let alone originals making use of the full 8.5gb for better quality.
Finally, although it might be just a placebo effect but running my DVD's through my modified Xbox in 1280x720 it kind of upsamples them and makes the old content look even better.
Why on earth would I buy in to this DRM rubbish - I look forward to it sinking, I hope Sony, MS, Toshiba and the whole damn industry end up learning an expensive lesson.
(again, please - vote with your wallet - fuck the high def standards - until they release them PROPERLY so we can use them!)
So, they put tech in place to keep us from breaking the law and we're pissed at them? The company that is merely being fiscally responsible to it's investors, lawfully, by merely keeping us from breaking the law? Interesting...
Just seems you're pissed at the wrong people since it seems that we, the people, are to blame here. We were the ones that were asleep at the wheel when these laws were "discussed" and "inacted". I mean, this is still a democracy, right? Pissed that large pools of money and ergo power (large corps.) have more say in policy than the will of the populace? Pissed at the lack of education to the populace about these laws, purposefully, when they were being pushed through? I would be too...
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
What if you want to play these discs on a laptop that is away from any network connection, or in a car? What if you want a standalone, portable player? Those have become common scenarios for playing DVD's nowadays.
Tell the average "Joe Sixpack" that Sony can remotely destroy his player anytime they want and he will be PISSED. Don't underestimate the average Joe's ability to understand what it means to be fucked over by a big company.
This WILL fail. That this idea has made it so far into the market shows how completely out of touch the execs at Sony are.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
It seems like corporate america has adopted an ass-backwards version of communism where corporations own every bit of your property rather than the government.
In communism (which has proven not to work), you can at least trust that the government has some positive motives in mind that will eventually lead to prosperity for the people. Obviously, history has proven this false, but the fact remains....
Here, on the other hand, we are no longer in control of our own property, and are at the mercy of huge corporations that have the single goal of making money. This, I can assure you, will NOT lead to prosperity for the proletariat no matter how you spin it.
So in a sense, our neo-capitalism has evolved into a system that incorporates the absolute worst parts of communism.
this leaves me conflicted inside. I don't like the idea of socialism/communism at all, and think that our free-market economy has served us well so far. However, corporations (foreign ones at that!) should not be in control of our personal possessions!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Will these only work when connected to the internet (ala DivX)?
If so, Can't one simply use some sort of firewall to disable the phone-home aspect? I.e. disable all contact with certain domains and/or restrict to certain MAC addresses?
If not, I hope that nobody will buy such a device.
It seems that we are moving into a very scary world regarding computing where the media companies want to take away our ability to tinker with anything we buy.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Cause I'm in Australia.
Yet the dufus in the US can still disable my player because I want to play legally purchased material that happens to be region 1 ?
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
This won't work if they require an internet connection. While most people probably have some ability to connect to the internet, physically it will be difficult to impose this on a device.
It seems to me more likely Sony will approach this they way they have with the PSP, with the UMD disks containing firmware or firmware checks that could disable players.
In otherwords, when you get Kill Bill version 4, it may have a checksum in the disk and either update it or disable the player.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
... to do as they wish with things they own, including to impose conditions when selling those things to others.
For example, say my company would like to use some Open Source code in our product. We can't just do it, there are ramifications to consider. Does using Open Source code mean all of our code is Open Source (This is death for us.) Does it mean we can be sued (This is also death). Clearly we can't just do as we wish because whoever "owns" the rights to the code in the first place decided to place limitations on its use.
I don't think the above is too horrific, do you? So what's the difference here? If a media provider wants you to jump through hoops that you don't want to jump through, don't buy their products. It's their right to place conditions, and it's your right to walk away from the transaction.
Which is what we did with Open Source code, by the way. It's prohibited. We looked at the rules and balked, chosing instead to write things in-house.
Mock Tech Interviews & Free Resume Review
You're under arrest because you suspected have the motive to "modify the firmware"!
Hong Kong - International Joke Center (after 1997-06-30)
Microsoft has been successful in doing exactly this with your Xboxes for years now. No Xbox Live for you Master Tickerer... you modded our Xbox and we don't stand for that. And, people continue to mod their xboxes and play with themselves while others go along with it so they can play in the 'sanitary community' called xbox live.
It'll always be that way - people that want to be different are on the outside looking in in order to exercise their rights to freedom, until, that is, everyone decides to WAKE THE FUCK UP and see what it is we are allowing ourselves to be turned in to... a bunch of servile cattle at the hands of the older generations who don't understand the technology or the issues, yet have the power to decide how the people using it should be treated.
There. I used to be a republican.
The only thing you should plug into the ethernet port of these worthless devices should be the etherkiller.
Don't believe everything you read. Most of the claims in the article are just plain wrong. Blu Ray drives are not going to report themselves to a service if hacked. Online connectivity is for making copies of disc contents which will require interaction with a service, and maybe a financial transaction. Internet connectivity is an optional feature of the players, it will not be in every player, and you could simply not plug it in to the Internet if you wished anyways. That doesn't mean Blu Ray and HD-DVD will not have copy protections, they will and some details are available at aacsla.org. Blu ray will have a few more security features, but nothing along the lines of what the article states.
How can they expect everyone to get these players hooked up to the internet? How many ports do they want me to have in my router? I'm already short... lots of people don't even have routers. Or will it use phone lines? If so, who pays? I'll admit that I don't know a whole lot about this subject, but it sounds pretty dubious.
Will they have these types of drives for PC's? If they try to disable a persons PC that they paid $1500 for, people will be pissed. All the more reason to use Linux over windows though. (no corporate control)
Yes. I have a Divx player. I picked it up secondhand together with a used VCR, for $35 and half a bottle of mediocre Bourbon. =)
Divx wasn't supposed to replace DVD in general, but replace DVD rentals. You also exagerate its popularity with the studios. And yes, that was a flop for MANY reasons-- the original relatively high price of the unit being one of them. However, the unit also plays standard DVDs just fine. In fact, I can play DVD+R and DVD-R disks on it as well... which is more than I can say for most other players of the time. I haven't been able to find a DVD-RAM disk to test it with, but I'd give even money that would work too. The main part about it that sucks is that the remote has an unwholesome appetite for batteries; they last about 2 months, compared with about a year for most of my other remotes. But, aside from that, I'm absolutely delighted at the money (and booze) I invested in getting it.
I'd agree, it's a question of marginal benefits: Blu Ray isn't worth it, especially while Modern Hollywood Sucks (and Bujold, Brust, SR Donaldson, LK Hamilton, GRR Martin, Pratchett, and V Vinge do not). But the content industry didn't understand that in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and they still don't get it. How anyone can get that rich without understanding marginal value, whether elastic or time-value, is beyond me.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Dont buy a participating player.
There are high-end dvd players coming out of china right now with picture quality, features, and prices that are kicking the asses of more expensive products from the big name brands. These players are typically easy to put into region 0 mode and disable macrovision because they dont care about all our DRM bullshit. I am certain that these types of players will become common with blu-ray and none of us will have a problem with it after so long.
Also to throw out there, as a videophile I have absolutely no interest in the PS3. A first-gen sony product that moonlights as a dvd player? Seriously, the PS2 and xbox are terrible dvd players (terrible quality, functionality, and even compatibility in some cases). The idea that the PS3 might be a good player is ludicrous.
Videophiles will get a real player after the second or third release of products from someone other than sony.
Looks like I'll be skipping this upgrade since holographic tech is just on the horizon. Plus DVDs will be hard as hell to kill.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
The thing about this that seems silly to be, is that there's no way companies are going to build HD players to require a network connection to work. That would be the biggest turnoff ever, the only company i could imagine doing something that stupid is Circuit City (still on my no-buy list) and they are not in a position to do so.
So I think it will be the same old key revocation system. What will be interesting is to see what happens if a few major keys are found (like Sony's) - is Sony really going to revoke thier own key and create a customer service nightmare? We shall see...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When it comes to backing a loser for consumer technology, Sony is really good at it. They seem to think the same rules and mentality they have in the pro market will work and it won't. I mean Beta was the professional format. When Betacam, and later SP came out, that's what practically all TV was shot on. Betacam SP is still the standard to which everything is compared. However Betamax failed in the home market. It was too expensive, and didn't hold enough on a tape.
The same thing happened with digital. Sony went with DigiBeta, a digital tape system with some compatability with Betacam SP. For the consumer market, they went with digital 8mm. The rest of the industry unified on a DV standard, which had bit-compatable pro (DVcam) and consumer (miniDV) devices. DV is where it's at now for consumer gear, and even a great deal of broadcast is shot DV.
Now Blu-ray may be different, since they aren't the only people involved, but I'd never bet money on any non-professional Sony standard. They have backed one looser after another in the consumer market, and they consumer electronics division has really been taking a hit.
Okay. A slashdot article on the blu-ray spec posted at least a month ago (2 or three dvd-related threads ago) had a link to the spec, a pdf. A 15 minute skim of the paper scared me and I posted about it, then reiterated it in the last 2 related threads. Does anybody read the technical material? It's like /. is just a bunch of 12-year old wankers who don't even like programming or studying that much.
The encryption system uses a broad tree of keys and subkeys so that the player can disable an entire subset of media by denying decryption functionality for parts of the tree.
The player can be Internet connected but does not have to be. However the spec IIRC does allow executable code or related commands in part of the DVD, which seems to be protected with a different key.
The player is proposed to have a wireless LAN adapter which may be sold separately, presumably this would simultaneously serve media to clients in your home while providing a keyring and monitor to police usage across the LAN.
The spec as proposed appears to guarantee that there will be events from time to time triggered by media or net connection (or even from media or programs on another pc on the LAN) causing portions of the key tree to be disabled, enabled, or updated. The ultimate thermonuclear threat on this platform is to disable the entire tree which may either render the device unusable completely, or may just let you use DVDs that are unprotected (if any exist in that format).
It sounds like each player will have a unique ID as well. While disablings of keys may not discriminate between IDs in the beginning, it is entirely possible that hacking your player could even end up in your being blacklisted in some way, or "infecting" your entire network with commands destroying functionality.
Personally I despise this introduction of military-grade security into my home by big entertainment companies and will boycott and fight against this any way I can. I already do not buy CDs or DVDs outright and do not feel I suffer unduly. This initiative is sure to make your home a battleground for all kinds of cyberwarfare that make you nostalgic in 10 years for the cute and relatively limited and harmless spyware and spam threats of today.
Well...Maybe I'm not the average slashdotter, but somehow I don't fancy the
idea of having random appliances, in my house, hooked up to the internet. So very much so that I have 2 VCR's I bought ~ 2 years ago that I never got to work because they had no proxy support and I've never gotten around to setting up my gnux box as a transparent proxy for the VCR's website -- no manual override to setup channels or time. Very well designed to be useless w/o a ree & open internet connection (not an unroutable local subnet that only has internet access through a gnux proxy box).
Anyway, needing open access while on my internal subnet: at odds with local security policy so still not done. DVD player on internet? Badness. Like I want to tell someone everytime I watch some movie and give them the chance to revoke a movie everytime I play it -- yeah, right.
-l
Once we reverse-engineer the remote-disable protocol, we can flash our firmware to permanently disable this bullshit, and stop worrying about it. In fact, if it's got an ethernet cable, we could even broadcast our movies to the internet, provided there's enough space on the firmware chips.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
It's strange, that all of the DVD players I have ever owned have had an undocumented 'feature' that allows me to make the device region free? So, as I read this, the manufacturer builds these features into their device, which you find out and turn on (probably through keypresses of the remote, and then the player says "Hey, this player shouldnt be region free" and disables itself.
Ok if you pull out the firmware and reverse engineer the code and put your own in, now that to me is hacking, but surely not if you enable a feature that the manufacturer has built in?
I imagine that it has got to the point now that dvd players that you cant disable the region code probably sell less well as those that you can disable it, so the manufacturer is going to stuff their product with these backdoors so more people buy them.
I can't help but wonder what it would take for a small-fry manufacturer to create and release a player that can play MPEG-4 video from DVDs. It would be exactly the same as DVD, keeping the same menu formats and everything, except that the video would be higher resolution and compressed with a different codec. The major hurdle, I guess, would be that there would be no content to play on it and so most people wouldn't buy it.
"Super-DVD" would be useful for home-made discs, though, as was SVCD. Many DVD players can already play VideoCD and SVCD, so why not add Super DVD as well?
Control just for control's sake! To micromanage your every thought! Control over when you can pee! Control of your dreams! Control of your DNA! Control of the bacteria in your colon! Puppet Masters don't begin to approach it - this is more like possession of your bar-coded, serial-numbered, shrink-wrapped soul. This is the only thing that gives CEOs a woody anymore. Money is just a tool towards that end.
So we have a device that is capable of reading Blue-Ray discs and requires an internet connection, think about the possibilities.
1. Hack the Authority server and upload a new firmware with a bittorrent protocol on to it.
2. All players download new firmware.
3. When playing a movie it is also on a bittorrent network.
4. ???
5. NON-PROFIT!!!
What power has law where only money rules.
Is there any truth to the rumour that Lexmark will soon be getting onto the blu-ray bandwagon? And you MUST buy a cartridge to use the player?
.
- aqk
F U
Nothing is going to change until we shoot the bastards!
Andy Out!
Cable and satelite owners are used to hooking equipment up to phone lines - IF they want to watch pay-per-view. The user gets something out of it.
What would a user get out of a networked DVD player? Nothing, except the possibility the thing can shut down. Furthermore it's not a phone line we are talking about, but a network connection - how many satellite boxes (directTV or otherwise) require a network connection again?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But I suppose I should still amend my statement; I doubt ALL Americans are so monstrous. Just enough of them to prevent things from ever changing for the better in the USA.
>>The solution will be to stop the government from allowing companies to screw us over like this!
Oh, get off of it. The solution is to grow up and exercise the power you have as a consumer. Quit playing the victim and recognize that you're not helpless.
Companies have the freedom to create any shitty product (including this one, apparently) they way. And YOU, sir, have the freedom not to buy them. Circuit Shitty's time-expiring divx or whatever it was called is a prime example of crapware that nobody (outside of the CC boardroom) wanted. The consumers ignored it and it promptly went away.
You're not powerless, give Capitalism a chance to work. And if the market only offers one solution (one which you happen to loathe), then it would seem to me that it's a perfect time for you to enter the market with your own HDDVD solution.
The Washington Post thinks that "This service is an embarrassment to the company that gave the world the Walkman.".
The impact however, which Sony has on culture, society and laws is certainly no laughing matter.
*) Don't bother if you are not using IE; I quote from the link:
We appreciate your interest in the Connect music store, but our store currently only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. You don't seem to be using that particular browser at the moment, so, unfortunately, we'll have to part ways until we support the browser you're currently using or you upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer. Please click the Download link below if you'd like to upgrade now.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk