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Film Studios Sue Samsung Over DVD players
Lam1969 writes "The Korea Times reports that five U.S. film studios have taken Samsung to court for selling DVD players which allow users to bypass DRM features. The film companies, including Walt Disney and Time Warner, are demanding Samsung recall the players. According to a Samsung spokesman quoted in the article, the movie studios probably 'take issue' with Samsung's HD841 model, which Samsung sold in the United States for five months in 2004."
Seems an extremely exaggerated lawsuit, more than usual.
This is a sig. There are many others like it, but this one is mine.
From the article: ''The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy.'' Hrm, yeah, and I bet that's all people buying dvd's from other countries and bepassing the DRM with samsung equipment. Oh, wait, wasn't that the Linux pirates last week?
What I have done for all the DVDs in my OWN collection is bypass the DRM using DVD decrypter (w00t!) because I am sick of these goddamn preveiews, menus, copyright notices, birth control notices, and other shit. DVD Shrink is a nice utility that allows you to reformat a DVD so that you can put the disc in the drive and JUST WATCH THE MOVIE. Some of these more recent DVDs that have come out require ten minutes of mandatory (e.g. you can't fast forward) viewing of SHITE before you can see WHAT YOU PAID TO WATCH. For rental DVD's, don't even bother... it's worse than the old VHS tapes, even though the retailers are PAYING LESS now to maintain their inventory!!
I heard you can connect a vcr to the output and then record everything you play, I can imagine the studios are upset.
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
so where can I get one of these players? ... hmm time to do a search on Ebay.
sue them
In other news, prices for Samsung's HD841 DVD player skyrocket on EBay.
Samsung is the bad guy here. Well, insofar as Rambus was the bad guy in JEDEC. Everyone who was involved in the creation of the DVD standard agreed to a certain set of rules that they would abide by, but Samsung (like Rambus) flagrantly violated those rules and put other members of the association at risk.
Now, DRM and especially things like region locks are really terrible for the consumer, but that's not the issue here. If there were a non-DRM standard for DVD, Samsung could manufacture players for that standard all they like. The fact is that they agreed to a set of rules which included not making non-DRM players, and they decided to go ahead and make a player that is for all intents and purposes non-DRM.
They will be hit with a penalty, no doubt.
MPAA: "I find your lack of DRM Disturbing..."
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Samsung+HD841+ retail&btnG=Search&meta=
Engadget has a slightly more information.
And ultimately, Google News will provide all the stories you could want
To summarize the facts:
1. Samsung stopped producing this drive a year and a half ago
2. The 'features' were unlockable through remote control key combos
3. "The DVD-HD841 DVD-player can allow region encoding and high-bandwidth digital-content protection (HDCP) bypassing, provided a code is entered by remote control. Although pulled off shelves, its genes appear to have been transmitted to the DVD-HD747 and DVD-HD941." reference here
HDCP Bypassing!!
Weren't we just complaining about HDCP a day or two ago?
Run, don't walk, to eBay and get one of these players before Samsung pulls 'em.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...that the sellers are mostly front-men for Samsung. (-:
It's a pity that they couldn't actually do that, because it'd probably come close to paying their legal costs for warding off greedy corporate control-freaks.
Speaking of which, how are Samsung themselves in the GCCF department? I haven't heard anything bad about them on that front.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...DRM was there to protect me from illegal content that could get me in trouble. Which is good and all, but what happens when I put my home made DVDs in and it refuses to play them? What happens when I put my backup DVD instead of my original one? Or is there a program/service I can pay for that will replace my damaged DVD's free of charge or even with a small fee? I'm just an average consumer that does not own a DRM nfested player yet and am afraid of the future...
The film companies, including Walt Disney and Time Warner, are demanding Samsung recall the players.
Raise your hand if you're going to return your player if/when it's recalled. =P
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
Sure it's more expensive, but being boarded and pillaged in flight is still a fairly rare thing for commercial jets.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This is why I always recommend avoiding DVD players badged by large companies.
Large companies have more to lose if they don't toe the MPAA line (I'm seriously wondering how long it will be until players refuse to play a movie more than once a week or so).
Buy cheap players packed with features from middle east companies that may not even exist - much harder to threaten a company like that and features sell those sort of players and fierce competition keeps prices low.
why are they singling out samsung? there are quite a few models made by quite a few manfacturers that are unlockable via codes. are they trying to scare the industry into making sure that such work-arounds are not going to be in future hardware like blu-ray and hd-dvd?
Holy Moly -- I do have this model. Now to find a link to the remote control key sequence. ;-)
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
...if I "reformat" one of their falafel rolls before eating it, so why should a content provider have any say in how you view their content?
To be certain, it's nice for them to be able to ensure that the original content is high-quality and in a certain order and all, but I should be the one to decide whether I want to watch ads and splash-screens, or even more pointedly whether my kids watch the entire movie or just the 98% of it that isn't offensive.
Would they care if I piped it into the 320x200 monochrome screen on my mobile 'phone to watch? Or watched it through a filter that corrected for colour blindness? Or just colour-inverted it? Or played it at 120% of realtime? Or toneshifted the soundtrack? Or karaoke style? If so, why?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I can't recall any special successful lawsuits over DVD region coding bypassing through a remote control lately, if they sent any lawsuits at all about this. This despite it being pretty common. Would a company producing DVD / HD-DVD drives really violate anything like the DMCA if they had all protective features like HDCP intact, but let the user manually disable them via techniques hushed about and leaked from unofficial souces, a bit like I believe it works today with regular DVD drives and zone check disabling? I have local video stores that can take a drive they sell and "fix" it so it's region free if a user wants it.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Is it just me, or is there is barely even an article here? No one even knows which particular models of DVD players the MPAA are bitching about/want recalled. Obviously, they can't mean all of Samsung's players...
Hm...they are the RIAA though...
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
$5.400.000.000?! I sure would like to see the math behind this estimation. It's probably the old non-sensical #copied movie * $$/movie. Let's say the average DVD price is around $20, that means 270.000.000 movies have been copied? Yeah right!
And it assumes:
I'm getting quite tired of these MPAA calculations.
The opposed feature in these players is most likely the ability to disable the country-code in these players (via a hidden menu) so that non-US DVDs - in fact all DVDs - can be played in the players. I for one never understood why I shouldn't be able to watch DVDs that I bought in Europe because I *cannot* get them here.
Oh well... In the end the MPAA will succeed convincing enough politicians who will pass more and more stringent laws, copyright will be extended to 500 years, and in a decade or so the movie industry will be facing bancruptcy and wondering why nobody is buying their super-duper-extra-high-definition-drm-secured-DVDs -of-dumb-holywood-crap anymore.
As I mentioned somewhere before: Instead of land-owners and peasants without rights and property we'll have information-owners and rightless masses of consumers... Information-Feudalism.
I'm really looking forward to the day when I can get sued for just owning a DVD player that allows me to bypass commercials, inane FBI warnings, and ads for studios and technologies like THX.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
What I have done for all the DVDs in my OWN collection is bypass the DRM using DVD decrypter (w00t!) because I am sick of these goddamn preveiews, menus, copyright notices, birth control notices, and other shit.
I have a secondhand Linux box with mplayer, a DVD drive and TV out hooked up to the TV. Unskippable previews? I think not.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Is there any evidence that the encryption actually reduces piracy, in other words, increases sales? Is there any evidence that zoning on DVDs increases sales?
To what extent does zoning reduce sales? For instance, holidaymakers and businessmen not being able to purchase DVDs in the countries they visit due to zoning? Have the film studios researched this? Anyone know of any relevant market research?
Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM) is THE thing used to enforce DRM in DVD players and are burnt in during production of the players. However it is AFAIK only mandatory in US, meaning u could get a player without CPRM keys that can play (and write) pirated DVDs in South American and Asian COuntries (except Japan and maybe a few other countries). Got a friend in Singapore? He could get you a good player
XD
I love humanity, it is people I hate
"The fact is that they agreed to a set of rules which included not making non-DRM players, and they decided to go ahead and make a player that is for all intents and purposes non-DRM."
Um, by definition this makes them the good guy.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Samsung stopped making this particular player nearly two years ago and the lawsuit looks more like a warning to other manufacturers.
Any recall would be useless - if someone has one of these players and wants to keep it they'll just say it broke and they binned it. This wouldn't be impossible since a quick skim thought online forums indicates build quality on this particular model wasn't up to much.
Instead the studios are sending a message to all DVD manufacturers to beef up their future models so this kind of thing can't be done in the first place. If they don't they too can expect a legal fight.
Personally I think they are on to a loser - studios have very little pull over hardware manufacturers and if there's strong demand for an open player they will build it.
they forgot to mention that samsung also broke a key DRM feature. you know, the one that erases your memory of the movie so you dont describe what happens, to other people.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I am starting to turn into a Samsung fanboy, and everything I've bought from them of late works with Linux. At last there is a company that appears to manufacture electronic products the way consumers want.
All this region code stuff is silly. You can go and buy a dvd player that allows ALL REGION CODES to play right now. How is BYPASSING the region codes any different to a player that plays them all anyway? It's all a wank, made by wankers, pure and simple!
My brother was recently forced to copy a DVD. It was a very cheap children's DVD his son loves. The problem? There was a 2 and a half minute non-skipable copyright notice before the main feature.
You try explaining that one to a 2 year old...
Erm, how could Samsung make a recall on these players? They can't force people to give them back.
Recalls are only for products that are faulty, when the purchaser gladly and willingly returns them.
DVD players don't contain any DRM. Region coding isn't DRM. Region coding doesn't stop me from ripping as many copies of a disc as I want. DRM doesn't stop the large scale pirates making verbatim copies of that disc (though usually with the region encoding removed).
I'm sure you want a young, skinny Korean woman, not an old, fat one. Friends and relatives that have traveled to Korea on business have noticed there are only young, skinny women and old, fat women. Their theory is that the old, fat women have eaten the young, skinny ones.
i want one of those samsung dvd players!
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
I watch DVDs on my computer. I "upgraded" my DVD-player software and it wouldn't let me skip sections that the DVD says can't skip.
I was watching Voyager DVDs and every episode starts with a non-skippable 10s clip of Voyager powering up and moving across the sreen. Even though it was only for 10s, after 3-4 episodes I was really really hating that clip.
Anyway, I feel that now a pirate DVD is more valueable than a real DVD since pirate DVDs remove all skip codes and DRM and makes for more pleasant viewing.
Why sue over a player that hasn't been comercially available for over a year? If they're going to sue over an unlockable player, why not sue Philips over the DVP642 which is still on the market and is region and macrovision unlockable through hidden menus. Or sue a company like Apex which has consistantly released an unlockable model, quickly followed by a "corrected" player, over and over again?
Google for samsung hd841 and the first page you get is a forum full of complaints. You might not want one anyway...
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
every time we talk of DRM, someone (rightly) notices that, in the past, each and any protection scheme was defeated; (and indeed C Doctorow of EFF claims that the failure of DRM is inevitable); the common say is "some clever hacker in a garage will find a way 'round it".
And then... Samsung... ?!? This is really funny! LOL! ()
Of all the places and ways to defeat DRM... Samsung !?! (me is rolling and laughing)
A world where everyone is allowed to do what he thinks is right is a world without laws.
Next thing you know and they'll disable the fast-forward and skip buttons when you put in a DVD.
Oh, wait, they already do. Thank you, Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). <sarcasm>
Seriously, I don't give a fuck about what they want to impose on me. I'll use a restriction-free DVD player just so I can watch the damn movie when I insert it instead of having to wait a minute for all the mandatory crap to play.
Does anyone know what this player did that pissed Hollywood off so much? I can't see anything there that other players don't do as well. Or are they trying to make an example of Samsung for some reason?
So they basically put this number out of their *ss, and whip it out every time things get rough for them :) This is so amazing!
Samsung: That's it, we're releasing the DVD-s as is.
MPAA: No! You can't!
Samsung: WTF?
MPAA: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
Samsung: What are those estimates based on, not on Samusng DVD players right?
MPAA: Can't you read man, come on, SHOCK! See: "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost $5.4 billion last year due to piracy."
People: MPAA you're suing your users and manifacturers and keep pulling those numbers out of your *ss and applying silly DRM restriction so people don't buy your production, what did you expect?
MPAA: And you'll all be sued!!! You know why!? "The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that the movie industry lost friggin $5.4 billion last year due to friggin piracy."!!! Estimate=Fact! Estimate=fact!! Don't question us or you be sued!!! Arghh..
It's time to just ditch it. Get together and agree that it's an idea that's past, and quit forcing your customers to waste their time with finding codes on the net.
You aren't cutting sales of R1 discs to the UK.
Does the MPAA realise that with the amount of attention this law suite is generating that they are effectively advertising a list of 'features' to be included in future DVD players (well at least to those from small companies in China/Middle East).
Of course we all know a recall would get nearly 100% of these offending boxes. I know I certainly would return my box, particularly if I really had DVDs with different region codes and the box could play them all, or if I knew I could use the box to othherwise get around DRM. Heck, who wouldn't want to rush to send back their recalled player for one that was hobbled? Of course, the more cynical might say that the only boxes they would get back on a recall would be those that have already died or those used by people who would never use the device to get around DRM anyway, and that a recall would only serve to alert consumers that this model has a feature they might want and find hard to get. It will be interesting to see how this works out.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Xbox Media Center (XBMC) automatically can turn the power light off on your xbox when it's playing a movie. Not to mention it supports SMB shared drives, and plays just about every video format you can imagine. Just hack out an xbox (Get em while supplies last) and have a killer media center PC for cheap.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
It can resize 480p DVDs to 720p. Big deal, so can any PC DVD playback software. All it's doing is resizing an image. Play a DVD in a screen res higher than 720x480 and you've acheived the same effect.
Yeah, I personally made a $12 million dollar loss because my startup didnt work, wheres my tax breaks and discounts?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Here ya go,a msung+HD841&hits=50&Search=Search
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php?dvdplayer=S
Seriously why is the fact that a dvd player can be unlocked such a suprise to some people? Walmart in England has been selling one for a number of months that plays off the shelf not only all regions, copies, divx and xvid but also plays them off of data cards as well. All this for £35.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
Commas are used as decimal separators in the English language. Periods are used over in Europe.
:)
N umbers
Ex. 15 million = 15,000,000 not 15.000.000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_(punctuation)#
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php?dvdplayer=Sa msung+HD841&hits=50&Search=Search
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
Region
1. Turn on player with no disc in the tray. "No disk" appears on screen.
2. Press the "Repeat" key on the remote.
3. Press "57538" on the remote. A number should appear on screen, indicating your player's current region (e.g. "2").
4. Press the number for your required region (e.g. "1") or "9" for region-free/all-regions. The number will appear on screen, replacing the previous number (from step 3).
5. Press "Open/Close Tray" and leave the tray open for a few seconds.
6. Press "Power On/Off". The tray closes automatically and the player turns off. Next time you turn it on, it is region free (or whatever Region you selected in step 4).
HDCP
1. Turn your television ON
2. Turn the DVD Player ON
(You should see the Samsung screen saver appear on the TV)
3. Ensure the DVD tray is EMPTY and CLOSED
4. Wait for the message 'NO DISC' to appear
5. Press the ANGLE button
6. Press the numbers 4, 3, 2, 7
(You should see the message 'HDCP Free' appear in the upper
left hand corner of your television screen)
7. Press the OPEN/CLOSE button to open the disc tray Your DVD player is now region-free and HDCP-free.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
If waiting 2,5 minutes for a film to start seems unbearable to him, should he even be watching TV?
2.5 minutes. That's 150 seconds. Try something: Sit there and count off 150 seconds. That's rather a long freakin' time to be waiting for a video to start, no? It takes less time to make a bag of microwave popcorn.
Really, waiting 2.5 minutes isn't the problem, it's waiting 2.5 minutes when you know that it's totally pointless that's really annoying.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'd love for a lot of electronics to learn to be dark. What is the freaking obsession with covering them with bright lights. These things sit in my bedroom and make the room a technocolor light show when I'm trying to sleep. Many of them turn more lights on when you turn them off! Brilliant design decision there and if you turn them off by cutting the power to them they lose your settings.
C'mon you crappy consumer hardware designers. If you must make your gizmos glow like a radioactive wasteland then make the lights go off when the power is off and make the lights dim when not being interacted with. And make the g'dam settings persistant even if the power to the device is shut off. How much memory can these settings possibly take? I can buy 32MB of flash memory for under $10 retail. Certainly a big electronics company could afford to put the memory and small amount of control logic in their device for a couple dollars. Frickin morons will waste a lot of money implementing DRM that customers don't want but not a couple bucks to make smart lights that dim as needed and settings that don't get lost all the damn time.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
screw em. we don't need their stinking DVDs http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-352937521 0704959792
Shrek also had unskippable previews, but you can always just fast forward through them and if you pin the fast forward it only takes a few seconds to reach the menu. So, all those previews, notices and warnings can be fast forwarded through but, yes are still incredibly annoying.
There are a few movies though where I was quite surprised that the movie just started with out all the bullshit. The Smallville DVDs are like that in that they do not display the FBI warning and go directly to the main menu. VLC and Mplayer ignore the PUO codes so you can skip everything, but I prefer to re-author the movie only to DVD-R using DVD Shrink and keep that in a case beside the TV while the originals sit in a nice display stand. When friends come over to watch a movie they appreciate that the movie just starts and so do I.
May I suggest the use of the Preview button?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Use "Mac the Ripper" (yes it really is called that) and Popcorn (by Roxio).
Yep, sit him down and have him watch the copyright notices, and he can grow up thinking he doesn't have any rights at all. That would, of course, be exactly what they want.
You know, I had (honestly) forgotten all about "region free" DVD players, etc. But all the MPAA's fuss, and this associated Slashdot article about it, has reminded me that I do want a more capable DVD player. A while back, I had wanted a player that did DivX, so I could fit two or three of my movies onto a DVD for the little ones to destroy (instead of damaging the original $$ DVDs). At that time, the DivX playback on the units pretty much sucked, so I let it go and forgot about it.
Anyway, this article reminded me that there are really good DVD players out there that support region-free, HDCP-free, high-resolution playback at a reasonable price.... and they play back DivX as well. I think I will order one right now, in fact.
How's that for blowing up in your face, MPAA? I'm sure I'm not the only one that is now thinking, "yes, actually, thats exactly what I want. Thanks for the reminder."
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
Samsang DVD player doesn't have DRM.
Tochiba flat screen TV let me watch whatever I want.
Suny MP3 player let me listen to whatever MP3 files.
I have no clue what Samsung, Toshiba, Sony make. Are they big companies like Samsang, Tochiba and Suny?
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nah... the young, skinny women stay that way for approximately 40-50 years, and... BAM! One day they wake up, and they're old, and fat. It is really weird.
Meow what do we have here?
I have a very well known brand of player that plays anything (any region, divx, mpeg's, hdcd, etc..), I bought it in spain, and it deals with ntsc and pal as well, so works anywhere around the world.
Whenever I visit gibraltar (which is about once a month) I have to buy 10 region free dvd players for my friend who owns a DVD rental store. He cant get enough of them, but there are only so many I can carry at once over the border, so he has to deal with it.
This is not about Samsung. It's not even about DVD players, or DVD copying, which as others have pointed out, it a million times easier with a cheap DVD-R drive and free software. It's about sending a shot across the bow to the hardware manufacturers, warning them to not allow any DRM-breaking back doors in upcoming Blu-Ray/HD-DVD hardware.
The Hollywood goons know the cat is out of the bag for old-style DVDs. This is about maintaining control over the next generation.
Factory recalls are in place to protect consumers from paying from defective devices.
The Samsung device is not broken from the consumer PoV. Quite the contrary.
Actually Samsung and others should sue MPAA and fore them to recall their defective discs (forwarding past adds don't work) - or better yet suing RIAA: many CDs are not able to play on DVD recorders. Those disks are *really* defective from the consumer PoV.
Dear Samsung,
Please buy at least one of these movie studios, and stop using DRM on all your models so that we consumers can watch the movies from that studio the way we like - hit play and watch the movie we bought. You will scare the other studios, and the people will love you.
Cheers,
Anonymous Coward Consumer
PS: Make it easy to preset the default spoken language, and fall back to subtitles if no alternative spoken language is available.
The MPAA seems to think there's a dichotomy of pirating films or purchasing them, and by extension that if we make pirating impossible, then every pirate will go out and purchase everything that they would otherwise have pirated. And that, my friends, is a rather baseless claim (even if you're completely unaware of the animosity towards studios in general).
My, that was a yummy potato!
The only disks it won't copy are a few recent Sony ones (and we fcking *hate* Sony right now, yes?). These generate a CRC failure on read and the first few you meet you'd probably put down to scratches on the disk.
For those small number that don't copy (assuming you're using Windows), use DVD Decrypter and then burn the result with any CD burning program.
Or, use DVD43 and leave it running in your systray at all times. It'll strip out this protection on the fly, allowing DVDshrink to do its thing.
Reminds me of what has lately become one of my favorite quotes from The Insider.
Movies released on DVD have been available in the internet in very good quality since DeCSS. And even before that professional pirates could make a bit-for-bit copy of any DVD that worked just like the original. One DVD player model that made it possible to circumvent DRM does not have any effect on international piratism. Not one fucking bit.
That cat's totally out of the bag.
This unit is a DVD Player.
How can they say it causes priacy?
It does not copy DVDs
It lets you jump past the messages for 'do not pirate this CD', which is all over the box, and the adverts (adverts have nothing to do with piracy).
It also lets you play originals from another region. That has nothing to do with copies either.
How does this unit cause piracy?
Please!
They should issue a release stating that these models had this feature inadvertently included which should not have been there. Anyone having this model player who wants this feature removed should return the unit to Samsung for reflashing.
To be safe, they should include instructions on how to turn the feature on, just so people can be sure that they have an affected unit.
Actually, it's not "high voltage pulses". Macrovision has evolved past the stage where you could remove it with a "couple of passives and a one-shot" bypass circuit. Now, they mess with the level (and position, I belive) of the HSYNC pulse in a pseudorandom way. You need to work a bit harder to remove it, but I believe it's still possible with enough effort.
Ever try bringing your DVD player to a rental home where they have an old, RF-input only TV? Even with a video modulator, you're out of luck on a rainy day. Ask me how I know this.
Rather than try to remove Macrovision, I've taken the MythTV route. I replaced my Panasonic VHS recorder with a $150 PIII-900 class machine, a $80 200G hard drive and a $150 PVR-250 NTSC receiver card. For about $400 (and hours of fun for the idle mind setting it up!), I have my own, DRM-free, time-shifting PVR, DVD-player and -ripper, and video/audio archive. I can rip DVDs, record shows, skip commercials and transfer any of it to iPods or PCs. www.mysettopbox.tv will help you do it, too.
No Consumer(the people that pay both companies) wants DRM. Samsung is meeting that demand. Companies that don't follow that rule of nature are monopolies. Don't lecture us on who the bad guy is. If law is what you're after, then your opinion sways with a whores touch. If justice is what you're after, then you should back a market that has the greatest efficiency and openness.
Well! I guess I know what DVD player to buy now.
I kill harmless processes for sport
"but Samsung (like Rambus) flagrantly violated those rules and put other members of the association at risk."
At risk of what?
You don't make any sense. Samsung violated an agreement and in doing so, they put...Sony at risk?
And Samsung violated it because they giving consumers what they want. How terrible. And how screwed up are you that you make "pro-consumer" seem like being the bad guy.
You almost sound like an MPAA shill, frankly.
Why would you need to make backups when replacements are readily available at affordable prices?
Well, not much doubt. Conceivably they might get lucky with a "No judge or jury would ever convict me!" situation. A more interesting question is whether the region coding agreement was legal, or whether the scheme (as some hotheads have muttered) constitutes an anti-trust violation. If the underlying agreement is illegal, the doctrine of unclean hands says that the other companies can't go to the courts to enforce it. It's the same principle that keeps you from suing the hitman you hired to kill your wife to try and get your money back if he doesn't do it, or the hooker you refused to pay afterwards from suing you. (Disclaimer: IAmNotALawyer.) I don't know if Samsung will have the nerve to raise this at trial; they would be more likely during settlement talks to threaten to open the issue in court, in hopes that the other players would decide they'd rather have that can of worms left unopened.
But it's never a certainty until all of the appeals are over...
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
These companies don't have a guarantee that they should earn such and such amount per year.
There are laws in place that they have to play by, and when their competition/customers ignore those laws, it's not a fair playing field. Of course they have a right to complain.
How many companies and start-ups go bust every year because there business plans are obsolete?
We're not talking about obsolete business plans. We're talking about massive amounts of potential customers taking your product without paying for it. Illegally.
If they can't make money, tough!
So I guess they should have chosen to product a tangible product that is harder to steal, than creative works that are trivial to acquire without paying? That's a great position to take. If everyone here hates paying for products that contain real value, and everyone hates big successful companies that are good at what they do, then maybe Microsoft, the MPAA, and the RIAA should all just go to hell, we'll just download all their products for free, and in a couple of years when there's no one left making movies/software/music, we can rejoice that our radio waves and movie theatres are no longer filled with crap!
Indeed, they won't be filled with anything at all.
Great thinking there, genius.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly. If I burn a DVD of some home movies and put it in a standard DVD player connected to an HDCP-compliant TV, will it not play at 720p (or some other upscaled resolution) because it doesn't have CSS? I'm confused.
What I'm saying is, in what situation (copying commerical DVDs, home-made DVDs, etc) would HDCP prevent me from doing activity $FOO? What is the problem? It sounds like if you have an HDCP dvd player and an HDCP tv, it'll play anything you throw at it in high(er) def.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Maybe I'm just a paranoid cynic, but I wonder if a movie studio executive doesn't have a truckload of those players parked somewhere...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
I have recently been hitting the library for some nice film classics, some film noir, some Hitchcock -- that was the golden age of cinema, none of this Ben Aflec and J. Lo crap.
You filthy communist pinko! Don't you know that this country was founded upon the American populace supporting businesses by being happy little consumers? People like you make me sick... I bet you listen to music on the radio without buying the CDs first too!
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
wie dumm kann man nur sein...
http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/20/samsung-sued-ov er-dvd-duping-by-discontinued-player/
Turns out you have to drop to the service menu to disable the copyright protection, and that this player has been discontinued for a while. Thanks for the studios for making this knowledge public!
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
They just made me buy one of those babies! Gotta get them while they're cheap!
--MaxPowerDJ
If I wrote this about my "right" to run OS X on whatever hardware I liked, I'd be kicked to the ground, and then people would get "+5, insightfuls" for saying that Apple has the right to restrict how its software is run. (After all, you agreed to the EULA...)
Presumably the logic is simple: Apple restrics rights, fine; Microsoft, the MPAA or anyone else restricts right, treason!
--- My dad's political betting
Piracy is an anauthorized act of robbery on high seas. I assume, it is closely related to extreme violance, mass assasinations, slavery and sunken ships.
Peacfully watching anything, even without a given permision, is just peeping. Not piracy! It does not stand even close to violance, robbery and assasination.
Authorized (by a government) sea robbers were called privateers. Not much different from pirates, really. Those MPAA and RIAA (and the similar institutions) were authorized to enforse those, who are weaker, with severe punishment, for the private benefit of these agencies and, probably, minor benefit of a government. They are real pirates.
Because you're a moron who doesn't read for meaning.
Read it again. Then read it again. Then get someone smarter than you, and have them read it VERY S-L-O-W-L-Y to you.
The quote was discussing 2005 revenues. It ALSO discussed nominated films, whic if you'd been paying attention, WASN'T THE SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION. There was NO ANALOGY AT ALL, just you reading part of a quote and thinking (erroneously) that you were reading the part that mattered.
You weren't.
So top being such a dick, especially when you've made such a silly mistake.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I use a very old top-loader VCR that doesn't know what Macrovision is, and records everything anyway. I doubt it has anything so complex built into it like what you are describing. I don't know why it works, but it does! It copies things that new VCR's can't. Old technology r0x0rZ.
The "DRM" (Fair-Use Circumvention Kit) features the MPAA would like to see in the player are not legal everywhere, and where they are, turning them off frequently is not illegal. Further, it's a widely held belief that one day the consumer or the powers that be might realize that people are getting the proverbial shaft and ultimately take a more sensible tack that obviates (or at least, no longer mandates) the need for such measures.
Samsung is simply building a player where the anti-consumer features can be made as consumer-friendly (or hostile) as the prevailing market conditions permit. This saves them effort of hardwiring different rules and functionality for each and every market or whenever there's been changes to local laws or customs.
Lets face it -- a minority have the player, and there's no tangible effect on the MPAA, since professional pirates wouldn't use a player like this to make bootlegs; heck, most amateur pirates would just as well rip the DVD.
ogle and vlc support DVD nav, and you can jump to the root menu at any time (or start at any title).
Contrast this with, say, PowerDVD or some other Windows/MAC DVD player which makes you sit through the parts you don't want to.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
They could just put out a press release along the lines:
Samsung is issuing a recall for all model HD841 because it easily allows users to strip DRM and other content control measures from DVDS. Please return your model and we will replace it with a more restrictive one.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
A nice feature for dvd software players (maybe in dvdnav?) I would like to see:
A blacklist with movie hashsums.
Most DVDs I own have the same "copying is stealing" spot before the disc menu.
Everytime your player encounters a "blacklisted" movie it would skip that title and play the next one.
Maybe add a context menu entry "[un]block this title" for ease of use.
Or a simpler version: since some program (I guess xine) already creates a ~/dvdcss/ dir with data for each disc (probably a css key cache) one could simply add a property: "start playback for this disc title/menu number X".
Add a "define as default title" context menu entry and say byebye to the annoying crap.
Ironically, if I had one of these DRM-bypassing DVD players I could stop ripping all the DVDs I rent. See, I do this because I hate ads and I'd rather spend 40 minutes pirating the movie (and stripping DRM in the process) than put the DVD on and go do something else for the 10 minutes' worth of commercials. Just my way of saying "fuck you, MPAA!" for doing it in the first place.
Hey, MPAA, when are you cocksmokers going to sue me for linking to DeCSS for several years like you threatened to? I keep emailing you and you keep hiding from me. You pussies.
On the optical drives, I always bought Lite-On CD burners, and all was well. Bought a DVD burner and it died. Bought a BenQ burner and it died. Everywhere I see, there are great reviews for these drives, but I just bad ones. I would specifically wonder if you didn't get two drives from the same run. I know that doesn't make it any less appalling that two consecutive drives crap out, but still.
I'll let you know about the drives...
Ack, not quite. The choice of chipsets is very important. Not all chipsets are well supported under Linux, and you could be stuck running X with the vesa driver rather than an actual driver. There are plenty of laptops with corrupt VGA BIOS that the Windows drivers bypass, but since there are no released specs for the card, the Linux driver can't get around the error. I think it's the i845, which is in SO many laptops.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
I own one of these DVD players.
Yes, we are talking about upscaled DVDs. The HD841 will upsample a 480P DVD to 720P and 1080i, but only through it's DVI connection, to a HDCP-compatible display(without the hack). I didn't know that when I bought it, which was a problem because the projector I had, an Infocus ScreenPlay 4800(which has since been sold and replaced with a ScreenPlay 4805 which is HDCP compatible), wasn't HDCP compatible. However, even with the hacks(which I haven't tried yet), I don't think it will be able to upsample to an analog output(component video). The upsampling button, which is on the remote, is called DVI Select, which makes me think it's DVI-out only.
"I reckon they are *deliberately* trying to degrade the viewing experience for DVDs by reverting back to the ads before the movie VCR model, so as to make it easier for them to push their next generation DVD formats such as HD-DVD and Blueray."
One flaw in your conspiracy argument (most conspiracy theories do). Ads on DVDs predate HD-DVD and Blu-ray. As for the "skip" feature. That's inconsistent on various players. Some can skip, some can't. Even on the same brand.
This is a blessing for many owners who bought the player because of its DVI output and upconversion properties, only to find out outside the 30 day return policy, short 3 month on-market time, or 1 year warranty period that the player is terrible. Start up is ridiculously slow, the transport mechanism frequently freezes, 4:3 content is never shown correctly, menus are very slow, very poor IR reception and a very bright annoying blue light. The chance at replacing a product that should never have been released due to quality control issues is a very welcome offer.
Regarding the Region Free 'hack' - I have never needed it, but it is enabled and I believe you should be able to view your content as you see fit.
I for one welcome our new recalled DVD players. Mine is just sitting in the rack, waiting to be replaced, or eBay'd.
http://www.linksysinfo.org - WRT54G Firmware Hacks and Linksys Support
Macrovision only works if your VCR has special AGC settings. Ancient VCRs had different AGC time constants and were therefore able to record anything. Eventually, producers were forced to stop making them, and all legal new VCRs have to use a predefined AGC algorithm/behavior which bails out on Macrovision signals.
...
Since only these particular AGC settings make Macrovision copy protection work, old players may play and record Macrovision protected stuff just fine
Taking another's content and selling it for profit is pirating.
No, boarding a ship and stealing its cargo on the open sea is piracy. Doubly so if you make the ship's captain walk the plank. ARGH!
What you're talking about is COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT. No matter how many times the ??AA tell you it's theft or piracy, it is NOT. They have not been deprived of property; they have been deprived of potential revenue. If we let them define the language of the debate, then the terrorists have already won. Or something.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
How many times have they (specially Disney) have had us rebuy movies or music? I have drawers fulls of VHS and same DVDs for the kids... How many of us have gone from vinyls to CDs? Now they want us to buy DVD-Audio 96... And they still dont know how to turn a profit? Are they surprised we dont want to buy again? And frankly CloneDVD removes all these annoying ads and "dont-skip" crap they force down on us. No, I dont buy DVDs or CDs anymore, why would I? What is my incentive? Its actually quite the reverse with all the crap they put on it. Same thing with watching live TV...why? When I can watch a TV show in 20 or 40 mins...even faster if I skip part I dont care... On demand has arrived, and has been around for awhile (just in the background), get with the program or be left in the dust... This whole DRM-thing and adding crapolos to CDs and DVDs, wheres the value? I'd rather not touch them period. I dont care if Disney or Hollywod productions go busts...I dont even watch them anymore, with Netflix I can watch all the Japanese films I have ever wanted. I had to blow up eventually. FU DRM!
I reckon the Oppo DV971H should be on every Slashdot reader's wish list.
e r-review-oppo-opdv971h
http://meta.ath0.com/articles/2006/01/09/dvd-play
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The hidden unlock feature on the Samsung allows for 720p/1080i over component, a feature you otherwise had to use a DVI cable for. This is great since my TV came out just before DVI.
"I could have sold FIVE BILLION DOLLARS worth of movies last year!"
"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for Samsung... and you meddling kids!"
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
All the things you mention above are true - they don't have anything to do with piracy (except that they will argue about the region coding bullshit)
No, they're pissed about the ability to disable the HDCP encoding of the upconverted output on this player.
HDCP is DRM, and disabling it does help with copyright violation.
(I have one of these players, and I recommend getting one specifically for the reason I did - disable the HDCP and have upconverted HD video over component outputs)
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I have one of these players and think it is kind of flaky. But if I'm not suppose to have it I guess I'll have to keep it now.
u ng+DVD-HD841
I was wondering what hacks you could do to the player and what the benafit would be. The link below shows how to bypass the region code, which is useful for international users, and can be done to pretty much and player. I don't think it add much benafit to the US user. You can also disable HDCP when sending video out the DVI port. I don't know what benafit this would be. The player support standard DVDs and up converts to 1080i. While this is nice while watching on a big screen TV, disabling HDCP means you could copy it from the DVI port to a PC. I don't know of any DVI or HDMI capture cards. If there are some I bet they are expensive. Besides if I wanted to up convert a DVD to 1080i, I would rip it to the hard drive and use the PC to create an up converted version. Even then all I could do is play it from my PC.
Am I missing something? What is the point of the studios doing this other than to create a false problem for publicity.
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks.php?select=Sams
I'm not trying to jump to any conclusions, but how could the movie industries claim to know how much money they lose due to piracy? To me, it's very similar to the music industries. What's to stop them from claiming that they lost a boatload due to piracy when in fact they just made shitty product during the fiscal year? And who is to say that everyone downloading movies or music online is pirating? If I bought a CD, leave it at home with my family while I go to school, and download the same songs, would it be considered "stealing," even though I own the CD and could rip the music onto my computer had I not left the CD at home so the CD itself doesn't get stolen?
They are the bad guy because the DMCA and the SBCE happened.
The Society for Better Computing Ethics?
Oh, you must mean the SBCTEA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?mas terid=2896859&search=samsung+hd841
I think you are hitting on why they said "5.4 billion last year due to piracy." and not due to Copyright infringement. They consider any manner of watching a movie other than as intended as piracy, and that piracy removed a opertunity cost whos value is = to that of a sale. Becasue of the lack of a legal definition of piracy, this is valid in thier eyes.
Since they don't care for replay TV, DVD rental, Tivo, etc, etc. they must claim all use of these devices as piracy.
I do the same as the G.P. with tivo on pay per view, and mencoder on rental DVD's. In that I save a "portion" of the movie rental until I am done enjoying the movie. The movie studios clearly call that piracy, because you get most of the benefits of owning, without a full purchase price. I violated no law that I know of, and their is no clear copyright violation, but this failure of DRM to stop me cost them a sale opertunity ie "Piracy"
We're not talking about obsolete business plans.
That's exactly what we're talking about. **AA's business models would have worked in the 1950s, 60s, and maybe 70s when people were only buying records and there was no known consumer technology to easily and quickly duplicate them. But technological innovation has changed that and **AA would like to kick innovation in the face so that it can keep running it's jurassic business. Any legitimate business running this way would have rightly died years ago. But legimate businesses doesn't have pet politicians.
Seriously Kombat, how much is MPAA paying for doing damage control? Because you're not doing a very good job.
Umm, you may not have to hunt around for this specific model -- my combo DVD-VRC player (a cheap-ass one I by Minntek or some similar name that got on sale at Fry's about 9 months ago for less than $40.00) already does this!!
When I first bought my player, I thought it had a manufacturing defect because when you pop movies into it, they just PLAY -- they don't go to the menu, previews, FBI warning, etc!! You can get to the menu, previews, etc. if you want to, but it is not FORCED on you.
I just got used to my "crappy" DVD player just doing this until I played some DVD's at my aunts house -- having to go through the FBI warning, previews, etc. DROVE ME NUTZ!! We should NOT have to put up with this crap!!
This cheap ass combo DVD player does not care if you output to another VCR to record, and there is NOTHING that you cannot skip/ffwd, etc!! I guess that sometimes it pays to buy the cheapest possible player instead of the expensive ones!
You think that attacking other people's ships, stealing their cargo, and making people walk the plank is legal?
Well, OK, maybe if you are in the tax-free wonderland of Somalia. But not around here. Around here PIRACY IS NOT LEGAL!
So stop saying "Piracy!=illegal activity", or I'll have to send Mr. Woodes Rogers of the Department of Homeland Security down to see you.
You know what really annoys me? It's how these articles always lie to me because they're just parroting what the MPAA said: ...avoid encryption features that prevent unauthorized duplication...
That's a bald faced lie. The Samsung players allowed users to bypass region coding, which has absolutely nothing to do with encryption or unauthorized duplication. Rather, the players allow you to play movies you bought in other countries. That's it. The MPAA has to lie about this because if they told the public what they were really mad about, they would get no sympathy at all from the public (But we want to charge more in Europe! Just because we can! Why are these pirates ruining the game for us?!?).
It's no wonder the average person turns on them when they finally learn the truth. You can't keep lying to people and expect them to trust you.
I read the internet for the articles.
I have a Samsung HD-850 and I just tried to make it region free and to remove HDCP protection.
:)
Region hack doesn't work, but the the HDCP one does! And the HD-850 is still for sale pretty much everywhere (bought it last week)
Man that article hits it right on. Lets not backup there severs because how many times do you actually need to do DR? I mean serious why do you need backups at all. Anyone know their IT department?
Dang, and I believed her when she said she would take me to court. Have to remember that next time...
Of course the best solution of all is to get a DVD player that can be set up to switch off the Macrovision pulses altogether. Oddly enough, Samsung also used to make a player, the venerable DVD-709, that could be made both multi-region and 'VCR-friendly' with a simple remote hack. Even if you're not part of an International Analogue Piracy Gang, switching off this dreadful system can be very useful when you have an old TV with limited (or just co-axial) inputs and multiple devices to connect to it - Macrovision blocks the obvious solution of routing the DVD player through the VCR, since it messes up the 'live' signal as well as degrading recordings. Unfortunately, Macrovision-free players are becoming harder to find here in the UK, even though multi-region hacks are more common than ever (even mainstream shops now sell pre-hacked region-free players).
If you put a bag of popcorn in a 1000w microwave it takes _at least_ 4 minutes till the kernels stop popping. any less and you are really wasting kernels. you can probably see a bunch at the bottom of the bag. i would make a poit of checking next time.
:)
The popcorn button on my microwave ends up putting a time on the display of about 1:40 or so, and I usually get very, very few unpopped kernels, on the close order of 20, I think.
I don't know the wattage offhand, but there's no need to check the bag; I dump the contents into a bowl for subsequent consumption.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
My cable provider (comcast) provides HD quality that's just as good as OTA and much better than the alleged HD programming proved by Directv. Even upscaled original (i.e. non-shrinked) DVDs though my line doubler don't look at good as quality HD signals (although some DVD transfers do come close). I'd complain to your cable company although we all know that seldom helps.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
How do I know about that? Err... mind your own damn business.
In the US, you can easaily buy a DVD player for $30-40. If someone in Europe wanted to view US movies, it seems they could easily and cheaply buy a US DVD player and watch all they want. I'm sure they could buy a new one off ebay and have it shipped for $50. They could also have a euro DVD player for playing DVDs from their region. For such a small price and effort, is banning DVD region free player be worth the effort?
If I were Disney or a major content owner, I'd be more concerned with bitorrent and other file sharing sites.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
>I reckon the Oppo DV971H should be on every Slashdot reader's wish list.
Hmmm... HDCP/HDMI?
Isn't it the epitome for "DRM encumbered"?
Where can one find info about the Oppo OPV971? I googled it (and tried yahoo and msn), and came up with exactly one hit, to AVS Forum, which had zero information. Does this actually exist, and if so, where might I find one?
How crazy would the world get if I could download mercedes.torrent, big_mac_combo.zip, and refreshing columbianblow.rar? .. INFECTED big_mac_combo.zip .. that'd be fun for the whole family :)
3.243F6A8885A308D313
There must be other players that allow that.
Can anyone post their recommendations for "benign" DVD players that:
- Allow one to play DVDs from all regions,
- Allow skipping offensive content (e.g., FBI warnings),
- Allow bypassing Macrovision,
and, most importantly:
- Bypass HDCP/HDMI DRM crap by allowing full resolution (or upconverted) HD video output over component.
but I hope that the MPAA and RIAA die in a fire.
That's nuts. Honestly, what are they selling? Is there any other product that has such strict rules regarding it's use? I can't think of any precedent for this, and it's hard to believe they would be allowed to make one now. It'd be simple, just don't watch any new movies/dvds for a couple months, don't let your kids, encourage others to do the same. People used to do this to show their distaste in a companies practices, and it would get the point across. Just boycott them until they come back into the realm of actual fair use. I'm not for pirating, but once you buy something, you should be allowed to view it however you like.
I have known Geeks do not like DRM.
And most of people in Slashdot sticks up for Samsung.
But Thiniking deeply, please.
Have you thought about Korean mentality?
They do not mind any copy rights. also copy left.
Why buy big-name players with region-coding when you can buy cheap players without region coding for less?
http://search.ebay.com//search/search.dll?satitle= DVD-HD841
My Freakin Blog
I bought one on eBay last week. Refurbished HD841 and it looks like they've blocked the HDCP Hack as part of being refurbished. :-( That's the only reason why I bought the HD841 anyway.
MAKE REGION FREE:
The latest shipment of units are not region free. To change to region free mode do this:
1. Press Setup on remote control to access the setup page
3. A secret menu will pop up
2. Enter 9210 on the remote
5. Press Setup on remote again to exit
4. Select 0 to 6 in region code (0 is region free)
USE WITH HDCP:
1. No HDCP issues as there isn't any HDCP!
Thanks to all the previous posters regarding this player. I did not know this product existed, and it seems to do pretty much everything I want it to do. Thanks again.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
I after all know the Kryptonite of any standard corporate lawyer-ninja squad: the jury trial. You'll be hard pressed to find a jury that will award against Joe Q. Public to a multi-billion dollar corporation for doing something that seems reasonable.
Which is why big-shot corporate attorneys will do their damnedest to get a summary judgment. This means that the presiding judge rules that even if the facts are exactly as the alleged infringer states them, what he or she did still violates law. In the United States, juries are said to try the facts, not the law.
Perhaps you should seek professional help if you are hearing your DVD player and DVDs speaking to each other.
That's exactly what an MPAA studio would say, to try to convince the sheeple that owners of logic analyzers necessarily need professional help.
P.S.
There is a new line of MPAA approved automobiles where it is criminal to crack the lock on the hood under any circumstances.
There is no need for it to be non-criminal for the owner of the car or a mechanic to open the hood for repairs because replacement cars are readily available at affordable prices.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"Cutting the rate of increase to a point below the rate of inflation is a decrease in actual spending power of that budget. This is not "playing with words", this is the truth."
Ah yes, the elusive 'truth'.
I KNEW someone was going to take that bait... Ok, I'll buy in too.
At a time when Republicans actually gave a shit about cutting spending (as opposed to now), cuts were made across the board - approved by our esteemed President Clinton. ALL agencies were biting the bullet back then but what was worse than that was the irresponsible hysterics from the Lefties in response to cuts in their favorite programs like school lunch.
There were some GREAT lines like these: "They're starving the CHILDREN!" and "What about the CHILDREN?!" How Feinstein and Boxer continue to get reelected befuddles me, you'd think their screeching alone would be enough for most voter's heads to explode. I'd like to think that most of us out East just shake our heads in disbelief, but then there's Massachusetts to consider...
Nevertheless, keep in mind that previous increases under the (D) Congress were well over inflationary figures because they had been grandfathered in due to higher inflation in the past (remember the Carter years?) - especially in programs like school lunch. In short, they got less because they got more before. It's not so much 'them that got, get', it's more like, 'them that got, got fair'. In any case, their overreaction was a quite melodramic and little more than hot soundbites for the press. This is especially true in light of the obesity stats of our 'starving children', but I digress. In *most* cases, spending was held to inflationary levels - and no more.
But you tell me what's likely to resonate more with the public: "They're STARVING the CHILDREN!" or a page and a half dedicated to calmly and fully explaining the situation. Once again, hysterics won the day and the nasty-wasty greedy Republicans were again villified by the liberal press. If there's any major difference between Republicans then and now, it's that they've learned how to spin as well as the Dems.
As I recall, a certain president Clinton took pride in the fact that the budget was balanced during his administration. Balanced no doubt on the backs of the working poor and the children, right? Goddamn Republicans again! Go Clinton, go!
Now back to the subject at hand - the RIAA/MPAA screaming and crying about piracy and lost revenue. It's all for the press - these people continue to be profitable even as they DRM us to death and work like machines to take away what little fair use we have left. I think the analogy of 90's lib Dems is probably on target - it's a stunt designed to get press, only I'd feel more sorry for our fat children than either of these monopolistic organizations...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
...the MPAA defines "piracy" along these lines: "you fucking serfs watch what we tell you to watch, and when, and you'll goddamn well like it and ask for more! Anyone who dares to disagree with us, their proper overlords, should be put up against a wall and shot!"
Remember, this is about control, not money. They could easily change their business model and make huge, unprecedented profits, but in order to do that they'd have to cede the control they've had over the viewing public for more than a half-century. And they'll NEVER do that. They'd rather go down in flames (and take you with them) than even consider the notion.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Like the recent Volvo 'designed for women'. /seemed so udderly sexist.
"which were down sharply as audiences proved apathetic for many time-tested movie formulas."
OK, audiences aren't willing to shell out big bones to see crap. They aren't buying pirate copies, they're just not watching crap.
"More accurately, the MPAA estimates that the retail value of pirated films, etc, was $5.4bn. Now I'm not advocating piracy, but when I was a student a couple of years ago I would download albums and films, and I can personally guarantee that it did not cost the industry any money - simply because as a poor student I couldn't afford to buy them. If I hadn't downloaded them, I just wouldn't have seen them, and that's that."
Of course poor students were simply out of luck before the Internet made it possible to sample the goods in their entirity. And the invention of businesses like Netflix and Blockbuster didn't change that fact.
"The MPAA seems to think there's a dichotomy of pirating films or purchasing them, and by extension that if we make pirating impossible, then every pirate will go out and purchase everything that they would otherwise have pirated. And that, my friends, is a rather baseless claim (even if you're completely unaware of the animosity towards studios in general)."
No more a "baseless claim" than "My pirating is helping the artist through free advertising". The dichotomy is that neither side wants to admit that they play fast and loose with the truth to bolster their arguments.
Why would I want to buy ANY player with DRM on it? That'd be like buying a car I could only drive by cramming myself into the glovebox.
no text
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
it seems that they're into stock swindles but not into attacking their own customers. Half marks, I guess.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
http://search.ebay.com/Samsung-HD841_W0QQcatrefZC6 QQfromZR10QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ3QQfstypeZ1QQftrtZ1QQftrv Z1QQsacatZQ2d1QQsascsZ2QQsbrbinZtQQsbrsrtZd
Geeze I hope you are a member of SMPTE
Libertas in infinitum
The HD745 Firmware Hack gives your Samsung HD841 DivX playback, MP3 DVD and HDCP Free (1080i via Component Input). Section 1: Go to (and join) - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZoranDVD > Files (Samsung HD841 Firmware) Read - DivX_update_manual.pdf (How to create firmware update CD) Download Firmware - 745ver2for841.zip Download and read - 745to841HowTo.zip (Firmware modification instructions) Make your Firmware Update Disc and follow the update instructions. Section 2: After the update your DVD paler will default to PAL video. To change it back to NTSC do the following: Start from power off and no disc. 1. Power on and give it a few seconds to power up 2. Press Menu. The selected menu is not correct, so... 3. Up Arrow ONCE puts you at setup. 4. Right Arrow goes into setup. 5. Down Arrow TWICE to highlight Display. 6. Right Arrow to select Display settings. 7. Down Arrow FOUR (4) times to get to PAL/NTSC. 8. Right Arrow changes from PAL to NTSC (and pushing again changes back to PAL). Section 3: If you're *not* using the HDMI/DVI output skip this section. DO THIS WITH THE TRAY EMPTY (no disc). The HD745 Firmware update does not default to P-SCAN&DVI output. To put it back into P-SCAN&DVI press the VIDEO SEL button on your remote, slowly (about every 10/15 seconds), until your picture comes back. Make sure you to this slowly because once you land on the right selection it will take your display a few seconds to detect the output from your DVD player and display it on the screen. Section 4: After the update your DVD player will default to region 2. To make your DVD player Region Free (Region 9, ALL REGIONS) do the following (this only works after the HD745 Firmware update): 1. Turn on player with no disc in the tray. "No disk" appears on screen. 2. Press the "Repeat" key on the remote. 3. Press "57538" on the remote. A number should appear on screen, indicating your player's current region (e.g. "2"). 4. Press the number for your required region (e.g. "1") or "9" for region-free/all-regions. The number will appear on screen, replacing the previous number (from step 3). 5. Press "Open/Close Tray" and leave the tray open for a few seconds. 6. Press "Power On/Off". The tray closes automatically and the player turns off. Next time you turn it on, it is region free (or whatever Region you selected in step 4). That's it, you're done! Now got through you're setup for audio and video and you're done. - Enjoy
I've got to say, the Live thing catched me and backfired to me in double. While it does send out 'surround" the signal needs to be redirected from digital-to-spdif or it won't work. The digital out supports only 2 speakers and a subwoofer ; eventually a middle speaker if you are lucky depending on the equipment you use.
I have bought myself a BlueGears HDA Digital X-Mystique 7.1, which has not only a Dolby Live surround output; supporting REAL 5.1 instead of the "thruput" Creative Labs solution; but it also costs half the price.
Therefor I think the live/audigy cards are not the real (good/best) thing(tm) for home-theater-systems; which is suggested by the site you have given.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
But are you using the DVD's subtitle option or the remote's "subtitle" button? Again, this IS NOT the same thing as closed captioning. Closed captions are activated using the TV (set to CC1) and are decoded and displayed by the TV.
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