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Sony Decides Against Blu-Ray Downsampling
Paul Slocum writes "According to Ars Technica, Sony is now saying they will not use the Image Constraint Token and so movies will play on analog HDTV sets at full resolution. If HD-DVD does implement the analog downsampling, it's going to give Blu-ray a nice market advantage." From the article: "Sony's decision to not use the Image Constraint Token for the time being is meant to encourage the adoption of Blu-ray players. Launching a new product that would leave the thousands of analog HDTV owners out in the standard-definition cold could have proven to be a nightmare for Sony and the Blu-ray spec in general. Reports that 'Blu-ray discs don't look right on my HDTV' could result in consumers' switching allegiances to the competing HD DVD standard or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether."
Just get rid of the DRM and we might have a decent product.
Sure.
:)
But if blu-ray takes off in the market, how long do you think downsampling will remain turned off?
If this wasn't a publicity stunt, it would be removed from the spec.
Gentoo Sucks
Sony isn't trying to totally screw their consumers... This is news STOP THE PRESSES-!!!
What they meant to say was "Sony Decides Against Blu-Ray Downsampling, for now..."
From the company that brought you every other proprietary technology on the planet and likes to subvert their users' computers with rootkits. People aren't THAT stupid. No, they probably are...
Sony has said that they do not intend to set the downsampling flag IN THE MOVIES THEY SELL. The capability still exists in the blu-ray standard.
According to the article, use of the "Image Constraint Token" is up to the studios. This announcement is only that Sony movies won't force down-sampling "for the foreseeable future". Other studios' movies could, since the players will still support it.
Welcome to consumer confusion.
The first taste is always free
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Let's hope that the other studios all follow suit for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
If not they will save me a bunch of money.
Sony Blu Ray Downsampling
HD-DVD Locks out old HDTVs
From the article:
According to Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Senior VP Don Eklund, none of Sony's Blu-ray releases for the "foreseeable future" will use ICT to force downsampling.
This is only applies to Blu-Ray discs released by Sony, not other studios. Blu-Ray players will still support down-sampling, other studios will make this decision independently of Sony, and Sony isn't promising to continue the practice with its own releases indefinately.
Nothing to do w/Blu-ray vs HD-DVD
To be more precise, it doesn't affect the standards. However it does affect their markets, and really that's the point, moreso than the standards.
Nice to see it working as it should for the consumer
Sony's been bad about controlling access to media in the past and things like this, but I rather like this move. I guess now, I'm rooting for Sony in this. I imagine many who got a TV without an HDMI/DVI or other port will think the same way I do. Maybe this won't be another "beta" after all?
1 point for bluray in my book.
Bashing aside, this is still the smartest move Sony has made all YEAR.
Sony says that they are doing this to promote the BluRay standard. Presumably, once HD-DVD is defeated, they'll be turning down-rezzing back on in their releases. First good reason to hope for a long, nasty, format war...
As for other content producers without a big vested interest in one format or the other, don't expect them to be so generous with their releases. If they set the flag, Sony's BluRay drives will obediently down-rez the analog output.
Funny that Sony decides not to shoot itself in the foot and it gets a headline.
It is amazing that any company ever considered downgrading the signal for non HDCP enabled devices. Talk about arbitrarily limiting your market just when you are trying to grow it.
My largest concern with this concession is that Sony will one day mandate that all Discs released after a certain time contain a firmware flash that forces down sampling, not to mention any other DRM tricks they have up their sleeves. Something like what TIVO is doing.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
doesn't matter what they do, I'm still not buying
Awesome. That immediately gives them an extra 6 million potential customers over HD-DVD.
Blu-Ray hopefully with dominate this generation.
Good little competition beastie...nice competition. Make for us better products.
Now go forth and devour remaining anti-consumer monopolies.
So is Blu-Ray going to break away from the AACS licensing terms? There was a great blog posting (not my blog) discussing certain sections of the AACS draft. If this is really the case, then Sony will win the format war because the linked analysis shows 3-5 million early adopters will be left out in the cold with the downsampling provisions. Now we just have to wait and see how long Blu-Ray will take to come out.
One thing to note is Blu-Ray has an additional DRM layer which makes it even tougher to creck.
... or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether.
That would be the wise thing to do. Just ignore Blu-ray and HD-DVD, and wait for the manufacturers to fight this war.
Before there is a single standard and no childish banning of dual-standard players, don't buy a single player. That will do them in.
Why would I buy a player that's so broken it listens to a "output worse image quality lol kthx bi" bit? I already won't buy a player that listens to a "don't play me because I'm only for germany lol kthx bi" bit or a "don't skip me because I'm really important lol kthx bi" bit.
Sacred Bits are even worse than encrypted discs.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Reports that 'Blu-ray discs don't look right on my HDTV' could result in consumers' switching allegiances to the competing HD DVD standard or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether."
Until this announcement, any purchase I might have made of Blu-Ray was definitely in the "postpone for a long-damn time" category. With this, they're at least in the running vs. HD-DVD.
Chip H.
If HD DVDs come with all sorts of restrictions, people might as well just subscribe to flat-fee video-on-demand services. I know I will. DVDs will likely increasingly be used for special content (like pr0n), but even that will probably be played back through the computer, not a DVD player.
The way companies could make HD DVD a success at this point would be to get rid of all region coding and all DRM and lower prices a little; that way, people might be tempted to replace their current DVD libraries. But as it is, I'm not going to replace any of the DVDs I have with HD ones.
Is that flag just a bit? Is it the "evil bit"?
I would not mind having a higher storage disk for storing computer files (but nowadays, one can just buy a USB hardrive for moving or backing up files), but having a locked restricted format that won't give me any benifits more than a standard DVD for movies or media (and is actually designed to degrade my eperience if I don't have the newest equipment)... man, I hope both these bastard fucking formats die a horrible death. I don't care which one is better! This isn't like VHS or Beta, because VHS and Beta weren't activly trying to restrict what I am able to do on machines I own with media that I own, or force me to purchase a new television to play movies.
It's so fucking annoying. But then I remember.. I download all my movies anyways :) Fuck HD-DVD and BLURAY, all I care about is HD-DVD and Bluray hddivx/hdxvid rips :D
Is there a government regulation at some point in the future getting rid of the analog HDTVs and recorders?
If the point is to close the analog hole, you can leverage the existing analog TVs by supporting them, but preventing future TVs (and, more to the point, recorders) from supporting that signal. As those wear out and people replace their TVs with (mandated) digital DRM ones, the studios get their dream of DRM all the way through without breaking compatibility with existing set. At some point they all turn on the token for future releases, and the DRM is total.
Yeah, I know it's stupid; as long as one analog recorder exists it'll leak out into the P2P nets and thence into everybody's hard disk. And people will make new ones. I'm just trying to follow their thinking.
So is there some sort of legislation mandating the digital DRM TVs, or am I making that up?
This seems to be a interesting tactic by Sony. I can already see the class action lawsuit against the studios who implement the Token by users of older HDTVs. In fact there WILL be a lawsuit over this. Chances are also pretty good that this type of functionality will be ruled against in the US. Here is the scenario:
I buy a new HD-DVD so I can watch King Kong in HD.
I place the disc in my new Toshiba HD-DVD player.
I try to play the HD movie on my slightly older Toshiba HD TV.
I do not get to watch my HD movie that I paid for.
Now if I am the consumer, am not told in VERY plain language that my TV will not play the movie in HD, I am now being misled.
At this point there are all sorts of wonderful legal options to pursue. I can sue the maker of the Player for implementing the Token, which I will. I can also sue the studio for enabling the Token, which I will also do. A case for collusion could also be made (let's get everyone to buy new TVs again).
Since Sony would make the player, the TV, and the movie, one stop shopping for a major lawsuit.
Bring it on!
Now look at them. Some of the most pretty laptops on the market, burdened with all the extra cost of paying for proprietary formats and slots. They are pushing formats not to make the consumers life easier, but to insure that the executives can afford drugs and boys/girls.
What mad the electronics market thrive was that one could plug an RCA cable from any decent device to any other decent device and get reasonable results. No need to hire an MSCE person to hook up the TV to the video player. No worry about if the disc was acually made for this region. DVD won on convinence, and the fact that VCR was getting complex, but why is it that I cannot just put a DVD in and watch a movie? Why can't I fast foward over the stuff I dont' want to see.
Shoudn't design be for the sake of the person paying, or is it that consumers no longer are a source of profit on thier own? Is it that Dell makes money only becuase of MS and AOL/TW kickbacks? Is it that Sony does not expect to make any money of the players, but only on the content, which will be so chock full of advertisements that it will be just like watching a tv program? Why can't movie theatres make a profit on ticket sales and concesions? It is because the studios are so greedy that they each up all the sales, yet, because of the rational fear that the major releases are crap compared to the indepdent, won't fund digigtal distribution which might singnificantly increased profits, if only they would stop letting the likes of Michael Bay make films and tom cruise appear in them.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
C'mon now. I want nothing less than 1080p support in my next generation DVD format! Anything less than 1080i is a complete waste of bits.
If they are smart it will last until most of the analog Sets have died off and been replaced by digital ones. That would depend on the expected lifetime of the analog sets. You don't have to wait till they are all dead, just until the Digital sets have hit a critical mass. Then the people with the old analog sets will be told that their old movies will play just fine, but anything new requires a fully digital set and compatible player. With fewer analog players still in the field, there will be fewer people to complain.
here's the problem with this. The analog hole will always exist. Because humans have eyes and ears. Even if it's reduced to good recording equipment and a microphone, it can still be pirated. And that's running under the assumption that no one will ever crack the HD cables and make it jack into a recorder anyway. Locks keep an honest man honest, but a thief will break in anyway. They're shooting themselves in the foot with overcomplicating a simple thing. Old folks can barely use VCRs, what makes the corporations think that they will be more interested in getting a $2000 TV, and $4000 worth of connectors and additional equipment + liscencing fees to play a single movie.
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
You dared criticize piracy on Slashdot. Expect a ton of Overrated mods, because when you sign up on Slashdot, you apparently have to sign a contract that states you must always be in favor ripping artists off and then blaming the MPAA/RIAA for it. "The MPAA made me do it!" Because the 14-year-old kids who pirate everything can't argue against your point, they'll try to censor you by modding you down.
If HD-DVD implements this, and BluRay does not, I will purchase a BluRay player, no questions asked.
I have several analog HD sets. I won't replace them; they are nice units.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Changing technology has been a real boon for studios. Now they can sell content that has already made its profit all over again. And again. Forever. Copyright is a deal between the public and the content creator - we give you a temporary monopoly in exchange for the creation. That has been perverted by a huge lobbying effort over the years.
Changing technology has also been a boon for pirates. It is possible to make perfect copies for nearly no cost.
It seems a bit hypocritical for studios to eagerly profit from new technology while complaining about piracy. Especially when copyright has been tilted more and more in their favor until now it is practically Forever.
Man, you really need that seminar!
This is a major step foreward, SONY. You now just increased your market by, what, 99 fold?
A great plot summary and video preview of the "offensive" part (wmv) is available from (I'm not kidding) the Parents Television Council:
Don't miss PTC's "explicit" and "EXTREMELY offensive" description of each controversial scene from that episode: For more laughs, check out their online FTC Complaint Form which probably contributed to the fine and ban.TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I was going to post this earlier, but couldn't find anywhere to confirm it. According to Anime On DVD (sorry, this is their news archive page), Consumer Electronics Digest have polled various studios, and the four studios above (Sony, Disney, Fox, Paramount) have all stated that they "have no intention of using the ICT flag on their releases.". The Sony executive is quoted as saying "(t)he perception...that we're withholding something from consumers, and we're sensitive to that fact." The Fox executive is quoted "Fox is always in favor of options for intellectual property rights holders, though it has no intention of employing the ICT. The security afforded by AACS enhanced with BD+ is the best of all possible solutions for content protection as we enter the Blu-ray era."
If someone's got access to Consumer Electronics Digest and can confirm this, that would be great...
50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight's Tale, The Last Waltz (MGM), Resident Evil Apocalypse and XXX [initial HD-DVD titles]
[sarcasm]Wow, it's a pirate's dream come true! I've always wanted to download a 30gig HD copy of Resident Evil Apocalypse.[/sarcasm]
Idiots. The overwhelming majority of pirated content isn't even up to SD-DVD quality because most people don't want to (or can't) spend enough time downloading it. The idea that someone who can't afford to buy the $20 movie is actually going to download (and re-upload) a 30gig movie is ludicrous. They're going to stick to the 1 gig highly compressed SD version.
Sure, eventually broadband speeds will catch up to HDDVD size, but by then the MPAA will probably have a 150GB movie format to (re)sell to us.
DVD's been mainstream for what, 6-7 years at most? And still there are many many people who haven't adjusted. So in another year they're introducing something else? DVD is a flash in the pan compared to VHS, which is still in wide use today.
The change in quality will be almost negligble. People will only feel cheated paying more and hardly being able to tell the difference.
It would make much more sense to switch to DivX on normal capacity DVDs, which is higher quality and much smaller, that way you can fit more on a single DVD, which I think is one of the more important things we need with a new format.
I don't see how anyone can be excited by Blu-Ray or HDDVD for movies, and you're kidding yourself if you are. More space isn't going to help movies that much at this stage. Yes, it will be in a higher resolution, yes, it will be crisper, but it will be at best half the difference between VHS and DVD. Many people may not even be able to tell the difference.
Games and data storage, yes, but it's too soon as the PS3 is showing. It would be better to wait a little longer to make sure that it can be distributed more cost effectively, and maybe even improve it.
DivX DVDs are a much better idea, in my opinion.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
Reports that 'Blu-ray discs don't look right on my HDTV' could result in consumers' switching allegiances to the competing HD DVD standard or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether."
How much did it cost Sony for that marketing analysis? They were stupid to even consider this "protection" algorithm in the first place. Why alienate PAYING customers when professional content pirates will not be deterred in the least? All you will end up doing is locking yourselves out of the majority of the market of existing HDTV owners, and locking yourself out of the market of people who rip legally-purchased media to iPod and PocketPC devices.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
This situtation is very similar to Microsoft's forced downsampling of HD content on non-HDCP-compliant monitors (read: basically every monitor on the market today). So will Microsoft relax the HDCP requirement for Vista? Will Hollywood even let them?
My guess is no, because DVI without HDCP is digital, and Hollywood is obsessed with the lack of generational loss when copying digital data. "Oh noes, the pirates will be able to get an unencumbered HD signal!" As if that's materially worsse than getting an unencumbered SD signal, what with all the camcorder jobs floating around the net...
it's only Sony that's not going to use the flag. Other studios are free to do as they wish.
Disney, Fox, and Paramount are apparently going along with Sony in not using the downsampling flag on BD-Video launch titles. Among MPAA member studios, this leaves Warner and Universal.
Region 1: North America, South America, Japan and East Asia (excluding China)
Region 2: Europe and Africa
Region 3: India, China, Russia, and all other countries.
Note how they put China and Russia, two countries with lax copyright controls, in the same region.
This means that PS3s, at least as Blu-Ray players, will be the same in Japan as they are in the US, making them much more inviting as imports if they were to launch earlier in Japan as opposed to everywhere else.
Ultimate AV magazine also got to see a preview of Blu-Ray. Here are the important points:
That is, they can always turn it on in the future on a per-title basis.)
The Blu-Ray group also summarized what they announced at CeBit in this PDF.
Highlights:
content. (This had been something that was supposed to be delayed in the hardware).
A source at a studio has said that current "Special Edition" content for Blu-Ray discs is being ported over to a High Def signal. It won't be only the movies that are in HD.
Netflix will be carrying both Blu-Ray and Hd-DVD discs at launch.
If you have a video card that says it will support HDCP, you may be disappointed. It looks like no current video cards on the market will really support HDCP. From Ars: "With regards to shipping cards, they are correct: no matter what a box's feature list may say, no video card supports HDCP fully at this time. Why? They have not been completely programmed. Until the specifications for the access control system are completely finished, implementing pro
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Does anyone know if discs using ICT will play through DVI? I've always heard it as "maybe." The article on Sony only talks about how analog will be allowed, since it is of little concern in the piracy arena. DVI is digital, not analog. Of course if analog works, then you can just use that, but it would be nice to know if my DVI equipped (but not HDMI equipped) TV will work with ICT.
Sony assures us that, at least for now, it won't discriminate against us. So we should trust them and give them our money.
You do as you choose, Sony has yet to prove to me that it's anything better than a script kiddie. One that steals your wallet as well as riffling your computer.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The HDCP spec discloses a way to revoke the ability of devices with a given manufacturer ID to play encrypted video. The DVI decoder chip used in the Spatz-Tech converter box might be the first HDCP product revoked.
Warner seems the only hold-out on downsampling. You won't see the token invoked on HD releases from Disney, [Twentieth Century Fox], Paramount or Sony. Whatever the media.
So what does Universal have to say about this? What about Lions Gate, which is not one of the six MPAA studios but still distributes a lot of movies in the United States?
any future titles may not just downsample, they may refuse to play entirely on your otherwise fine player. That's another feature that Sony won't be using "for the forseeable future" (and Sony has already demonstrated that they have all the foresight of David Emerson with 4 beers and a hardon).
It amazes me that the current standard DVD players that are capable of upconversion to HD resolutions still refuse to do so on their analog outputs, only supporting it on the HDMI output. It isn't as if people couldn't rip SD-DVDs to their computers and perform their own upconversions to HD resolution; there just doesn't seem to be a demand for software that can do it. So where's the anti-piracy rationale for restricting the SD-DVD players from upconverting?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
It would make much more sense to switch to DivX on normal capacity DVDs, which is higher quality and much smaller
I seem to remember that one of the two standards has provisions for a red-laser disc using the new codecs. (It might just be the new file structure on a DVD-9.) Given that most DivX files are MPEG-4 Simple video (or Advanced Simple if you pay for Pro), and the H.264 used in both standards is an improvement over even Advanced Simple, I think the electronics companies have already thought of your idea.
It bears pointing out -- although replying to (-1) Offtopic -- that one of the five tags on this story actually is "dupe"
Ya shoulda been modded (-1) Redundant!
Or, just to throw out a conspiracy theory, maybe their decision is more devilishly calculated. Suppose someone finds a way to grab full HD signals from an analog HD monitor while watching a Blu-Ray disc and proceeds to make it available via those pesky interwebs.
"Oho!" sayeth Sony, "Pirates ahoy! See? This is why we kept the downsampling option in the specs! Now EVERYONE can see just why we did it and will clearly understand why we're now enabling it..."
The difference between composite and HD-TV is obvious, but the higher resolution that will be on Blu-Ray/HD-DVD movies won't look any better past added "crispness", not from anything I've seen. If you have any short video clips demonstrating it, I'd love to see them, they should be very noticable on a PC Monitor.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
The future I'm being shown is not to my liking. I refuse to play this game anymore. Over the years, I bought LPs, tapes, CDs, VHS tapes, Beta tapes, and ultimately DVDs. I won't do it anymore. I will hopefully get years out of my existing hardware, but when it breaks, I'm done. When the cable providers no longer transmit analog TV signals, my set will likely go to the dumpster. I refuse to deal with media that requires me to play their game. There are too many other ways for me to spend my time. As it is, I'm down to two TV shows anyway. Giving it up for good won't be difficult.
I stopped going to the movie theater two years ago, and quit buying DVDs about the same time. I stopped buying CDs four. It's easy to quit. I wish more people would back up their feelings with actions. If more did, the media producers would have no choice but to listen. As it is, the sheep will continue to play the no-win game the media producers graciously allow you to spend money to play. Have fun.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
They have quit. The industries won't admit people are quitting, so they scream piracy instead.
I don't get what this guy is trolling. Anyone care to explain? Seems creepy :)
Reports that 'Blu-ray discs don't look right on my HDTV' could result in consumers' switching allegiances to the competing HD DVD standard or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether.
What would switching to HD-DVD accomplish? They're doing the same thing with analog signals.
I think consumers will be postponing purchases anyway because they'd rather wait for the format war to end.
Higher resolutions do not immediately mean a massive increase in quality.
Most people think of resolutions in terms of 3D Polygonal games, where higher resolutions means less "jaggies" or blurry anti-aliased edges.
Everything on DVD is "Pre-blended" as such in a much more efficent way than polygons ever will be. I don't know if you've ever notived how even analog television can pull off much more convincing "edges" than any pre-render has done.
Higher resolutions mean it will be a little less blurred. But in practice, DVD is already high quality. There is a point for which resolutions become difficult for an untrained eye to distinguish. HD lies within that spectrum, but at the end of it.
On most TVs, it will be difficult to tell the resolution. On very large screen TVs, it most certainly is a benefit. But for most of us, it's a small performance increase as opposed to the relatively large one DVDs offered, and even that had it's critics.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
I meant "Small screen TVs" on that bit where you probably went "WTF?!", and I meant "quality" instead of performance. Damn homophobes making me angry and careless.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
"For the time being"? Seriously? With the stated goal of driving adoption? What a transparent charade. Gee, I guess I'll buy Sony's product now, and as soon as they are the market leader, I'm sure they won't suddenly start using the token.
Who is foolish enough to be suckered in by this?
After the beta, minidisc.net, memorystick, memorystick pro, atrac, rootkit failures/debacles, Sony realises it cannot force crap onto consumers for very long.
About bloody time.
I know I won't be buying any of that anyway. My family still just has one TV, an analog set that's a few years old. That's only the second television set that we've owned in the past 15 years. We get free TV, and that's it. No cable or anything. We didn't even get a DVD player until about 2 years ago. It's things like this (besides just not caring much about movies or TV) that really make me not want to buy newer entertainment pieces. The entertainment industry is just horrible, and is in constant effort to screw their customers.
I just bought a Toshiba SD-DVD Upconverting DVD player that upconverts to 720p and 1080i (via HDMI or DVI only mind you) and it looks phenomanal. All of this for a mere $150 Canadian.
I'm quite happy to wait up to ten years for the prices for a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player to come into this price range, as I'm sure the quality increase from the upconverting player is probably only negligable comparatively.
In the meantime I save $850 by waiting and already enjoy my current DVD collection in near HD quality. That's $850 that can go towards more SD-DVD's or other frivolous purchases.
You gotta wonder about their business plan sometimes, especially since the format war is still very undecided. Does this help you decide?
The point of copyright and patent law was to allow an author to have monopoly rights on some invention/information for a _Limited amount of Time_ to encourage art and science.
DRM, by it's nature is attempting to circumvent any legal end to the information/invention monopoly.
There is no built-in expiration of DRM control, so it conflicts with the intent of the constitution.
DRM does not encourage the advancement of art and science. It encourages information hoarding, and exploitation.
What a brilliant scam. Put a big smile on their face, take their money then fuck them over. And some of you will eat it up like cherry cheesecake.
..with your own analogy, reefer possession.
That is in the top ten of the stupidest, most unreasonable and clearly unconstitional laws out there, and any judge, prosecutor or armed & badged mercenary thug who engages in persecution of people for that is an idiot, a moron and a traitor.
and to get to the point:
It is obvious that the music distributors in the RIAA org are guilty of extreme RICO violations, have engaged in a decades long effort to control prices, acting as an illegal cartel, have engaged in payola, threats, intimidation, extortion, bribery and influence peddling, have constantly ripped off the talent, and should have been shutdown long ago and the heads put in jail, not this every other year joke business as usual fine they get. Ongoing organized criminal activity..
That the so-called justice "system" let's those crooks continue just goes to show how utterly immoral and corrupt the system, with these various "judges", is. So once a year or so they get a wrist slapping, big effin deal. but, some poor working stiff slob file sharing, bankrupt their ass! It's justice! Some scared kid with a bag, bankrupt their ass! Give them a lifelong criminal record! Justice!
Screw that you JERKS
We, the people, aren't stupid. We know you system supporters are corrupt fascist pigs. It is beyond obvious and has been so for a long time now.. Thanks for verifying and proving the point so well. Ya, people are human and might say anything to try and avoid WHAT SHOULDN'T BE A CRIME IN THE FIRST PLACE.
DRM is not for preventing piracy. Piracy is just being used as the whipping boy to try to justify DRM and the DMCA law. They know they can't defeat piracy because it takes a system that is locked absolutely 100% perfectly, and that just can't exist. Instead, the purpose of DRM is to provide the content industry with a means to restrict things in specific ways so you have to pay them more to get what you previously enjoyed for one price before. DRM doesn't do everything the content industry wants, just yet, but they will continue to use the existance of piracy to keep asking for more DRM (Digital Restriction Marketing, or Doubling Revenues Monthly, depending on which side you are on). Eventually you'll have to pay-per-view on the disks you actually buy. And then after that, they'll charge you for even doing things like rewinding to replay an interesting scene. You'll see more advertising that you can't skip, eventually even embedded in the middle of the movie. And later, that advertising will even require you to click "Buy now" or "Not interested" before the movie resumes. A small percentage of people might even find a way to defeat the DRM. But the DMCA storm troopers will be activated enough to maintain just enough terror level to keep that percentage small. But of DRM even fails to get any revenue at all from 10% of the population, it won't matter because it will have quadrupled the revenues from the other 90%.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Also, you have to be specific here, most HD quality analog recorders are recording an analog input onto an analog tape. It's hard to do HD quality analog to digital conversion and mpeg encoding on in realtime and at high bit rates. There are recorders that do it, but they're professional level.
The studios are worried about someone making mpeg2 copies from an analog signal? I think it'll be easier for someone just to setup a HD video camera (under $1000 now) pointing at an HD plasma screen, and make the recording that way. I wonder how much lower quality that would be than low end HD A/D converters feeding mpeg encoders?
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
...these guys want some of my disposable income? From TFA:
Riiiight. Give them money now, for a "promise" they can break any time they feel like it.
Maybe, just maybe, if you sign a contract to buy back any equipment I buy - adjusting for inflation but not depreciation - if you choose to use ICT, then I'll think about considering looking into the possibility of wondering aloud whether paying real money for Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD for that matter) could potentially enter my hypothetical to-do list.
Fuck Off, Mister Vee Pee.
Nah, you're insightful, man. The impact of all of this screwing of the customer has already long been here.
I'm an example. I have two TVs in my house, from 1984 and 1985. Yep, they're analog, yep, they're old and lack even some of the most basic features (one of them won't mute, for example). But you know what? They work. And they work in the unencumbered way that I want.
Meanwhile, all I hear about new TVs is how they will be laden down with this DRM shit over here and that broadcast flag over there. It's confusing, it takes functionality away from the hardware, so I don't want anything to do with it.
More example? I still use VCRs to copy programs off the air. I bought them pre-Macrovision, and they still work great. Yes, I know all about Tivo etcetera, but why even get caught up in the possibility of restriction nonsense when my current hardware is fully functional.
More examples? I switched to Linux when Microsoft switched to Product Activation, and I have never looked back. I'll switch to something else again if Linux ever becomes encumbered.
Do you see a pattern here? Many "consumers," like me, demand hardware which is completely unencumbered, period. (And OSs, which from a hardware perspective, are basically another piece of hardware). To us, any kind of DRM is immoral and works against our interests. Meanwhile, we don't care if the content, or, as Microsoft likes to call it (in a passive, sheeple type manner) if our "experience" is not full-featured. Analog instead of digital? So what, the quality is good enough. Close the analog hole on us? Then saynoara, I'll go read a book.
We want, and demand, pristine hardware from the hardware manufacturers. We don't care if the quality of the CONTENT is crap - we want good hardware. But the hardware manufacturers stopped listening to their customers at the time they first caved in and inserted the Macrovision infection into VCRs. It's been 20 years now of this stupid DRM-infection of hardware, and it is cutting severely into hardware sales.
(Yes, yes, I know DVD players sold well, etc bla bla. But they would have sold more quickly, and in greater quantities, if they weren't encumbered. As it is now, the only reason many of us ever bought into that hardware is because it started being sold unencumbered).
Opting out is a perfectly legitimate response, and it is one that has been going on for a long long time.
The executives who make decisions to impose this DRM crap are even more clueless than most Slashdotters have presumed them to be.
Hey hardware manufacturers, don't you care that the 1980s passed by, and the 1990s, and now the 2000s are almost gone, and you STILL haven't been able to persuade me to buy a new TV or two? Think of the lost sales in my household alone, if you had provided unencumbered TVs with new, buyer-friendly features every five years or so. Instead of my last two TV purchases having occurred more than twenty years ago (two TVs), I probably would have been buying new ones every few years (that's maybe six or eight TVs by now, that I have never bought).
And Hi-Def? Don't get me started. Why would I even CONSIDER it, since I know that somewhere, somehow in the process, those pieces of hardware are infected with restrictions?
Give us useful hardware, or go away. Lost profits, movie and record industries? Um, dontcha think those losses pale in comparison to lost hardware profits (caused by your DRM)?
"Cite a case where this happens, and you've got a point. Until then, nothing."
Well, not with movies, but certainly with software.
At school, we use very expensive video software. Altogether, the packages have cost the school tens of thousands of dollars.
The licensing schemes used to control these packages regularly fail. They depend on IPs, which get reassigned, or writing to bits of the hard-drive that aren't backed up, or whatever.
The result is that at school I'm often unable to use the software packages my tuition money legitimately paid to put on the lab machines, whereas at home my cracked versions of this software have never given me a lick of trouble.
A friend of mine has rendering software on his computer that requires a re-authentication when you change resolutions or something. I don't know what, because I've always used the cracked version. I just remember him sitting there, Windows PC in hand, futzing around trying to connect to a wireless hub just so he could show me a torso he'd modeled.
If movie studios and the mpaa would agree to allow a new disc standard not have such drm features I'd disagree. I hightly doubt it's either hardware companies that even want such forms of copy protection.
It's the movie studios trying to force it down.
Hmmm... Pie...
How many times is this going to be misreported? This is Sony Pictures saying that they won't use the Image Constraint token. It is not Sony Consumer Electronics saying that the ICT won't exist in Blu-Ray. Other movie studios are welcome to use the ICT on Blu-ray, or even use it or not on disc-by-disc basis. Fox has made a similar announcement about HD-DVD: they won't use the ICT on their HD-DVD movies. Again: blu-ray still has the Image Constraint Token, and every movie studio is welcome to enable it or not on any disc they choose.
The summary is a bit misleading (slashdot...did you expect different?), Sony STUDIOS will not be enabling the ICT flag on the BDs they release. It does not mean other studios will not.
Can somebody please confirm the rumour that if you buy a collection of blu-ray discs, and then upgrade or replace your player, that none of your discs will work? This seems madness to me but I've read it in at least three different places now. Does this mean that if I upgrade my player (or if it breaks) I will have the right to get them exchanged at the shop because they no longer work? If this is right, all I can say is, keep your receipts!
Translation: "Once we kill the competition and become the only game in town, we will be free to restrict viewing on our discs as much as we want and the Image Constraint Token goes back on."
DiVX compression would be a better way to solve that. You could have it at higher resolution and still take up less space. And you're not going to notice the resolution increase on small televisions, and it's not going to be too significant on medium sized televisions, either. I don't think we should be stuck with DVD forever. I just think it's a few years too early for HD DVD and we're likely to have ANOTHER "Next Big Thing" in 5 years time. There's too much new technology being created to take a format that's already technically a couple of years old, that the market isn't fully ready for.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
"How people can justify the censorship of kids getting to second base ..."
In Europe teen orgies are second base? Looks like I'm moving to Europe!
(Yes, yes, I know DVD players sold well, etc bla bla. But they would have sold more quickly, and in greater quantities, if they weren't encumbered. As it is now, the only reason many of us ever bought into that hardware is because it started being sold unencumbered).
Nah, mate, I'm going to have to call you on this one. Most people don't know that DVDs are encumbered. Heck, I'm a pretty geeky guy myself - ran an ISP back in '95, like to get down and play with my soldering iron, whatever. You know what?
I have a commercial DVD player - Toshiba SD9100 or something. Not a grey-market anything, I picked it up off the shelf. Every DVD I've ever tried to play in it plays fine. I have DVD players in my laptop and desktop. Every DVD I've ever tried to play in them plays fine. The fact that the technology is, to an extent, encumbered, means diddly squat to me.
Now, HD-DVDs not outputting onto Component video? That would annoy me, or rather it would if I wasn't already planning to replace my old big-box RP HDTV with a wall-mounted unit (for decor reasons, not technical ones). But I can pretty much guarantee you that Joe Average Consumer, the guy buying 99.99% of DVDs and DVD Players, neither knows nor cares about your issues.
And Hi-Def? Don't get me started. Why would I even CONSIDER it, since I know that somewhere, somehow in the process, those pieces of hardware are infected with restrictions?
Because it looks fantastic, even at 65"? Just a thought. That is, after all, why most people (geeks or non-geeks alike) consider it.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
What about a few months down the line?
I don't know about the other studios, but according to the PC World story, Sony's "Blu-Ray releases won't use this feature for the forseeable[sic] future". I would hope that Sony can foresee more than "a few months down the line".
More importantly, the story states that all Blu-ray discs that use the blur bit will be conspicuously labeled as such. So if you see someone looking at a disc with ICT, tell him or her: "See the ICT notice? That tells you that this disc isn't Blu-ray; it's Blur-ray. If your HDTV isn't one of the newest, the picture will be blurred almost as bad as DVD."
Interestingly enough, when looking at the list of tags below this article, I misread the "bluray" tag as "blurry".
Admittedly, with the hyphen in place, i'd never made the connection. But when one of your selling points is sharper images, is it really smart to have your product name be one letter (and on epunctuation mark) off from "blurry"?
R David Francis