Work Around for New DVD Format Protections

An anonymous reader writes "For the new Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats, Hollywood implemented a complete copy protection scheme; almost everything has to be encrypted and authenticated. Despite the crypto-stuff in Advanced Access Content System and High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, they left the backdoor wide open — they forgot about the PrintScreen button. Using this function you can create exact digital copies of a film picture-by-picture and reassemble them into a stream."

Comments

Yeah right

[Britz]

So the new copy protection sheme is supposed to keep professinal pirates (the guys that copy the movie and then sell th ecopies in large quantities) from gaining a copy? Gimme a break!

And it is supposed to be a hurdle to those "release groups" (the guys that compete with each other to be the fastest to release a movie to the p2p networks)? Yeah, right!

This hole (and there will be others) is another prove that there is no protection against those two groups. They will simply find another way.

But it puts a major obstacle in the way of paying customers that just want to watch movies. The movie studios don't realize it because there is no pressure from an alternative. That is also called a monopoly. And who is going to break it up? The movie industry and the record industry both seem to need a little "help" to get some competition back into their respective markets.

And just to make things easier...

[Noryungi]

You can automate the whole process using the two software below:

1. AutoIT to create a script.
2. IrfanView to grab the entire screen and/or apply optional transforms to the captured image. This is optional, since AutoIT can probably send the "PrintScreen" command itself, and move the resulting file(s) into a capture directory.

Just set your DVD software to play frame-by-frame. The rest is taken care of by the automated script. Sure, it may take a couple of attempts, but once you have the formula down, ripping an entire DVD movie should not take more than 4x or 5x the normal duration of the movie. Just let your computer run all night and you can have a brand new DiVX in the morning.

Now, what I'd like to know is: how do you rip the soundtrack off those uber-protected DVD? Hook the DVD player to an MP3 recorder? Or do you use one of the software that pretends to be a valid sound card?

Re:And just to make things easier...

[EnsilZah]

Software that pretends to be a valid sound card?
We had a virrtualization story just four stories back, i'm thinking it wouldn't be that hard to modify an open source virtualization solution so that the video and audio output devices can be captured from.

Wouldn't be that hard for someone who knows what they are doing that is.

Re:Not so much, really

[radtea]

Yet, anyways. It's still possible to break the chain somewhere and extract content. I'm guessing that'll always be the case too, at least for a good long while. Only way to get around that with what we have today would be if MS started selling PCs that are welded shut.

And that don't have any output.

So long as it's possible to get output, it's possible to produce a nearly-perfect digital replica of any content.

A/D conversion isn't perfect because of noise, but you can play back the movie/audio/whatever as many times as you want and average the noise away, or use fancier statistical algorithms to reclaim the original content, pixel-by-pixel, frame-by-frame. If you're worried about A/D bias, run it through multiple playbacks on different hardware. It just isn't that hard. Anyone who has worked in digital imaging (my own backgroud is in realtime x-ray) knows how easy this is.

I can see the videophile's system of the future: a video driver card with an external analog output plugged into a video capture card, plus a bit of software to repeat the process of playing the movie and averaging the frames until the desired quality is reached. Instant (ok, maybe 1 day turn-around) DVD/Blur-ray/HDTV-quality non-DRM'd video.

We've hardly begun to scratch the surface of means for making DRM obsolete. People who invest in DRM Just Don't Get It(tm).

Re:hrmm

[Kosmatos]

Now with virtualization technology, where the OS is running virtually, or in VMWare, you'll be able to do a "Print screen" at a higher level than the OS, so it shouldn'T be a problem.