Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Playback Under XP

An anonymous reader writes "In the last few weeks the first HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drives for PCs have slowly trickled onto the market. Up to now, it has not been clear what system requirements you need to actually be able to play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. The operating system was the main cause of concern; many rumors cropped up that the new generation of video discs would not work under Windows XP. Hardware.Info put the question to Cyberlink, the company behind Power DVD, if the lack of a protected videopath in Windows XP would make it impossible to enable HD-DVD or Blu-Ray playback. They have answered the questions, and provide a complete checklist of what you need to play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies in HD resolutions on your home PC."

Comments

1 goat, 1 long knife

[also-rr]

...and a penatagram to use for the sacrifice Personally I hope that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD _never_ get cracked, or at least if they do it's never ported to Windows in an easy to use fashion. It's hard to think of any other way to get the formats dropped faster.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm right with you on the goat but what's the knife for? I find a cut-throat razor or femshave does the business myself.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[hotdiggitydawg]

He wants to sacrifice the goat, not shave it. Then again, shaved goats sound kinda fun - where did I put that baby oil?

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[jmorris42]

> Personally I hope that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD _never_ get cracked, or at least if they do it's never ported to Windows in an easy to
> use fashion. It's hard to think of any other way to get the formats dropped faster.

You mean like DVD was dropped? Nope, once they commit billions to pushing a format that have to follow through. At least once it hits a critical mass. If the crack doesn't appear until after millions of players are fielded and thousands of titles are released they are stuck.

Since Vista dropped the requirement for TPCM we have all known the next gen DVD formats were going to get cracked. As soon as a software based player is available it is toast. And I'll tell ya something else. Mplayer won't need a dual core CPU and a 256MB video card for playback either.

Regular DVDs could be played back with a 1X DVD drive, a Pentium 90 and a video card with hardware scaling and color space conversion (i.e. xv support). A little back of the envelope math tells me a fast single core Intel or AMD cpu is more than enough. If your video card can do scaled video and colorspace on 1920x1080 windows you should be in the ballpark. If you have XvMC support you should be golden. HD video isn't THAT many more bits or pixels per second, despite what the marketing would have you believe.

Besides, I still don't understand your thinking. If it isn't cracked I ain't buying in. Didn't buy DVD until DVD Jon make it usable. So if this stuff ain't cracked it can all rot in hell for all I care.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[CastrTroy]

The dual core and 256 MB of video RAM does seem a little steep. I currently watch lots of quicktime trailers at 1080p, and haven't noticed any dropped frames with an AMD 3200+ and an ATI x550 (128 mb). I don't even see how dual core would come into it. I highly doubt that the number of cores will make a difference if you're just running a single process to display the video.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Darkforge]

Personally I hope that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD _never_ get cracked, or at least if they do it's never ported to Windows in an easy to use fashion. It's hard to think of any other way to get the formats dropped faster.

Besides, I still don't understand your thinking. If it isn't cracked I ain't buying in.

That was the grandparent post's whole point. If (in a magical fantasy land) the formats didn't get cracked, no one would buy in, and the formats would rot, which would be a good thing.

With that said, I think everybody agrees that the formats certainly will be cracked, so, meh.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[benwaggoner]

A QuickTime trailer is typically H.264 Main Profile @ 10 Mbps CBR. HD DVD supports VC-1 or H.264 High Profile @ up to ~27 Mbps, plus picture-in-picture video overlay, plus subtitles and graphics, plus up to three 7.1 audio tracks mixed in realtime (main audio + commentary + UI effects).

Ther's a LOT more going on with these formats than just playing back a single moderate data rate file! Look at the above, and you can see why multiple threads + GPU decoder and rendering asssist are extremely helpful.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[twistedsymphony]

Maybe not... the GOOD Blue laser discs use the VC-1 codec (as opposed to MPEG2)... I have a copy of the T2 extreme edition which comes with a 2nd disc that has the movie in 1080p encoded using the WM9 codec (which IIRC is based on VC-1). It's just a regular old DVD-9, basically MS's poor early attempt at HD content through their WMVHD-DVD discs (there was about 10 of them total I believe). Anyway, I've got an Athalon 2600+ and a decent 512MB ATi card and I can't even come close to playing that disc, nor can I come close to playing any of the example HD WM9 videos on MS's website. Maybe it's because the video has been compressed to fit on a simple DVD9 so maybe thats why my machine chokes, but maybe it's just because it's no-where near powerful enough.

It also brings up another interesting question. If the VC-1 codec is powerful enough to fit a full-length feature film in 1080p on a mere DVD9 disc... why exactly do we need the new formats again?

If you're interested in trying these videos out on your own machine you can go to the WMVHD showcase The 720p videos played OK, they still stuttered every couple of seconds, but the 1080p stuff was just flat out unplayable.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[indil]

Too late. High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (the Blu-ray and HD-DVD DRM) was broken years before it was ever put on the market. As expected, the industry has pulled the rug out from under itself by using a custom and unproven (and incidently, unsecure) encryption algorithm. Apparently, they had a requirement to keep the hardware gate count <= 10,000. According to the cryptanalysis, the following are possible for HDCP-compliant devices:

• Eavesdropping on any data
• Cloning any device with only their public key
• Avoiding any blacklist on devices
• Creating new device keyvectors

And all you need to do that are 40 devices. You can extract their keys and quickly calculate the master key, which can then be used to circumvent the DRM.

From the paper:

An attacker can reverse engineer 40 different HDCP video software utilities, he can break open 40 devices and extract the keys via reverse engineering, or he can simply license the keys from the trusted center. According to the HDCP License Agreement, device manufacturers can buy 10000 key pairs for $16000. Given these 40 spanning keys, the master secret can be recovered in seconds. So in essence, the trusted authority sells a large portion of its master secret to every HDCP licensee. With the master secret in hand, one can eavesdrop on all device communications, spoof any device, and clone any device, all in real time. One can produce a device that, by parroting back the KSVs of its peers, cannot be disabled by any blacklist. With a reasonable amount of computation, an attacker can also produce new device keys not on any key revocation list.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[jmorris42]

> Ther's a LOT more going on with these formats than just playing back a single moderate data rate file!

Nice features to have, but most of us will only be watching the movie. One HD video stream and one audio, either decoded ijn software or passed out on an optical plug. And do the math on the movie itself. Assume a dual layer BD-ROM (by the time a crack appears these will actually be shipping in quantity) with a single movie. That gives you 50GB of data for a two hour movie. Compare to a DVD with 9.6GB for a two hour movie. I make it out to a maximum 5 fold increase in raw bitrate spread over 12 times the pixels with the audio datarate remaining constant. If you try uncompressed audio you can kiss the video quality goodbye.

Now tell me again about the picture in picture and multiple 7.1 audio tracks? Forget the PiP, the bits aren't there to support it except for a couple of special features on the second bonus features disc nobody watches more than once anyway. About like the multiple angle feature of DVDs now. And nobody is going to be mixing the multiple audio tracks on their players with HD anymore than they do now on DVDs with commentary tracks. All of that is premixed during mastering.

No, just about any machine built this year has more than enough power for HD if you don't need to one core burning up doing decryption and reencryption. So what is about to happen is the Free players will work on far more machines than the official versions. People are going to notice, especially when they realise battery life will be a lot longer if they download mplayer.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Keith Russell]

I have a copy of the T2 extreme edition which comes with a 2nd disc that has the movie in 1080p encoded using the WM9 codec... If the VC-1 codec is powerful enough to fit a full-length feature film in 1080p on a mere DVD9 disc... why exactly do we need the new formats again?

The "HD" disc of T2 Extreme Edition is 720p, not 1080p. The "making of" bits in the liner notes state that they made a 1080p24 master from the film transfer. Once they were done with post-production, the last step was to down-sample to 720p for WMV9 encoding. And I recall them saying that they made damn sure that they archived that 1080p24 master, so it shouldn't take much effort to make a Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD pressing. (If they haven't already. I haven't been paying much attention to titles, since I'm not touching either format until they get their crap straight.)

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[stunt_penguin]

But hang on, goats don't shave!

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[jmorris42]

> That was the grandparent post's whole point. If (in a magical fantasy land) the formats didn't get
> cracked, no one would buy in, and the formats would rot, which would be a good thing.

Why would it be a good thing?

Fact: DVD is near the end of its life for a high quality movie format. Disney titles for the kids? Another ten years, just like VHS is still clinging to life if that niche. A format to drive a 50" HD monitor? No.

Fact: Any new format will have all the DRM the industry thinks it can get away with.

Fact: The original plan was for Vista to be a TPCM only horror, and for HD content to only be playable on PCs with TPCM (ie. Vista and OS X on Intel). Hollywood had banked everything on that and was betrayed. (Nobody ever wins in a 'partnership' with Microsoft.)

Fact: If either/both of these new formats catch on they will be good enough to last 10-20 years, like DVD's eventual lifespan will probably end up and about like VHS's reign.

Fact: If both fail, by the time Hollywood is ready to try again we might not be lucky enough to get something so crackable.

Fact: If Hollywood has TPCM it is possible they might actually design something that can't be cracked. Or at least not cracked effortlessly, as DVDs are now. Microsoft's failure with Vista is our opportunity, we should seize it.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[benwaggoner]

Well, many of us will mainly be watching the movie and main audio at any given time, but a vendor hardly would go to market with a player that didn't support big features of the disc (well, Blu-ray lets you do that by having a couple of different profiles, but not HD DVD). That'd be like having a DVD player that didn't support subtitles. To get a HD DVD logo for a player, you need to support the interactive features.

I gather you haven't seen any of the IME (In Movie Experience) titles. For example, on Bourne Supremacy, on the fly you can have a video commentary track, where the director or producer will pop up as a picture-in-picture to give a face to the narration. Lots of very cool things along these lines will be coming in later titles, and its stuff you'd want to be able to access. And we're talking real-world titles - there are clearly the bits available to do it.

Also, HD DVD absoutely mixes multiple audo sources in real-time, and this is used in real titles. They were required to be premixed on DVD, but not on HD DVD. This is a good thing, since you don't have to waste bits on doing the base audio when doing commentary tracks. This is also why audio decoding is moving out of recievers into the players, and the players output mixed PCM over HDMI as the optimum output mode.

You're dramatically underestimating the load of rich media playback, and overestimating the load of decryption. And I'm not aware of any software players that'll be doing any sort of reencryption in software, or why that would be needed.

I imagine free players like VLC will eventually support playback of non-AACS HD DVD discs. But they'll have similar decoder requirements. We're definitely talking about using GPU compositing, GPU codec decode assist, etcetera.

And we're not even talking about Blu-ray, which has higher max codec complexity, plus it has to run a Java VM and another encryption layer...

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[evilviper]

You mean like DVD was dropped? Nope, once they commit billions to pushing a format that have to follow through.

You got the complete opposite of what the parent was actually saying. He said that if it DOESN'T get cracked, people won't adopt them. Which doesn't actually seem to likely, as DVD adoption was quite fast, long before DeCSS and css-auth came along.

If you have XvMC support you should be golden.

XVMC is (almost) exclusively for MPEG-1/2, and not for VC-1, h.264, etc.

And, with a fast enough computer, XVMC is actually slower than software-decoding.

Didn't buy DVD until DVD Jon make it usable.

That doesn't make it legal. It'll be real interesting if companies ever decide to crack down on everyone who is breaking the DMCA.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[SyncNine]

Right. Because playback of HD-quality video utilizing BR Discs or HD-DVDs under Windows XP and cracking the DRM of BR Discs or HD-DVDs under Windows XP are exactly the same thing.

Nice logical conclusion there, Sherlock.

Also, nice '+5 Insightful' on a comment that makes absolutely no sense. Welcome to Slashdot, eh?

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[dangitman]

Fact: DVD is near the end of its life for a high quality movie format. Disney titles for the kids? Another ten years, just like VHS is still clinging to life if that niche. A format to drive a 50" HD monitor? No.

How many people really care? A 50" HD monitor is not essential to living, and a movie is just as enjoyable on a smaller SD screen, if it is a good movie.

Fact: If either/both of these new formats catch on they will be good enough to last 10-20 years, like DVD's eventual lifespan will probably end up and about like VHS's reign.

Which is why we should not adopt Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. If this stuff is going to be around for so long, why rely on such a crappy format? It would be better to use a non-physical medium (download from internet) or wait until something with far greater storage comes along. Why adopt a new format, just for minor incremental improvements? Wait until something really next-gen comes along.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Darkforge]

If (in a magical fantasy land) the formats didn't get cracked, no one would buy in, and the formats would rot, which would be a good thing.

Why would it be a good thing?

I think you're forgetting that this story begins "in a magical fantasy land"...

With that said, suppose in a magical fantasy land, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are uncrackable, fulfilling Hollywood's wildest DRM dreams. In this fantasy land, nobody buys them; they're a financial disaster. Hollywood loses a lot of money, and can no longer blame piracy for their financial woes.

That's nice for schadenfreude alone, but also because it teaches them a lesson about what markets will/won't accept. In this world of fantasy, they see the light, learn their lesson, and start offering less draconian formats.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Malc]

Blu-ray and HD DVD do more than just decode 1080p video, although the video decoding does require more than you might think (and there are other codecs besides MPEG2 to support). Half your CPU is going to be going on Java and other advanced content.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[TheoMurpse]

Wikipedia states that the first DVD players sold in Europe appeared in 1998. DeCSS came out in October of 1999. Does this mean we can expect a similar timetable for a reverse engineering of HDDVD and Blu-Ray? Does this mean we'll (well, I don't plan on using the technologies for video playback, so maybe it should be "you'll") have to wait twice as long, since there are 2 competing formats? Will DVD Jon's immigration to the US affect the release of the tools (seeing as how he has played a central role in various DRM-removing technologies in the past 6 years)? We know there are still two anonymous German circumventionists somewhere out there who worked on DeCSS. Will they be involved? This is all so exciting to me as a bystander in the drive-by shootings that are the DRM wars.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming that you have 40 spanning KSVs. That is, a set of 40 KSVs that can combine to give you any of the 2^(56*40) possible vectors.

Any old set of 40 KSVs won't cut it. In fact, according to that paper, a truly random set of 40 KSVs has about a 29.5% chance of working.

Indeed, if I were the person assigning keys to devices, knowing that this attack exists, I'd make it as hard as possible for anyone to obtain a spanning set.

And mind you, even once we've found 40 devices whose KSVs span the space, it's not trivial to reverse-engineer all 40 of them and pry out their private keys...

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[modecx]

For example, on Bourne Supremacy, on the fly you can have a video commentary track, where the director or producer will pop up as a picture-in-picture to give a face to the narration. Lots of very cool things along these lines will be coming in later titles, and its stuff you'd want to be able to access. And we're talking real-world titles - there are clearly the bits available to do it.


Yeah, that PIP stuff is bound to be incredibly useful! I mean, having the director pop up and tell you what stupid thing he was going after with this shot or that shot might take your attention off the nausea-inducing effects of watching Matt Damon long enough to realize that you're not infact strapped to a giant hydraulic jackhammer!

Seriously, you can strap me to a tiny boat heaving up and down 40 feet on the sea, while everyone else is puking, tumble me around in a small airplane, again, while everyone else is puking, throw me out of the plane, spin me around and around, and around on an office chair, fly me around a race track at 150MPH, make me watch a video of a twitchy teenager hopped up on Ritalin play an FPS game, etc... None of that bothers me.

That goddamned movie, however, that bothered me. The ride home was an interesting one, I'm not afraid to admit.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[bangenge]

Fact: If Hollywood has TPCM it is possible they might actually design something that can't be cracked. Or at least not cracked effortlessly, as DVDs are now. Microsoft's failure with Vista is our opportunity, we should seize it.

Fact: According to http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid =Mozilla-search&va=fact, most of what you said is based on speculation, thus, does not constitute fact. Check your facts.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Calinous]

I'm not sure about the Pentium 90 thing, but I've saw DVD played on some Pentium 233MMX with an ATI 4MB video card, and a Creative accelerator. While on the monitor it had some quirks (colors/transparency), on a TV (using a TV-out connection) looked great

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[delinear]

You mean like DVD was dropped? Nope, once they commit billions to pushing a format that have to follow through.

You got the complete opposite of what the parent was actually saying. He said that if it DOESN'T get cracked, people won't adopt them. Which doesn't actually seem to likely, as DVD adoption was quite fast, long before DeCSS and css-auth came along.

True, but then DVD over VHS was a massive improvement in almost every way possible, better quality which could be enjoyed immediately with just a DVD player (no need to upgrade the TV), supposedly much longer shelf-life, smaller and lighter physical media.

The only thing the new formats really offer over and above DVD is an improvement in quality (which arguably doesn't match the jump from VHS > DVD), for which they not only need an expensive player, but a hugely expensive new television (and a lot of the hugely expensive televisions people have bought already, thinking they will work with the new disc formats, won't give the expected benefits). In order to get this improvement in quality, people will have to give up any rights to do what they like with their media just as they are getting used to the idea of movies as data and data being portable across devices/networks.

I wouldn't like to call the outcome either way...

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[mgblst]

If it fails, then maybe hollywood would reconsider their strategy. Maybe the would realise that we want fair use of the things we buy, the ability to back things up and lend them to people.

If Blu/HD succeed, your way, we are only putting of the inevitable, as next time they will be ever more restrictive.

Hollywood need to realise how much ordinary consumers are suffering/ will suffer because they are chasing after the pirates, who will provide a debatable amount of money in actual sales anyway.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if this auudio mixing means I can switch off the crappy music and even crappier laughter tracks on stuff it's a good thing.

I'm still not interested until it's all been cracked thogh ;)

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[dctoastman]

Fact: DVD is near the end of its life for a high quality movie format.

End of its life? Since when did distribution formats have a shelf life? Not to mention that DVD has been on the market for just over a decade. DVD only surpassed VHS in in sales in 1993. Closer to two decades of existence for VHS.

And look at CDs. 20+ years on the market and still hasn't been replaced. Why haven't you moved on over to SACD or DVD-Audio? They both offer higher quality and storage capacity for music.

I think the CD market is a prime example of what will happen to the DVD market. CDs and CD players have only recently begun to see serious competition in digital music players like the iPod and distribution systems like iTunes. Why?
Because they offer higher convenience at a quality level that people can live with. Something BD and HD-DVD don't.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[evil_tandem]

I'm not necessarily sure I buy this. They released all those silly next-gen audio disc formats no one ever bought. You have to give me a compelling reason to switch.

I think they've managed to cross the line finally. All the early adopters, who are your bread and butter, are getting shafted. I'm not going out to buy another big flat TV, and upgrade my media center hardware, for a slightly better picture. My current setup plays the hd content I download just fine.

I'm not going to throw away my car stereo for some slightly better sounding tunes. I'm not tossing out everything I have now for this monster. I mean it will downsample to dvd quality on all my hardware anyway, so there really is no benefit to the end user. Mom and pop will see a DVD player for $50 and a hd-whatever for $500+ and just get the DVD. The early adopters who drive this sort of switch anyway are all left scratching their heads.

They needed to make the offer very compelling for us all to switch, and they've just failed on every level to do that.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[Captain_Chaos]

I hope that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD _never_ get cracked, or at least if they do it's never ported to Windows in an easy to use fashion. It's hard to think of any other way to get the formats dropped faster.

I hope it does get cracked, and as soon as possible and as wide as possible. If I can't make fair use of the movies I purchase, then I don't have any use for the format and would rather it went away sooner rather than later. Hopefully the content companies will learn their lesson (hey, I can dream right?) and it will be replaced with something less draconian or get competition from a better alternative.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[PrescriptionWarning]

"Fact: If both fail, by the time Hollywood is ready to try again we might not be lucky enough to get something so crackable."

Fact: By selling the consumer the means to view their content, they are creating a crackable media format.

It's simple, they're giving us the keys to the car but telling us we can only drive it on the roads they want us to and with the fuel they want us to. The consumer is simply going to decide for his or herself what they want to use the product for.

Re:1 goat, 1 long knife

[evilviper]

better quality which could be enjoyed immediately with just a DVD player (no need to upgrade the TV),

At the time, most TVs didn't have S-Video connections, which were needed to get the better resolution out of DVDs. Look at the popularity of RF converters at the time. With that, you're barely getting any quality improvements at all, and with the switch to widescreen, it could be considered a net loss.

The only thing the new formats really offer over and above DVD is an improvement in quality (which arguably doesn't match the jump from VHS > DVD)

Arguable only by complete idiots who have no idea what they are talking about, and have never seen an HDTV in action.

DVD to highdef is a 6X improvement, while VHS to DVD was a 3X improvement AT BEST.

but a hugely expensive new television

Nobody is going to go out and buy a new TV to watch HD-DVD/Bluray. It's those that are already getting a new TV that will invest in a highdef disc format to get the full quality out of their HDTVs.

(and a lot of the hugely expensive televisions people have bought already, thinking they will work with the new disc formats, won't give the expected benefits).

No, actually both formats will output full resolution over component outputs, so you'll get the full resolution. It's only in the distant future when that restriction may be enabled.

In order to get this improvement in quality, people will have to give up any rights to do what they like with their media

You could have said the exact same thing about DVDs, but CSS didn't slow their adoption at all.

DRM, just say no!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://bluraysucks.com/

What you need to watch HD-DVD

[slightcrazed]

A shit-load of cash and a bunch of new hardware, apparently. Seriously, I need a DUAL CORE CPU just to watch a fricken HD DVD? Are you serious? What is a new HD DVD set top box going to look like, a cray supercomputer?

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[gEvil (beta)]

What is a new HD DVD set top box going to look like, a cray supercomputer?

Nope. It's going to look like a 2.5GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and a USB card running Red Hat.

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[in2mind]

Seriously, I need a DUAL CORE CPU just to watch a fricken HD DVD? Are you serious?

Dont take them so seriously.These guys usually recommend the highest config hardware available.

If Quad core Cpu was available for desktop now,then thats what these guys would recommend for "Best Optimal Performance"!

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[paranode]

Apparently so. I ran it on this machine and it tells me a P4 3.0GHz is not sufficient...

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[MindStalker]

You didn't think the $1000 (yea its come down some) cost of a HDDVD or blueray player was due to the expensive laser did you?

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[benwaggoner]

Plus a bunch of DSPs, including a hardware video decoder.

This is NOT something that's going to "just work" on a P4M computer!

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[Sillygates]

These next gen formats probably need all the extra CPU power to decrypt the content on the HD discs.

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[MightyYar]

My first computer to come with a DVD-ROM was very high-end in it's day: a 350MHz blue-and-white Macintosh. It had a video card with a dedicated MPEG2 decoder on it... otherwise it wasn't quite quick enough to decode a DVD. My 400MHz Pentium couldn't really get the job done, either. My 800MHz Athlon was the first one to do it smoothly.

So, anyway, I think this situation is analogous and not that unusual. In 3 years you will forget that it was ever an issue, just like with DVD.

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[gEvil (beta)]

Oh, I know that. Point being that even with specialized hardware, it still requires a fair amount of horsepower to even function as a standalone device.

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[jZnat]

Quad core is already available in all Mac Pros (they all have dual Xeons, and each Xeon has dual-core).

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, everyone who's delt with HD in mpeg2 or h264 knows something like a p4/athlon >2ghz will do the trick.

But keep in mind they're giving guidelines for the end user, making sure he can play HD on his XP setup. (think john doe's xp setup, as if you were a company and needed to support every customer):

* Therefore a DUAL CORE is welcomed, as the first core will be used by xp + antivirus + antispyware + (viruses and spywares ?) + other background tasks, a spare 2ghz proc will be there for hd decoding.

* And the 'brand new graphic card' is not a performance requirement (as the cpu is enough and i doubt powerdvd uses the gpu ?); it's just to have more chances it's HDCP compliant...

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[Rico_Suave]

This isn't unusual. Early software-only DVD players required a pretty hefty machine for the time. Remember DVD accelerator cards? (Creative DXR, etc.) They existed because the CPUs at the time weren't quite up to the taskl

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[k31bang]

What is a new HD DVD set top box going to look like, a cray supercomputer?

Nope. It's going to look like a 2.5GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and a USB card running Red Hat. [geekswithblogs.net]

Which compared to my 750 Duron is a super duper computer ;-)

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

The USB card runs RedHat? Damn, you guys can get Linux running on ANYTHING!

Re:What you need to watch HD-DVD

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a stupid question I'm sure, but..

Does being based on Red Hat mean that there is a requirement to open source it?

What a deal!

[shawnmchorse]

I would only need to purchase a whole new computer, video card, and monitor to support playback of movies in somewhat higher resolution. Hold me back...:p Do they really think that introducing new hurdles like HDCP and a "secure video path" to be able to watch this stuff will encourage people to buy and actually use it? Or do they just not care?

Re:What a deal!

[winnabago]

Hell, my computer can't even run the diagnostic utility that supposedly tells me how deficient I am. Guess my answer is "no".

Re:What a deal!

[truthsearch]

Most people will only hear "HD-DVD doesn't work with your old monitor, so you need to get a new one." That won't piss them off as much as hearing that it can technically work but manufacturers have chosen to make it not work. People accept that new technology often means all new hardware, so they eventually will be inclined to upgrade.

Re:What a deal!

[lazybratsche]

Also, you'd need to spring for a moniter you couldn't afford or possibly even find. Even better, video cards implementing HDCP don't even exist yet!

Re:What a deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably don't care particularly. They win either way.

Option 1: People put up with the crappy restrictions and monopolistic system and buy it.

Option 2: People refuse to buy it, and the companies "convince" Congress that it's because "artists are afraid of their work being pirated." That lets them pass a SuperDMCA to outlaw any electronics that aren't pre-approved and licensed from them.

Re:What a deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

It requires a high-end computer right now, but in six months any new computer will probably be capable of playing HD content. That's fine with me; I would be more upset if they _didn't_ push the limits.

AC

Re:What a deal!

[Trailer Trash]

In a year or two the standard $500 pc from dell will have all of this stuff built-in, and the vast majority of people will neither know nor care that their pc has special hardware that enables this playback. These same people today don't know that their dvds can't be copied legally.

Just to gauge the reaction, I explained the DMCA to my mother one day in plain English and she was aghast. People who don't hang out on here all day tend to not know these things.

Re:What a deal!

[Babbster]

I don't understand these recommendations at all. First off, as others have noted, HD playback is indeed possible with single-core CPUs. Second, the video card shouldn't have to have 256MB Of memory - video cards have supported resolutions higher than 1920x1080 ("1080p") for years, so video memory should be a minor concern. Finally, unless the HD-DVD and Blu-ray consortia are putting extra restrictions on PC playback (over and above those on current HD-DVD and Blu-ray players hooked up to TVs), HDCP won't be an issue until a content provider decides to enable the ICT flag - no current releases do, and supposedly the major studios have an agreement amongst themselves not to do so for at least a few years.

In short, I find all of this information suspect and most likely just a way to get people to buy more new hardware. Since Cyberlink makes most of their money from OEM deals, they have a large incentive to do so.

Re:What a deal!

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Just to gauge the reaction, I explained the DMCA to my mother one day in plain English and she was aghast. People who don't hang out on here all day tend to not know these things.

And it's really not for lack of intelligence or comprehension. It's due to a systematic, purposeful lack of education - the content companies are much happier with few people even knowing what DMCA means, much less what it actually does.

Re:What a deal!

[samkass]

I'm wondering what the Mac specs will look like. Mid-range Macs have built-in monitors (iMacs), so the requirement that things be HDCP and a secure video path might not be as big a deal with the studios on the Mac.

Re:What a deal!

[viking099]

"Second, the video card shouldn't have to have 256MB Of memory - video cards have supported resolutions higher than 1920x1080 ("1080p") for years, so video memory should be a minor concern."

So you're telling me that you firmly believe that in 1998 you could have run full-screen 1024x768 video and sound through software without a problem?

Rendering full-screen 1920x1080 progressive scan (i.e. the full screen 60times a second) is going to take a ton more computer power than standard DVD video.

I'm sure you could "run" HD content on many new computers, but I doubt it would be anything approaching acceptable performance.

Re:What a deal!

[Tim Browse]

Given that just about every time I've ever run some Cyberlink software, it has crashed and burned in some way, I can't say I'm surprised. WinDVD isn't much better. And they both have crap UI. Horrible, horrible software.

Re:What a deal!

[rikkards]

Probably still will be. How long do you think it will be before someone comes up with some kind of interface that would go between the board inside the mac and the cabling running up to the monitor? The interface would loop back and drop the file in some acronymed video format. Even worse it may involve booting one of these evil Open Source communistic Operating Systems. Savages.

Re:What a deal!

[jandrese]

I think his point was that you don't need 256MB of video memory to render a raster image 60 times a second. In fact I'm not sure exactly why you need such a beefy card, it's no like this is a polygon intensive operation, and even cheap cards are fine at blitting stuff to the screen. Does Cyberlink have some sort of processing for the HD-DVD and Bluray video offloaded to the video card? Granted you're going to need a card that can push a lot of pixels, but 1920x1080 @ 60Hz is something that any halfway decent card should be able to handle these days. I wouldn't try it on a Mach64 based card or something, but even a cheap Geforce 6200 shouldn't have any trouble blitting that.

Re:What a deal!

[keep_it_simple_stupi]

Well that's just freakin awesome then. My kick a$$ in every other way $1000 Dell 2405 LCD monitor won't display HD movies because it doesn't have HanDiCaPping techology. Well they can kiss my a$$ I'm not buying in. I'll stick with DVD thank you very much.

Re:What a deal!

[eno2001]

And I'll bet you're the sort who thinks that buying a new PC every two years is the way it's supopsed to be. Do you realize that a P3 system is plenty of horsepower to playback nearly ANY video format? Probably not. Oh well, you know what they say about fools and their money...

Re:What a deal!

[Babbster]

That was indeed my point. There were 16MB and 32MB cards that could display (2D) at up to 2048x1536x32 at high refresh rates - of course, whether the consumer PC hardware of the time could render that 2D resolution with acceptable speed is another question (to which the answer is "no") entirely. All that should be required, as you say, is that the video card can take all that data from the CPU/main memory and push it out the VGA/DVI/HDMI connection at 60Hz or better.

Re:What a deal!

[EXrider]

No, they probably think lots of people will be dumb enough to buy outrageously overpriced movies on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (repeatedly), and play them back on their non-HDCP equipment (be it LCD computer displays, or older HDTV sets that don't have HDMI). Best case; remain ignorantly blissful, thinking they're getting the best picture possible, or they might even realize that the quality isn't as good as it could be, but they still think it's better than DVD. Meanwhile it's only displaying the same resolution as plain ol' DVD.

Anyways, we'll see I guess. DVD's good enough for me in the mean time.

Re:What a deal!

[gamepln1]

Actually there are a number of device that support HDCP. One of which is the Gateway FPD2185W 21" Widescreen High-Definition LCD Flat-Panel Display. Also I believe most newer Samsung LCD televisions support HDCP.

Re:What a deal!

[FonkiE]

Yeah. But online DRM decryption is not possible that fast - *sigh*

Re:What a deal!

[delinear]

No, I definitely think they're on to something here. Quality is king and people will always go for quality even if it costs them the earth. I mean, when was the last time you ever heard of someone downloading a low-fi, shaky cam version of the latest movie release rather than shelling out £5 to see it on a huge cinema screen with full surround sound? Oh, wait... never mind.

Re:What a deal!

[evil_tandem]

NVIDIA actually makes a product called "Pure Video" or something like that. It enables the NVIDIA cards hardware to do the deinterlacing. Before I found the NVIDIA software performance/deinterlacing were just terrible. Now I've been watching hd content from my media center for a year, on a computer I put together 2 or 3 years ago.

It looks awesome.

Re:What a deal!

[xrushx]

I believe this is correct, manufacters are now including certain hardware to enable the OS to run efficiently. Along with the requirments that Vista is going to have over XP.

Re:What a deal!

[PhilTR]

Since my eyes are going bad anyway, I really can't see the benefit of buying into this new crap.

What's not clear?

[fmwap]

it has not been clear what system requirements you need to actually be able to play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs.

Yes it has, 64-bits and a DRM-ridden OS

I thought we already discussed this?

Break open the bank, folks

[consonant]

HD content from a Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc requires quite a bit of processing power; Cyberlink recommends using a dual-core processor like the Intel Pentium D, Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon X2. As a graphics card you should at least use a nVidia GeForce 7600 or ATI Radeon X1600 series with a minimum of 256MB video memory.

Nice. And that's just for watching movies. At least we now know who Microsoft's been collaborating with to ensure everyone buys new machines...

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[Lumpy]

funny part is that non drm HD quality and resolution mpeg4 content can play on paltry Celeron 2.4ghz processors with 512 meg of ram and a crappy video card.

I demo real HD content on a HTPC next to a HDDVD to a customer and they love the HTPC's picture over the HDDVD player. BluRay is not even HD quality yet as they do not have dual layer discs available yet so they are EDDVD instead of HDDVD.

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[BalanceOfJudgement]

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.

Awesome quote, I really like it.

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. And that's just for watching movies. At least we now know who Microsoft's been collaborating with to ensure everyone buys new machines...

But how is this any different that video game players. There is an entire micro industry built up around supplying those who must squeeze every last fps and get every last atmospheric simulation for their games. AAMOF, this is very similar in that those who don't have the right stuff can still get access to the content, just not as high a quality as those who do have the right things. With games it's almost completely hardware centric, with the new hd formats it's the same but with the added wrinkle of hdcp thrown in.

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[sperm]

Well who wants to watch Hoolywood movies anyways? I have been watching more and more foreign content, even with subtitles, there's is lot a of good content produced.
Maybe if we're lucky MS and DRM associates will have financial troubles; I can see a future where people (me and others) will pay for content from independents that are fine with you burning it to DVD. Maybe a bunch of new creative media companies will come out of all this mess. I already download and watch a free shows such as http://welcometothescene.com/.
I can see a future in the same vein as podcasts for videos (probably some of it is already there). Just ask radio stations if they like podcasts? In a way they've had to comply!

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[simontek2]

No one ever caugh this little detail, have they. On April 18, 2006, Toshiba released the first HD DVD player for the United States, the Toshiba HD-A1 and Toshiba HD-XA1. They are powered by an Intel Pentium 4 processor and contain 1 GB of RAM; the drive mechanism is also an IDE HD DVD drive. The units run a specialized version of the Linux operating system booting off a USB thumbdrive. Due to high demand, they were reported to be sold out in many stores in the United States after the first shipment. (Although the number of HD DVD players shipped has not been released) (wikipedia) So if a standard P4 chip works, why do we need dual core? I think a lot of it is to sell more hardware. You know manufactures are tired of selling $300 machines.

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[makomk]

On April 18, 2006, Toshiba released the first HD DVD player for the United States, the Toshiba HD-A1 and Toshiba HD-XA1. They are powered by an Intel Pentium 4 processor and contain 1 GB of RAM

They also have several hardware decoder chips and a FPGA... not exactly your standard, off-the-shelf PC.

Re:Break open the bank, folks

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

unny part is that non drm HD quality and resolution mpeg4 content can play on paltry Celeron 2.4ghz processors with 512 meg of ram and a crappy video card.

You are correct sir. The problem with some HD is that VC1 playback takes a lot of CPU power. I have a 3200+ AMD CPU and 2 GB of memory and I can't get VC1 video to playback at normal speeds. The picture quality is fantastic, but the video playback is somewhat slower than it should be, so it's not really watchable. Divx in HD doesn't require as much CPU power and will playback fine on systems such as the one you describe. VC1's demands for tons of CPU power is why Cyberlink is recommending dual core CPUs to play HD-DVD and BluRay on a PC.

I demo real HD content on a HTPC next to a HDDVD to a customer and they love the HTPC's picture over the HDDVD player. BluRay is not even HD quality yet as they do not have dual layer discs available yet so they are EDDVD instead of HDDVD.

I'm not sure I like the way you phrased this. Your statement is accurate but somewhat misleading. BluRay discs are in HD right now. It's my understanding released titles are in 1080p. Maybe it's 1080i and not 1080p, but they are in 1080-something. However, reviewers have reported the quality is not as good as it should be. This is because Sony rushed BluRay to market before it was ready and the only codec they could get working for the first releases was the old MPEG-2 codec. MPEG-2 in HD resolutions is capable of excellent results if you use a high enough bit rate, but apparently the first discs were encoded somewhat sloppily and it's said that the results aren't very impressive. Supposedly Sony finally got VC1 to work under BluRay, so future releases may be better. Your statement about these discs being EDDVD is just wrong. They are in HD format. There's no such thing as EDDVD anyway, so I'm not sure where you came up with that one.

Who cares?

[Quiet_Desperation]

You have to need psychotherapy to even consider buying into this format war.

I'll wait until there's a format where, when I push the Menu button after inserting a disc, I DON'T get "operation prohibited by disc". Prohibit my shiny white ass, disc makers!

Re:Who cares?

[truthsearch]

Your disc player will respond, "Bite my shiny metal ass."

Re:Who cares?

[InsaneProcessor]

Won't buy any of it. Won't even look at it. It isn't worth my money or time to even consider it. Let them fight it out and let the morons buy it. I am not wasting my.......oh wait, I already wasted 12 second to write this out, oops.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your format is here, DVD (as long as you don't have a shitty DVD player).

Re:Who cares?

[Quiet_Desperation]

*shrug* Then its shiny metal ass can stay at the store.

I bet on linux support

[Anonymous Coward]

While all this makes big news, I hope people is working on Linux versions of burning tools and mplayer/xine modifications too.

The list:

[Anonymous Coward]

• Your soul surrendered to the local Devil-affiliated MPAA representative
• Virgin sacrifice
• An EULA, signed in blood, stating, among other things, that you will surrender your right arm if you watch any of the discs more than 3 times
• Your firstborn son's heart placed on the altar of Fair Use, and his blood sprinkled over your motherboard
• No un-DRMed content within 5 miles of you

Re:The list:

[crayiii]

#2 should be easy for the /. community...

Re:The list:

[rcamera]

but if you commit suicide, you would never get to view the content you just paid so dearly for.

Only one last piece to the puzzle...

[interiot]

All we need now is either a drive that can read both HD-DVD and BluRay, or we need HD-DVD to be declared the winner of this silly war.

Re:Only one last piece to the puzzle...

[brunascle]

All we need now is either a drive that can read both HD-DVD and BluRay

i think Ricoh has one ready to go

"Is my computer BD/HD ready?" command-line tool:

[mypalmike]

echo "No"

DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I am now waiting for a DeCSS-like solution for Blue Ray/HD-DVD.

Does anyone know if the DRM/encryption in BD/HD has been cracked yet? Is DVD Jon working hard on this?

Once this crack becomes available, I should be able to play back the cracked BD/HD without having to "upgrade" to DRM-compliant hardware. However, I might have to replace my aging Radeon 8500 graphics card.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[NSIM]

> Does anyone know if the DRM/encryption in BD/HD has been cracked yet? Is DVD Jon working hard on this?

It will not be as simple as DeCSS, the schemes used in HD & BL discs allow the vendors to update encryption keys over the network, so if someone cracks a particular key it can be invalidated for future use.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[pla]

However, I might have to replace my aging Radeon 8500 graphics card.

You really shouldn't need to, unless it doesn't support a high enough screen resolution. Playback of HD content has nothing to do with 3d rendering, just a series of 1920x1080 (at 1080p) 2d framebuffer fills.

Granted, you may find that you get a better framerate by having the player fake the data as textures, but that has more to do with driver optimization favoring gamers over media playback, than the nature of the data itself.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[deafpluckin]

http://nanocrew.net/2006/01/08/deaacscom/ ..."dvd john" registered deaacs.com a while ago... here's hoping something shows up there if bd/hddvd becomes more popular.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Paul Slocum]

I definitely hope a crack comes soon, but most people will still have to upgrade their hardware. It takes a LOT of power to play back HD smoothly, and a lot of storage space too. I have a computer capable of playing the latest games at decent resolution and framerate, but it struggles playing some HD content. There's no way it could play 1080 anything. 720 it can do sometimes depending on the codec and bitrate. I'm an artist and run a gallery that specializes in computer video, so I deal with quite a bit of HD content on the computer.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is DVD Jon working hard on this?

he registered deaacs.com. not sure if that means anything, though.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[KillerBob]

My guess is that a crack will be available in the next 6 months. Long before I have any intention of buying either HD-DVD or BluRay... Despite the fact that I'd have to buy several hundred DVDs all over again, I'm gonna sit back, make some popcorn, and wait to see which emerges the victor before I even consider upgrading. Heck... I didn't even buy a DVD burner until a month ago (well ok, a year ago... my laptop came with one). I'm not a luddite, I just don't see the point in buying into a new technology until I need it. The current generation of DVD is good enough. My monitor supports HDCP (Gateway 2185W LCD), but that was hardly a determining factor when I bought it.

As for the graphics card... since DVD playback is in 2D and the decoding is usually done at the CPU-level, the only reason I can think of to need a high end video card is because older video cards' GPUs simply aren't compatible with HDCP. According to ATI's website, for example, the Radeon 9550 core and the X1K core are the only GPUs they manufacture (and have ever manufactured) that are even HDCP-capable, let alone HDCP-ready. They don't yet manufacture a video card that actually supports HDCP, and suggest that you should check with the people rebranding their product to see which, if any, support HDCP.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[cttforsale]

Will and XVid of resonable quality in full HD (19?? X 1080 or whatever) fit on a single layer DVD?

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[plague3106]

It will not be as simple as DeCSS, the schemes used in HD & BL discs allow the vendors to update encryption keys over the network, so if someone cracks a particular key it can be invalidated for future use.

It was my understanding that there is a blacklist of players on the disc, and newer discs would blacklist the cracked device...but existing discs would continue to work fine.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will not be as simple as DeCSS, the schemes used in HD & BL discs allow the vendors to update encryption keys over the network, so if someone cracks a particular key it can be invalidated for future use.

It doesn't really matter. Once one person gets the key, they can decrypt the movie and distribute it with bittorrent. Invalidating keys will only anger legitimate consumers and reduce sales.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Surye]

This is exactly what H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (x264 for example) is suitable for.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[BalanceOfJudgement]

It doesn't really matter. Once one person gets the key, they can decrypt the movie and distribute it with bittorrent. Invalidating keys will only anger legitimate consumers and reduce sales.

As it should be. Best way to get people to hate DRM and finally understand what it is.

That or, just get mad at people doing the cracking, but even dense people can't stay THAT dense for very long.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[iamr00t]

Probably not, considering that next-gen disks already use AVC-family compression, from what i remember.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[benwaggoner]

You actually don't need HDCP to play back any released HD DVD or Blu-ray title. Since the Xbox 360 and PS3 will have lots of component analog units out there, studios have agreeed not to use the ICT (Image Constraint Token - forces downrez to 960x540 out of analog outputs) flag.

That said, people are going to be buying new computers for the most part to do this, since you'll need a new blue laser drive anyway, which is a good chunk of the price of a machine for the time being.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[cptgrudge]

I don't have a DVD burner even now. My backups are to hard disk, and if I need to go portable, I throw it on my 20GB iRiver. Why buy into it if I won't use it? All this HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/HDCP nonsense is just pointless for me.

Maybe I'll get one of these drives later, if both formats don't fail, and when they are releasing content for it. But at that point I'll just be ripping it anyway; all the winning format would be is a vector for content distribution, not a medium that I play from. And with ripping tools, HDCP-enabled hardware may not matter, since I won't be playing the content in the DRM-laden form, but on a HTPC/XBMC type device streamed from a storage server.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[The Warlock]

That just means that the key used has to be from a significantly high-profile device. Say, hypothetically, the PS3 AACP key was cracked. Do you really think Sony would let the consortium invalidate the PS3's key (and thus make it impossible to play Blu-Ray discs on their new baby)?

I don't either. Hell, they'd probably sue to prevent it.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[cayenne8]

"It will not be as simple as DeCSS, the schemes used in HD & BL discs allow the vendors to update encryption keys over the network, so if someone cracks a particular key it can be invalidated for future use."

So...are you saying that these players are all going to require internet connectivity so they can call home for key information, or they won't work???

That does not sounds like a good business model....

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Monsuco]

Is DVD Jon working hard on this?

Yes, he has even registered a domain to support DeAACS the name of the planned hack. What is needed to keep the movie industry at bay is for DeACSS to break ACSS and have old players blacklisted so much that consumers will be furious. I on the other hand will probably resort to bittorrent, which should quickly become avalible as AACS seems like it is going to just be the music industry taking a massive shit on consumers.

Re:DeCSS for Blue Ray/HD-DVD?

[Detritus]

That depends on how it's being licensed to PC software vendors. The Blu-Ray and HD-DVD people can insist that any software video players on PCs only support HDCP-compliant hardware, even if you don't need it for a video player running on a game console.

Consumers being held hostage

[dgallina]

Forget it. The article may as well suggest paying the movie industry a ransom directly. HDCP is a useless mandated solution in search of a problem.

Re:Consumers being held hostage

[Chabil Ha']

Really makes you wonder though, doesn't it? I mean when faced with piracy and the myriad ways to get a movie for free, how else can they get revenue with their current business model? I'm sure the discs aren't much more expensive to produce than a DVD, yet they cost at least twice as much to consumers. A player? Yikes! That's quite a cost to consumers for them to pay for R&D.

No, it is a racket to get the consumer to pay for all this equipment just so that they can further consolidate their power against the piracy movement. It would seem to me that with all this 'secure' passing of information that at some point you ought to be able to pull the decoded stream from somewhere just like has been accomplished with iTunes. Besides, I don't think the piracy is as pervasive as the movie industry would have us believe.

Let the cat and mouse game begin...

Re:Consumers being held hostage

[Grishnakh]

Really makes you wonder though, doesn't it? I mean when faced with piracy and the myriad ways to get a movie for free, how else can they get revenue with their current business model?

It's really simple: make them inexpensive and convenient. It's a total PITA to download a full movie off of BitTorrent and burn it to DVD, and not many people want to use DivX since that doesn't play in most DVD players and most people don't want to watch movies on their computer when they're enjoying an evening with their girlfriend.

The movie industry is making tons of money right now from DVDs, and sales of TV shows on DVDs has really taken off too. But... DVDs are already cracked, and it's simple to copy DVDs. Many people get movies from Netflix and burn copies of them. But the DVDs are still selling very well despite this.

It's simple: you simply can't stop all piracy; you just have to make DVDs in such a way that enough people buy them so it's profitable. The problem is these morons at the content industries that want to stop ALL piracy, no matter what. That simply isn't going to happen. They'd be better off saving the money wasted on all the content protection crap, selling the movies for less so that people don't even bother with piracy, and being happy with decent profits.

does not matter.

[Lumpy]

I am in the high end Home theatre market and most of these people that these are targetted at are not buying it. BluRay right now sucks because you can only get single layer discs so blu ray is n ot full res HD and is on ly slightly better than DVD. HDDVD is better and is actually ready for market, but their choice in movies on HDDVD right now sucks. Plus, even the really rich get put off having to re-buy all their movies.

Re:does not matter.

[chrisjwray]

"I am in the high end Home theatre market"

We call it future shop in Canada.

Re:does not matter.

[Wolvie MkM]

God I wish I had mod points for you Lol...

Re:does not matter.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

We call it future shop in Canada.

No you don't. I've been to Future Shop, and it was awful. Magnolia HiFi or Definitive Audio are much better.

Re:does not matter.

[springbox]

Plus, even the really rich get put off having to re-buy all their movies.

How is this even an argument against the high def formats? Because I see it every time someone is putting down Blu-Ray/HD-DVD. You could only buy newer movies in the new format or only rebuy the movies you actually really like. It's not like your new BD player will fly around your house zapping your DVD collection with a laser.

Re:does not matter.

[benwaggoner]

?

There are plenty of HD DVD titles, and a lot coming. Here's a distilled, updated release list

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=66 5702

And there are plenty titles in production not yet on the release schedule.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

BluRay right now sucks because you can only get single layer discs so blu ray is n ot full res HD and is on ly slightly better than DVD.

Bluray is only single-layer, but it is still in full res, and FAR better than DVD. Compare 9GB DVDs with 25GB Blurays.

HDDVD is better and is actually ready for market,

HD-DVD is only 5GBs larger than Bluray, at this point in time, and can't even output 1080p. How is that better?

Besides, this will be a non-issue as soon as the first dual-layer Bluray discs are pressed, and it completely leapfrogs HD-DVD.

Re:does not matter.

[the eric conspiracy]

1080i and 1080p provide exactly the same resolution as far as movies go.

http://www.hdbeat.com/2006/08/14/hometheatermag-th ere-is-no-differnce-between-1080i-and-1080p-mo/

HD-DVD has a huge edge over BluRay right now because it is ready for market and is half the cost. Whether that will be enough to win the format war I don't know. But it might be. It sure would be good to have an early winner.

Re:does not matter.

[scottnews]

It does not list if the source is High Def which is the most important thing.

Re:does not matter.

[benwaggoner]

AFAIK, they're all working from D5 HD 1920x1080 23.976 fps 4:2:2 10-bit masters.

Most studio movies are available with HD masters, although the quality of the masters can vary. I don' think anyone's tried to use an upsampled SD source for an HD movie yet. It'd be pretty pointless to master a HD title from SD source, considering the players can upsample a DVD quite nicely.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

1080i and 1080p provide exactly the same resolution as far as movies go.

Not at all.

That whole article is based on an obviously bullshit premise, that "there are essentially no 1080i TVs anymore".

The guy doesn't know the difference between deinterlacing, and inversing telecine. Yet he assumes all TVs can do perfect "deinterlacing" (inverse telecine).

HD-DVD has a huge edge over BluRay right now because it is ready for market

Name one thing that makes HD-DVD "ready for market" that Bluray is failing in.

and is half the cost.

The cheaper HD-DVD player is $500, while the cheaper Bluray players are $600. That's not half...

It sure would be good to have an early winner.

No, it would be better if they both had to fight it out, and dramatically lower their prices to try and get a one-up on the other for a while.

Re:does not matter.

[the eric conspiracy]

Obviously you didn't do your research. There are many many descriptions on the internet that go into the details of why 1080i and 1080p are essentially identical for movies. Here is another one:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=71 8139

Name one thing that makes HD-DVD "ready for market" that Bluray is failing in.

Picture quality. Here is one review. It is very typical.

http://www.projectorcentral.com/blu-ray_2.htm

The cheaper HD-DVD player is $500, /i

As a benchmark I went on Google's Froogle service and found the Samsung BluRay palyer (cheapest I have seen) low price is $850. On the same search site the Toshiba HD-DVD player was available for $420.

I am sure that better discounts can be found for both. But I'd bet the same ratio will apply.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

Obviously you didn't do your research. There are many many descriptions on the internet that go into the details of why 1080i and 1080p are essentially identical for movies.

I don't need to do any research. I understand the issues better than the people writing any of these articles you can link to.

You're quite simply never going to find a TV that does perfect pulldown reversal (IVTC), and that's all there is to it.

Thought experiment for you... Why would anybody buy a progressive-scan DVD player, if their HDTVs can do perfect IVTC anyhow?

Picture quality.

There is NOTHING which makes HD-DVD inherently better quality than BluRay. They are about the same capacity right now (with more room for improvements in Blu-ray), they support all the same video codecs, etc. The fact that the studios chose to do a half-assed job on their first Blu-ray titles doesn't say anything about either format.

As a benchmark I went on Google's Froogle service and found the Samsung BluRay palyer [sic] (cheapest I have seen) low price is $850. On the same search site the Toshiba HD-DVD player was available for $420.

Froogle isn't a very good source, but since you want to cite them:

$650 Blu-ray Player easily found via Froogle: http://www.dealznet.com/item.aspx?eid=1&pid=103660

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

I don' think anyone's tried to use an upsampled SD source for an HD movie yet

That's right, George Lucas is usually quite slow to pick up on new technology

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

Well, of course you might be right, but you're one person on Slashdot claiming that numerous articles on well-established home-theatre sites out there are wrong.

Here's another:

http://www.projectorcentral.com/retailing_HD-DVD_B lu-ray.htm

"Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have all of the progressively scanned 1080-lines per frame of information on the disc, and this information is not lost or compromised in 1080i transmission." etc...

I don't believe that diplays have to do inverse telecine, as there is no motion between the interlaced frames to compensate for. But please explain more.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

Well, of course you might be right, but you're one person on Slashdot claiming that numerous articles on well-established home-theatre sites out there are wrong.

Slashdot isn't a hive mind. Here, you can find and talk with the preeminent experts on any technical subject you could want to. You should really pay attention to usernames, and look into comment histories to see who knows what they are talking about.

"Both HD-DVD and Blu-ray have all of the progressively scanned 1080-lines per frame of information on the disc, and this information is not lost or compromised in 1080i transmission." etc...

All of which is true. The information is on the disc, and ALL of it is transfered in the interlaced signal. The problem is that it's very difficult to convert that interlaced signal back into progressive form, without any mistakes. Telecine can be very complex.

As I said before... Try to explain the existance of progressive-scan DVD players, since you believe I'm wrong.

I don't believe that diplays have to do inverse telecine, as there is no motion between the interlaced frames to compensate for. But please explain more.

3:2 pulldown means your HD-DVD / DVD player takes the 23.976fps material, and uses the flags set in the header to make it into interlaced 29.97fps material.

Duplicating every 4th frame to get 29.97fps out of 23.976 would look HORRIBLE, on interlaced or progressive displays. So what they do is duplicate a top field, then a bottom field to get 5 fields out of 4 frames, hence the 3:2 notation. This looks much smoother, but results in the artifact known as judder. If you want to find articles about 3:2 pulldown from people who know what they are talking about, you should search for "judder".

A quick google search turned up this:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/pulldown.htm

And the Wikipedia article isn't too bad either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#3:2_pulldown _.28technically.2C_2:3_pulldown.29

Of course, both of those are very simple examples, trying to explain the concept, rather than the whole reality of the situation, and all the screwed-up telecine patterns.

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

I know about 3:2 pulldown and that makes sense.
But ProjectorCentral and others seem to think the problems with that don't apply to HD-DVD or Blu-ray.
Why do they think this? These guys are not stupid.

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

A fuller answer.

You should really pay attention to usernames, and look into comment histories to see who knows what they are talking about.

Sir, there are hundreds of thousands of people on slashdot. Unless you're posting great comments on every article that I read, I'm not going to remember you. Also reviewing user histories is something I DO sometimes do, but most people post a lot of casual comments as well as their "knowledgeable" posts (if any) so it is very difficult to tell.

The problem is that it's very difficult to convert that interlaced signal back into progressive form, without any mistakes

I think this is the point where you differ with other sources. They seem to think that near-perfect IVTC is now pretty common. Yes, there might be occasional mistakes due to edit points (or whatever) but on the whole, they assume this is no longer a problem.

And why should it be? All they have to do is examine several fields and check if they are the same, to see where in the 3:2 sequence the frames are. With a digitally identical source for each 24fps frame (unlike say VHS or Laserdisc) the frames are obviously easy to detect as the same.

Or another way of putting this argument is: you say it's not perfect, but everyone else thinks it's close enough that it doesn't matter. Your standards appear to be too high :)

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

They seem to think that near-perfect IVTC is now pretty common.

"They" seem to think that IVTC is "deinterlacing". They don't even specifically mention IVTC, so it's impossible to guess why they're reaching the conclusions they are. I'd just have to guess from the repeated mistakes, that they simply don't know what they are talking about, and believe whatever the company press-release tells them.

All they have to do is examine several fields and check if they are the same, to see where in the 3:2 sequence the frames are.

Telecine has never been a strict pattern. You can't just assume the pattern is in strict cadence, or you'll be wrong all the time. Also, delaying video output by 10 or more frames to compare, and look for telecine, would be utterly unacceptable. More than 1/3rd of a second of delay, before the picture appears/responds/etc..

The only way to do it is to compare adjacent fields, and see if they look like they match. It's one of those problems that you need a full-fledged computer to do in realtime. HDTVs don't contain full-fledged computers, and even if they did, the latest PCs still struggle to do (*good*) IVTC on 1920x1080 content.

you say it's not perfect, but everyone else thinks it's close enough that it doesn't matter.

I say the Earth is round, too. I'm not going to put a lot of effort into arguing with the self-proclaimed "experts" who simply dismiss all evidence and claim it's flat.

Those guys haven't even demonstrated that they know the difference between interlaced video, and telecined film. So, baring any additional evidence, it's safe to assume they are, indeed, stupid (on this subject, at least).

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

Telecine has never been a strict pattern? Why not? What else would it do? It seems extravagantly unlikely that it would be constantly varying.

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

According to the discussion here:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benc hmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html

Implies the cadence is consistent for long periods and only occasionally interrupted, and then the IVTC (operating in film mode) might get out of synch for a while and combine the wrong frames.

"If the 3-2 sequence is interrupted, sometimes the cadence-reading players will stay in film mode for a handful of frames, and the result on screen is combing, which is very distracting."

So. IVTC as required to convert 1080i back to 1080p might have errors, and so you would be right that transmitting from player to TV in 1080i would damage the end result. But how common are these errors?

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

And the answer for HD-DVD would seem to be: hardly ever for film, because the source [from film] is 1080p24 in the digital domain, and the DVD player just has to mechanically convert that by 3:2 pulldown to 1080i60. There is no reason for it to break cadence in any continuous sequence. Unless of course the source material broke from correct 1080p24 sequence ...

So, summarising: source 1080p24 -> 1080i60 is done trivially by the player. Converting 1080i60 back to 1080p24 can be done well by the display, because the 3:2 cadence from the player will be consistent.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

If you are interested in the subject, as you seem to be, there are numerous references on the web that cover the subject in detail. There are many open-source ivtc filters you can examine if you're interested in code. And there are numerous downloadable video samples showing many different screwed-up telecine patterns.

I would recomend the mailing-lists for open source video playback and encoding software, like MPlayer, xine, vlc, transcode, avisynth, etc.

For your specific question, you need only search for "weird telecine pattern", "mixed hard soft telecine", "custom telecine" or something similar, and you'll find more examples than you could possibly want.

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

I did a search, and the most of the first page of results was talking about television. That's clearly a different case from HD-DVD where the source is 1080p24.

If you don't feel like answering the specific points I raised/asked about, perhaps you shouldn't post in a discussion about it. Most of your posts have been dismissive of everyone else as beneath you.

Personally, I'm happy that I can see why 1080p24->1080i60->1080p24 can be done very accurately for HD-DVD, so I believe those who say it doesn't matter.

Re:does not matter.

[the eric conspiracy]

I don't need to do any research. I understand the issues better than the people writing any of these articles you can link to.

So you think that you understand this better than anyone writing these articles on the internet? I'd say there is about 0% chance of that.

You're quite simply never going to find a TV that does perfect pulldown reversal (IVTC), and that's all there is to it.

I'd agree with that. In fact I don't think you will find any component that will do a perfect job. TV, player, whatever. Oh, BTW did
you know that at least one BluRay player model (the Samsung) is actually a 1080i design with a deinterlacer tacked on
to the end of video chain? WTF? How is that better than the same deinterlacer chip in the TV? I feel bad for consumers buying that player not knowing they are getting that kind of implementation.

The fact that the studios chose to do a half-assed job on their first Blu-ray titles doesn't say anything about either format.

That is academic. The consumer doesn't care why his video quality is not what he was was expecting. The point is that BluRay is not ready for market PLUS it is significantly more expensive.

Why would anybody buy a progressive-scan DVD player, if their HDTVs can do perfect IVTC anyhow?

That is an easy question. There are a lot of older HDTVs with no deinterlacers, or with analog inputs. These TVs will clearly benefit
from a deinterlacing DVD player. This is why these players were originally designed. However that has absoultely nothing to do with current 1080 format TVs. I do not believe that 1080p is a substantial advantage in movie playback for those TVs. Maybe theoretically there is an advantage, but not in practical applications.


$650 Blu-ray Player easily found via Froogle: http://www.dealznet.com/item.aspx?eid=1&pid=103660

The same site has a $378 HD-DVD player listed. Cherry picking numbers is not helping your argument.

Fact: BluRay is significantly more expensive and was rushed to market. The picture quality is not as good as HD-DVD and the price
is considerably higher. Double whammy. Nobody is going to buy into that situation. It is a threat to the survival of the format.

Personally I wish it weren't the case. I would like to see BluRay or even better a combined format with the BluRay disk capacity win because I think that ultimately the disk capacity is going to determine the video quality, something I am very interested in. It is annoying me greatly that this may not happen.

Sony has a huge amount of work to do here - improve the codec situation, get the price of dual layer BluRay down. Get the studios to build the high quality transfers. Get the price of the players down. Can they do it before HD-DVD gets established? I am sure HD-DVD is not going to sit still either. Based on Sony's execution history I think it is a big big question mark.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

If you don't feel like answering the specific points I raised/asked about, perhaps you shouldn't post in a discussion about it.

Well let's see... I've now posted about a dozen comments in this single thread. You've personally posted about half a dozen, all containing numerous questions within each.

It's one thing to answer questions and debate a topic, but it's quite another having to explain entire concepts to people who don't understand.

I could answer this last set of questions, but I don't believe that would be the end of it at all.

Personally, I'm happy that I can see why 1080p24->1080i60->1080p24 can be done very accurately for HD-DVD, so I believe those who say it doesn't matter.

Good for you. The Earth still isn't flat.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

So you think that you understand this better than anyone writing these articles on the internet? I'd say there is about 0% chance of that.

Better than any of the articles that have been linked to, so far.

Beware armchair experts who've never actually had to capture and re-encode video, let alone writing code to improve an actual IVTC filter.

The same site has a $378 HD-DVD player listed. Cherry picking numbers is not helping your argument.

Froogle turned up the Blu-ray player on that site, but not the HD-DVD player. Don't blame me.
That is a bit of a discount, yes but still puts BluRay players "significantly" under 2X the price of HD-DVDs, as you keep claiming. Who is cherry-picking their numbers here?

The consumer doesn't care why his video quality is not what he was was expecting.

I'm a consumer, and I care, so it seems you're wrong.

The point is that BluRay is not ready for market

Completely subjective judgement, not based on facts.

Fact: BluRay is significantly more expensive

False. The price difference is insignificant. I can use my own arbitrary definitions for subjective terms, as well.

and was rushed to market.

You're source for this is? You seem to have mistakenly omitted it.

The picture quality is not as good as HD-DVD

The picture quality of DVDs isn't as good as LaserDiscs or S-VHS...

Re:does not matter.

[AaronLawrence]

You're not debating, just trying to put me down.

Once again, it's not polite to post into a discussion saying "you're all ignorant and should just take my word for it". If you don't want to discuss, then don't post.

I DID do research and spent several hours reading, and all the evidence I found suggests you're off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the situation being discussed. Namely that it is relatively straightforward to regenerate 1080p24 when it was cleanly converted to 1080i60 by an HD-DVD player.

You could be the world's greatest expert on IVTC, but to me you're just another poster on slashdot, and I am trying to figure out if what you say is true or not. The "preponderance of the evidence" is that it is not. Sorry.

Re:does not matter.

[evilviper]

I really wasn't going to respond anymore, I'd rather let this thread die, but I don't want to come off as a complete asshole, so here's the finale...

Once again, it's not polite to post into a discussion saying "you're all ignorant and should just take my word for it".

I never said anything of the sort. The only time I even came close was when you were reapeatedly dismissing everything I had to say, not for technical reasons, but because you read some baseless article on some home theatre site which happened to disagree.

Neither you nor I know how they came to that conclusion, they may just believe some lying press release from Toshiba. There's no way to know, so there's no way for me to tell you why they've come to the wrong conclusion, which you keep insisting I should do. I can't. I can only say their wrong, for several of the reasons I've already outlined.

"X says so" doesn't lead to a good discussion.

and I am trying to figure out if what you say is true or not. The "preponderance of the evidence" is that it is not. Sorry.

And in your previous posts, the "preponderance of the evidence" told you that:

Telecine didn't need to be reversed.
The 3:2 pattern never varied.
etc. etc.

I've repeatedly answered questions, but my patience is at it's end. I don't say you should trust me, or anything like that. I've given you numerous places to start learning about inverse telecine, if you wish understand why it's not perfect.

How long do you think a physicists would answer questions from people claiming "there's no such thing as gravity" and "the world is flat" before they would recomend some reference books to the person?

I'm not dismissing what you say, I just want to point out that your opinion is born out of ignorance, not knowledge, and I mean that literally, not as an insult. i.e. you don't know why telecine is hard, so you don't understand why there are problems. As opposed to understanding how inverse telecine works, and believing that it will do the job perfectly.

I keep asking one thought-provoking (I hope) question, that you ignore... If HDTVs can do perfect IVTC, why do progressive-scan DVD players even exist? Standard DVD players output interlaced/telecined signals like HD-DVD players, so why is the TV's IVTC sufficent for HD-DVDs, but somehow insufficent for DVDs?

I'm now more than finished with this thread... If it makes you feel better, go ahead and have the last word, and say what a jerk I am.

The list is incomplete

[pembo13]

they forgot to mention having to put down your soul, as a deposit, just incase you understand.

/.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so we reduced their server to ashes. Anyone have a coral cache link?

Most important question

[zdzichu]

Will it play on freenix (for example, on Linux)?

Re:Most important question

[thepotoo]

No, obviously not, because Linux doesn't support DRM.

Hell, the utility to check and see if it works doesn't even run on Linux.

Re:Most important question

[CastrTroy]

Of course Linux supports DRM. And right in the kernel no less. :P

Re:Most important question

[ElleyKitten]

No, obviously not, because Linux doesn't support DRM.

It doesn't *support* DRM, but there are workarounds on Linux that make various DRMed things play.

Re:Most important question

[obious]

rriiiiight...

Re:Most important question

[Al Dimond]

Linux (the kernel) supports DRM exactly the same as the Windows NT kernel does: it doesn't do anything in particular to support or preclude it. Under Linux you could circumvent many types of DRM schemes with kernel modules that dump audio or video data to disk, in theory. Under Windows NT you could do the same. There are various other techniques you might use to either snoop out the unencrypted data or discover a program's keys with debuggers and disassemblers if you have kernel-level or even root-level access to your system. It's hard for software to hide, because computers have for so many years made programs examinable. Linux and current versions of Windows don't do much against these trends.

Vista is implementing a bunch of new techniques to make media-handling programs unexaminable, to disallow unsigned kernel modules, etc.

This is why it's surprising to hear that XP SP2 would have support for this stuff. Especially given the earlier announcement that 32-bit versions of Vista wouldn't support HD playback. I guess it's all up to the drives: if the drives allow XP software to authenticate and retrieve the content then XP will "support" HD playback.

Re:Most important question

[jZnat]

Wait, doesn't DRM stand for "direct renderring module"?

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[$RANDOMLUSER]

OK, I understand your problem. You used "responsible journalism" and "slashdot" in conjunction with each other.

Besides, this is "what's required", NOT "how to hack".

deCSS

[CyberVenom]

Time for DVD-Jon to jump in and save us from the evil DRM monsters.

Seriously, do they think the HDCP stuff will actually prevent people from using a HD-DVD drive and some fancy software to display the image at full resolution on the screen or even rip it directly to DivX? Even if Vista completely ensures through some black driver magic that applications are unable to access the higher-resolution data on video discs, what is to prevent a Linux or BSD based live CD that boots a HD-DVD player app? Wait, don't answer that.... Palladium.

Re:deCSS

[Dark_MadMax666]

Well even then you still can hook ripping device somewhere (in worst case it would be probably somwhere in the monitor - you can't put TPM chip for each pixel ) .It will just mean that average joe will not be able to rip his home movie collection -which only affect paying customers ,as pirates dont even need disks (they get it straight from P2P).

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[BalanceOfJudgement]

We will get Blu-ray and HD-DVD Windows support when the media and software companies decide we're finally allowed to watch the content we rightfully and legally purchased

There, fixed that for you.

Requirements

[Gr8Apes]

It needs to be able to display HD content over the component inputs on my HDTV monitor.
It needs to render on my PC. The one I have now.

If not, I won't be buying it.

Re:Requirements

[CYDVicious]

"It needs to render on my PC. The one I have now."

GrAmps, it may be time to upgrade your 486DX2/66Mhz with 8M of Ram, with that Voodoo 8mb video card...but you can get a good machine for cheap off craigslist, no it's not your neighbor Craig's grocery list... Wait, errrr...Great Apes...nm...

Re:Requirements

[Gr8Apes]

Funny.

AMD X2 3800+ with X1900XT. Not planning on buying a new one this year. Maybe next year I'll replace the CPU/MB with the quad AM2 CPU. Maybe.

HDPC?

[LoRdTAW]

Im confused. How will protecting the video from the graphics card to my monitor help anything? One blu-ray/hd-dvd is cracked HDCP will be moot.

Surely no-one's going to buy a bluray...

[niceone]

.. after it just killed that aussie TV guy?!

Re:Surely no-one's going to buy a bluray...

[syousef]

No you've got it confused. BluRay vs Sting Ray.

One is a dangerous thing that will rip out your heart with a poisonous barb given half a chance, and the other is a harmless-if-not-provoked sea creature.

Aside from the hardware...

[emil10001]

Why do you need Windows XP or Vista to play these discs, specifically the HD-DVD? The Toshiba players run Linux, therefore would already have all of the software necessary to play these discs, so why not sell it? It would be nice if they supported Linux from the start, especially since the software and drivers clearly exist and there is no extra work involved. It seems that at the very least, it would likely help to discourage the DRM cracking. It could also give HD a competitive edge on BD.

Re:Aside from the hardware...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Toshiba players may RUN Linux, but look at the hardware inside the case. They have 4 Analog Devices Sharcs for decoding the audio, they have a big Broadcom chip for decoding the video, and they have a big FPGA in there presumably for the AACS. So, if you put all of that on a motherboard, then you might be able to have the Linux software DO something for you, otherwise, no dice.

Cripes.

[Rob T Firefly]

What's powering the damned players? Is this all OS overhead and panicky DRM safeguards, or are they actually churning out set-top boxes with dual cores, flux capacitors, and proton packs?

Re:Cripes.

[hockeynut66]

DRM accounts for probably about 5-10% tops. VC1 and especially h.264 high profile at 20+mbps are brutal on today's processors. Add to that, you're running java or jscript, drawing 1080p graphics on top of the movie, decoding audio, mixing, re-encoding audio, decoding secondary video/audio...and you can see why a dual core is needed without speicialized hardware decoders. consumer players have specialized hardware codecs and thus don't need as much processing power.

Re:Cripes.

[viking099]

Don't forget that desktop computers couldn't handle DVD video when DVD drives were coming out. Just like with old-school 3d rendering for video games (Hello $200 Canopus Voodoo1 daughterboard!) you needed a daughterboard to do the processing.

When you're dedicating a piece of hardware to do something, you don't NEED as much general processing power. In a home theatre component you've got a bunch of specialized tools working together in the same way, all the time, each perfectly syncronised with each other. In a desktop computer, you've got a pretty much random assortment of chips, cards, and software that have to be forced to work together by a central piece of software. It's a lot more load-intensive.

You're ALWAYS going to see better performance in a job-specific device over a general-use device. It's why you can't really run a Sony PS2 emulator on anything but the best computers: because they're not optomised for it, whereas the PS2 has been around for YEARS, playing PS2 games like they're no big deal.

In 7 years, nobody is going to think twice about all this stuff. It'll be pretty much bundled in with all but the cheapest computer systems, and all this whinging will be aimed at the next cutting edge tech that no one can run at the time.

Re:Cripes.

[aesiamun]

I don't know. A 4Ghz Pentium-4 seems like an awful lot of processing power for a DVD player :)

Re:Cripes.

[aztektum]

if you tow it behind your car and reach 88MPH it will time warp you back to the days of BETAMAX

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[mooglez]

We will get Blu-ray and HD-DVD Windows support when the media and software companies decide we're finally allowed to watch the content we rightfully and legally purchased

There, fixed that for you.

Done. WinDVD8 was released over a week ago, and allows you to play Blu-Ray movies on your WinXP equipped with a Blu-Ray drive.

Everybody knows he hates HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

[Anonymous Coward]

and provide a complete checklist of what you need to play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies in HD resolutions on your home PC.

Here is my list why both formats will not rule the home PC too soon.

1) There is no need for single-file-divx movies with more than 4G in size.

2) Every Discography I downloaded (except Miles Davis) fits onto DVD or even CD.

3) At the current rate hdd's will out-cheap discs very soon. Even Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

4) DRM is not cool. As a matter of fact even Joe Average will learn to hate it very soon. And there is the regulation in the EU that forces companies to label DRM'd media.

5) How soon will people see Blu-Ray-R or HD-DVD-R? Never?

Re:Everybody knows he hates HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

[Overzeetop]

Joe Average doesn't give a shit about DRM, and DVDs prove it. I'd bet a dollar that 98% of Americans* couldn't figure out how to copy a DVD, and most if not all of those don't care. DRM only matters to the file sharers and the audio/video/technophiles** who want their systems to perform *just the way they like it*. Nobody else cares.

*I know, it's no fair choosing stupid Americans, but I'm trying to prove my point.
** I'm part of that group
      I also support my local Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) as much as I can, and actively talk down that numbnut Sen George Allen (R-VA, GWB lapdog) whenever I get a chance.

Re:Everybody knows he hates HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

[nxtw]

1) There is no need for single-file-divx movies with more than 4G in size.

Sure there is, if you like HD.

3) At the current rate hdd's will out-cheap discs very soon. Even Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

So you're saying hard drives will cost 1/5 as much very soon?

DVD+-R is $0.06/gig or less (Ritek discs). Hard drives seem to bottom out around $0.29/gig right now.

Hard drives are subject to failure at any time. Optical media decays, but when stored properly should actually last a predictable amount of time.

You can have as many optical discs as you want and easily insert them into a drive. Hard drives must be connected to a computer. You'd have to buy enclosures for each drive or plug in the drive every time you want to use it, and the computer you're trying to use must have the requisite connection.

BD-R disks are $0.51/gig right now. HD-DVD-R is $0.54/gig. If anything, it'll be the new HD discs becoming cheaper per gigabyte than hard drives first.

Re:Everybody knows he hates HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

[Anonymous Coward]

^^ the only sensible reply in this article. No one cares if it doesn't work in OMG1337 LUNIX!11 etc. If new movies come out on it, people will buy it.

Re:Everybody knows he hates HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

[Anonymous Coward]

Harddrives are more reliable... especially in a raid... optical discs die... and when they die they cost probably more money than a harddrive...

Re:Everybody knows he hates HD-DVD and Blu-Ray...

[dangitman]

I told my boss about Macrovision the other day. I described the effect (of the screen "pulsating" lighter and darker. And he said "Holy shit, that happens on my TV at home!" All this time, he had been affected by Macrovision, but did not realize. I didn't get around to asking him what he thought the cause of the poor picture was. He just put up with it.

Many users assume that their stuff doesn't work properly, I guess. Hard to imagine many people care about HD, when they are perfectly happy to watch a screen that irritatingly changes in brightness.

Re:"Is my computer BD/HD ready?" command-line tool

[nine-times]

dammit. apparently my computer isn't BD/HD ready.

That settles it...

[MrPerfekt]

I tend to be an early adopter and want, no.. need, to have the latest and greatest especially when it comes to TV/Movies. And now, I have absolutely no motivation to get what should be the new peak of HD entertainment. Why?

Well, you're forcing me to use Windows. You're forcing me to get all new hardware, not just the new drive mind you, but the whole shebang. New monitor, new video card, new OS in addition to the new drive. That is lunacy, pure and simple.

Let's not forget the obscene processor requirements for _watching a flat image_. This isn't polygons being generated on the fly. Why do I need a dual-core processor to decode some freaking movie frames? Ridiculous.

BOTH HD-DVD and BluRay have failed on the fronts of being user-friendly and not overly draconian. I'll watch movies on HBO-HD thanks. You can keep your locked down, power hungry format.

Re:That settles it...

[hockeynut66]

see my post above on why hddvd/bd require so much processing power. Watch a movie like bourne supremacy or dukes of hazzard (they knew their movie sucked, so the interactive extras are extra funny, like a countdown to when jessica next shows, and suggestions on how to spend that time). To answer your point, hbo-hd is usually lower bitrate, lower resolution and possibly transcoded. it looks & sounds like ass compared to hddvd on my setup.

if you're really an early adopter and care about HD, then the 400-500 you spend on the toshiba hddvd player should be chump change. runs linux to satisfy your anti-windows sentiment.

Re:That settles it...

[dargon]

> Well, you're forcing me to use Windows. You're forcing me to get all new hardware,
> not just the new drive mind you, but the whole shebang. New monitor, new video card,
> new OS in addition to the new drive. That is lunacy, pure and simple.

Personally, my main concern would be the $1000 (approx) that you need to put out for the damn drive, before you even take the other upgrades into consideration.

Re:That settles it...

[swillden]

Personally, my main concern would be the $1000 (approx) that you need to put out for the damn drive

Yeah, but that'll drop as volume ramps up and the drives become commonpla... Ummmm, never mind. Yeah the drive's the first major hurdle.

Re:That settles it...

[nxtw]

Let's not forget the obscene processor requirements for _watching a flat image_. This isn't polygons being generated on the fly. Why do I need a dual-core processor to decode some freaking movie frames? Ridiculous.

Becuase they use codecs that do a very good job of maintaing video quality at the same bitrates compared to previous codecs, but at the expense of added CPU power required to decode the video.

No need to wait

[paranode]

VHS is already available. You don't even have to mess with menus. ;)

Unless you wanted something more modern, in which case you'll probably be waiting... forever. :\

Re:No need to wait

[interiot]

Well, there are LOTS of ways to disable or ignore the UOPs in DVDs, so that's semi-modern. And presumably we'll have a number of easy ways to do that in BluRay/HD-DVD in a couple years.

I have an idea.

[rice_burners_suck]

Let's make it so that in Windows XP, the video is read off the disc, unencrypted, saved to the hard drive in full resolution, and then played through an unprotected videopath. Then, the RIAA, MPAA, and Microsoft can sue Microsoft for making illegal copies of movies. It doesn't matter that Microsoft will be both a plaintiff and a defendant in this case. When a company is so big, it's not uncommon for one department to do something without another department's knowledge, such as sue itself. Hmmm... if their legal department worked the same way as their software, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[787style]

No, you still have it wrong.

It's:

We will get Blu-ray and HD-DVD Windows support when the media and software companies decide we're finally allowed to watch the content we rightfully and legally licensed to view.

You don't own the content, you never did. You always purchased the right to view it under whatever restrictions they decided to impose. If you don't agree with those restrictions, don't buy it.

Jon says he will

[in2mind]

Does anyone know if the DRM/encryption in BD/HD has been cracked yet? Is DVD Jon working hard on this

AFAIK Not yet. But DVD Jon has said in his blog that he will. check his site

http://nanocrew.net/2006/01/08/deaacscom/

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060116-5989 .html

Re:Jon says he will

[StikyPad]

Considering that he denies even writing the decryption part of DeCSS, that's not saying much.

Re:Jon says he will

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that in the years since then, he's been hard at work reverse-engineering as much as he can -- he's broken several aspects of the iTunes DRM, several times each -- you're not saying much.

Re:Jon says he will

[91degrees]

By "DVD Jon", people are of course referring to the cracking organisation that uses Jon as the public face.

Single core?

[tepples]

I ran it on this machine and it tells me a P4 3.0GHz is not sufficient...

How many Pentium 4 3.0 GHz processors do you have in your machine? Maybe if you had two, each one could process one side of the screen.

Why?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

So, why the hell should I shell out roughly $500 just I can watch the same hollywood dreck in higher resolution?

Re:Why?

[really?]

Because this time it goes to 11???

The only people who will be watching HD movies

[Prototerm]

Will be the guys working in the rendering labs in Industrial Light and Magic, since they'll be the only ones with access to the required hardware. This is gonna require more oomph than Vista, and boy is that saying something!

Jeez, I gave up my Commodore 64 for this?

Re:The only people who will be watching HD movies

[dave562]

Will be the guys working in the rendering labs in Industrial Light and Magic, since they'll be the only ones with access to the required hardware. This is gonna require more oomph than Vista, and boy is that saying something!

Yup, it's called Avid. All of the editing and post production folks are already working in HD. The big battle is bringing that HD content to the consumer in a package that fits on a single disc.

Personally, when I read about all of this nonsense, I'm glad that I really don't give a flying fuck about consuming media anymore. I've pulled off the blinders and realized how worthless and unoriginal all of the content really is. I feel sorry for you guys who are fretting over all of this stuff. Ohhhh noes, no movies for you?!?! Booo hooo hooo.

And in a more serious tone, come on... you know this crap is going to be cracked in short order. You'll be able to fire up your Linux box, slap in the copied disc into your drive and watch away. Maybe I'm a little bit jaded from living in southern California and having clients in the post production business, but I've NEVER had any problem getting my hands on any sort of movie that I wanted to watch. Most of the stuff I don't even have to go to Hollywood for it. Every DVD that I've wanted to have "permanently" says Maxell on it. =) Most of the time, it came to me via the local video store and my buddy's PC. I don't see that changing simply because a new format was invented.

Re:The only people who will be watching HD movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, I gave up my Commodore 64 for this?

Didn't you get hit by a train?

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I didn't license anything. I bought a DVD, which I now own. I can do whatever I want, so long as I don't break copyright law by redistributing copies or something. Even public performance restrictions are reasonable, but inviting 10 people over to see a movie is fine.

Why would you even want it?

[CyberLord Seven]

I'll probably build a computer to meet these specs within the next five years, but until my current computers die or fail to perform some necessary function these specs will have to wait.

BTW, are you sure you want to buy BluRay or HDDVDs?

I saw 2001: A Space Oddysey in high definition on HD Movies last July. It looked beautiful. I have the DVD and I watched it after the premiere just to compare the images. The hi-def version was sharper and the colors were brighter. In fact, if you have the DVD and a hi-def television watch the segment where Dr. Heywood Floyd is traveling to the moon base. A stewardess receives a tray of food. Pay attention as she pulls the straws from the tray with her left hand. On the inside of her left forearm there is a brown spot that is clearly visible on the hi-def version. On the DVD you have to know it's there to see it.

It's the same for a white speck on Dr. Floyd's jacket just above his left collar bone when he is addressing the group at the moon base. It's clearly visible in hi-def, but again, you have to know it's there to see it on the DVD.

So what does all this mean for someone like me?

As good as hi-def is, it's not good enough for me to buy 2001 again.

I bought it on DVD even though I already own it on Betamax tape because the DVD not only looked sharper, it also allowed me to start the movie quickly and skip to any section of the film I liked.

I'm curious as to why you would even want hi-def disks since they have only the improved image and nothing else.

NOTE TO DUMB AS A FUCKIN' ROCK "CONTENT OWNERS"! Why is it that any DVD I bought a few years ago allows me to start the movie immediately, or go to any section I want, when any movie I've PURCHASED WITH MY FUCKIN' MOVIE, YOU DIPSHIT, puts me through an FBI screen and ungodly advertisements. IF YOU IGNORANT FUCKS WOULD GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES AND REMOVE THIS SHIT FROM BLURAY AND HDDVD I MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO BUY THIS SHIT, BUT SINCE YOU WON'T, FUCK OFF!

Yes, I'm more than a little bit pissed off by this.

Re:Why would you even want it?

[Overzeetop]

Okay, I'm with the rest of the drooling HT crowd over higher definition sources, especially for larger screens. I also understand that the images will be sharper. But to have to decribe the difference as:

On the inside of her left forearm there is a brown spot that is clearly visible on the hi-def version. On the DVD you have to know it's there to see it.

Just makes me start to wonder how few applications there are where HD really matters. (Oh, I do have an aversion to watching football in SD, even on a small 51" screen...so there are places where it definitely does matter).

Re:Why would you even want it?

[CyberLord Seven]

The brown spot and the white speck are mentioned just so people can have an apples to apples comparison point.

But, yeah, like you I wonder WHY I would want to have to repurchase my collection of movies for something that has a GREAT image (if you have a television that supports it) and little else.

To be honest, I don't want DVD Jon to waste his time with this new format. I think in a few years these devices will be like Quadrophonic stereos and amplifiers from the 1970s.

Re:Why would you even want it?

[Vinnie_333]

On the inside of her left forearm there is a brown spot that is clearly visible on the hi-def version.

Great, but I'd prefer not to see the stewardess's brown spot.

Re:Why would you even want it?

[cayenne8]

"Just makes me start to wonder how few applications there are where HD really matters."

Porn.

And not in a positive way....you'll now be able to see all the horrible flaws in even the great looking ones.

On a side note, way back when Adult-dex coincided with Comdex...I went, and it was interesting, but, man I was amazed at how bad the stretch marks on the tits of some of the porn ladies were...not to mention how you could see pock marked faces through all the tons of makeup some had on....no, HD will not be friendly to them.

Not to mention HD ass pimples....brrrr...don't wanna see those in video perfection....

Re:Why would you even want it?

[CyberLord Seven]

Porn. Oh, yeah, Baby! The great thing about DVDs was that it enabled the user to quickly jump to the scene in Disclosure where Jean Tripplehorn in nude rather than scan through a tape for that one scene.

What does either of the new hi-def formats offer that is comparable to that?

Will any of the porn studios want this if their *stars* look worse, as you point out? My guess is only if the "content protection" is NOT broken.

Re:Why would you even want it?

[Overzeetop]

I hadn't thought of this until now, but what if the studios decided that the DRM was "good enough" this time around, and decided to stop releasing and repressing films onto DVD in favor of one or both of the HD formats? What if the phase out of the "old" media went faster, and was coordinated? If HD player prices dropped into the sub $100 range, we could possibly see the death of DVD in a couple of years. I don't think it would happen, but if they really wanted to put your balls in a DRM vice, that'd be the way to do it.

Re:Why would you even want it?

[CyberLord Seven]

I think that's what they are hoping for. Look at the multitude of movies that are now available on DVD. You can now get nonsense collections like the pack of 50 Drive-In movies and 50 Monster movies I picked up from Best Buy a couple of weeks ago. These collections had such "hits" as Wasp Woman, Attack of the Bee Girls, and Zombie Black Exorcist! That last title is NOT a joke, though the movie is.

I think the studios see the end of DVD in sight and are now trying to pump out as much content as they can before the opportunity dies. I don't think it's a coincidence that Lucas has released the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD twice now. I think he sees this as an opportunity to get some sales in a dying, lesser quality format before he can pimp his audience again with a higer definition product with stronger DRM.

He knows DVDs have been cracked, but still needs to generate sales in this lower quality format.

This seems somewhat ... excessive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I've got a 3500+, a gig of RAM, and a Radeon 98x GPU.

In other words, I can play HL2 and Doom3 at decent detail levels. And my machine apparently isn't good enough to watch a movie.

Oh dear - looks like I don't get to spend my money on the studios' locked-down DRM-heavy overpriced shit. Such a tragedy...

What about Linux?

[Eravnrekaree]

The really important question they should be asking, will they play under Linux?

And, when will HD-DVD-R drives be avialable, so we can make our own data disks?

Re:What about Linux?

[smoker2]

And, when will HD-DVD-R drives be avialable, so we can make our own data disks?

Don't know about HD but BD writers are available here.

Single layer only though ...but 25 GB is enough for now I guess. (Not that I'll be investing at those prices !)

Re:What about Linux?

[MarkCollette]

HD-DVD-R is a standard for using regular old style red laser DVD-R disks, but with HD resolution content stored in the HD-DVD file format.

It's analogous to putting a short DVD clip on a CD-R disk.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[JFMulder]

Actually, you paid for the right to watch the movie with the restrictions put upon the media by the manufacturer. If you can't agree to those terms, don't buy it. Meanwhile, I'll watch HD-DVDs on my HD TV set with HDCP and I couldn't care less about all this noise generated by Slashdot users.

Not possible?

[skrolle2]

FTA:

When your system lacks HDCP compatibility, it will not be possible to play the content in full HD resolution.

No, the DRM technologies are required for you to be ALLOWED to play back the content you purchased in full HD resolution. It's not like the DRM is somehow technically necessary for the playback of HD video, although the article sure makes it sound like it.

Re:HDCP?

[Anonymous Coward]

One [sic, once] blu-ray/hd-dvd is cracked HDCP will be moot.

HDCP is already moot. Of course, even though HDCP doesn't work, they still charge license fees for it, which is the whole reason it exists in the first place.

personal experience

[mrcubehead]

I have a sony HDV camera and I tried encoding an HD clip using HD-DVD-like specs (using x264 and educated guesses from doom9, since the spec isn't public), and my P4 3Ghz (nearly 4 yrs old now) could not play it back without severe stuttering. And this was using CoreAVC, the fastest software decoder (forget even trying to use ffmpeg).

What about linux

[moria]

Do we have a chance that the major vendors are linux-friendly this time? considering more and more of their own products are now based on Linux, such as Sony's Mylo.

If I was in charge of Microsoft

[Nonillion]

You know, with Microsoft's vast fortune; you think they would be in a position to dictate terms to the MPAA / RIAA, just like they do with computer and hardware manufactures.

MPAA/RIAA: You will provide DRM (digital restrictions management) in your OS and ANY hardware we see fit. People are ripping us off left and right! Piracy is so rampant, we are going broke paying off politicians and lawyers to ram DRM down everyones throat.

MICROSOFT: (with me in charge) Fuck you guys, our customers don't want this DRM shit. It crates enormous overhead and will require everyone to buy all new hardware. Our customers are getting tired of this draconian and Stalinist attitude of yours. You are going to be MY bitch, and do EXACTLY what I tell you to do.

MPAA/RIAA: How dare you speak to us that way we'll sue!

MICROSOFT: (with me in charge) Bring it on bitch! We have been sued by governments, you'll pose no challenge at all.

Re:If I was in charge of Microsoft

[vertinox]

You know, with Microsoft's vast fortune; you think they would be in a position to dictate terms to the MPAA / RIAA, just like they do with computer and hardware manufactures.

Actually they are, but the MPAA/RIAA hasn't caught on.

The only reason Microsoft fixed the hole was because it allowed people to take their Windows Media files to other formats which may or not be compatible with non-Windows operating systems. Yeah... OS X has Windows Media Players... well sort of... but they are broke and usesless for a reason... mostly Microsoft's reasons.

That is why they fixed it... Not because some Hollywood mogul told them to.

My Checklist

[segedunum]

To enable HD resolution playback of an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray videodisc your monitor, graphics card and the driver you use have to be compatibe with the HDCP standard.

Bugger. That's me out in the first round. I'm not going to replace my good equipment, and especially my fantastic 19" CRT monitor, just to get 'high resolution' videos to play.

Graphics cards are even worse, there is only a handfull of cards out there that sport HDCP support.

Yes, and even those you buy yourself might have HDCP, but they won't have it switched on. However, many OEMs 'in the know' like HP, do. Sounds like lock-in to me.

The purchase of a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player will therefore have no added value to a normal DVD player without HDCP.

Fantastic. I'm sorry, why do I need to monkey about getting high definition content on my PC again, and why would I want to pay more money for HD discs over DVD when there's no benefit whatsoever? That sounds like a lovely way to get a new format to take off. Not.

I downloaded that checker and bugger, I can't play high definition disks. I'm...really...devastated.

Re:My Checklist

[jonwil]

I thought that disks without the image constraint settings enabled would output the highest quality without requiring HDCP on the output.

HDPC is to a scam to sell new monitors/video cards

[Anonymous Coward]

HDPC is to a scam to sell new monitors/video cards - just like Microshaft intends to leverage BluRay/HD-DVD compatibility to sell Vista. Stunningly, WinXP will never get the patches needed to play BluRay/HD-DVD discs - only the DRM crippled Vista will be BluRay/HD-DVD compatible. Now, the voiced excuse for HDCP is to prevent customers from running the video-out cable to a recorder of some sort and making a copy.
 
Of course, HDCP will have absolutely no effect on the commercial-scale pirates in Asia and eastern Europe - it just makes using BluRay and HD-DVD a massive and expensive pain in the ass for the customer. If you are a masochist, BluRay and HD-DVD are for you. I have no intention of ever buying a HD-Television, or BluRay, or HD-DVD - these items offer no advantage over normal television and DVDs, and suffer from a wide range of perversely restrictive disadvantages that I would rather live without.

Alternative checklist

[Gathers]

Here's my alternative checklist:
1. Bittorrent client
2. Video player

(3. profit?)

Seriously though, I wonder when the media industry will figure out that they can fight piracy by making paying for something easier, faster and more convenient then obtaining a pirated copy. Or atleast close to as easy, fast and convenient..

Now back to figuring out what to call my 47:th Ancient Domains Of Mystery character...

--
http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.ht ml

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[ZachPruckowski]

You don't own the content, you never did. You always purchased the right to view it under whatever restrictions they decided to impose. If you don't agree with those restrictions, don't buy it.

I never signed a license. Nor even saw one. And if that's true, I can get DVDs replaced for $3 or so. Afterall, I already own the license (which costs $15-20), I just need the little disc the content comes on.

$2000 laptop that isn't 6 months old = no go

[GweeDo]

Here are my results after running the application. It appears my dual core 1.83ghz Core Duo CPU needs to be upgraded already. On top of that, my Geforce Go 7800 appears to be lacking. This just goes to show how out of touch with reality the studio's are for trying to push this crap on people.

Re: $2000 laptop that isn't 6 months old = no go

[MarkCollette]

Who says they want you playing your disks on your computer anyway. They're probably more interested in selling you a standalone BlueRay or HD-DVD drive to hookup to your TV. Not only for the hardware sales, but most likely the license fees paid to the consorteums are probably higher for hardware players than software players.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Actually, you paid for the right to watch the movie with the restrictions put upon the media by the manufacturer.

I don't usually use this word, but BULLSHIT. I paid for the right to watch the movie - that's all. I did NOT pay to allow the producer to tell me how I could watch it (listen to it, read it, whatever). Ever heard of Fair Use? It means that once I've legally purchased it, it's mine to do with what I want, within the bounds of copyright law.

It's apologists like you that let these companies get away with wholesale cultural theft.

Strong words but I am so sick and tired of seeing people be perfectly fine with what these big media conglomerates are doing to copyright, fair use, and consumer rights. YOU may be perfectly willing to give up those rights, but I am not.

Sombody mod this guy funny

[Overzeetop]

It would be nice if they supported Linux from the start, especially since the software and drivers clearly exist and there is no extra work involved. It seems that at the very least, it would likely help to discourage the DRM cracking.

This has got to be the funniest thing on /. for quite some time. Release the drivers to the largest group of MPAA-haters in the universe? Do you think for a minute that any self respecting Linux nut is going to put a closed-source, DRM encumbered driver on his or her system for any purpose other than to find a crack for the encryption? Why don't we all just scratch a check for $10,000 to our local poitician and ask him to so "something positive" with the money.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[BalanceOfJudgement]

You always purchased the right to view it under whatever restrictions they decided to impose.

Bullshit. Do you even know what copyright means? The ONLY right conferred to the copyright holder is the right to distrubute and make copies of the work.

It does NOT give them the right to tell me how to watch it. They don't get to put ANY restrictions on how I watch it - I could watch it naked in a bath of baked beans standing on my head and they can't say a damn thing about it, much less how much computer has to behave when the movie is playing.

What you really need is simple

[WillAffleckUW]

Lots of money - the movie titles sell for outrageous prices.

However, since they don't work with anything I have, it really doesn't matter.

On a practical level, if you just wait three years, to 2009, HDTV will be the TV standard and retail for $300 or less, HD players will cost only $200 or less, and you can be sure whichever format you buy them in is the winning format, instead of shelling out a few thousand dollars today.

Do you really need to see the sequel to Underworld in HDTV that much? I know Kate Beckinsale is hot, but she's not that hot.

Now, if you just wait one year, you'll be able to watch the pirated version on a PC that sells then.

Re:What you really need is simple

[BalanceOfJudgement]

I know Kate Beckinsale is hot, but she's not that hot.

Especially in HD. I mean come on, they're so hot partly because you can't see all the small blemishes. Who wants HD to spoil every nerd's fantasies?

Re:What you really need is simple

[WillAffleckUW]

you think the blemishes are bad, wait until you see Brad Pitt.

man ...

Er...

[Tim Browse]

So, point number 1:

Important to know is that all current first generation HD-DVD and Blu-Ray drives are suitable to play video discs, so no problems there.

Is it just me, or is that not quite true?

Re:Er...

[nutshell42]

No, it's not you, it's cnet having a sensationalist headline, and /. editors never read more than the headline of an article, of course

The cnet article has this to say about movie playback:

Vincent Bautista, Sony's product manager for data storage, told CNET.com.au that due to copy protection issues and lagging software development, the drive will only play user-recorded high-definition content from a digital camcorder, and not commercial movies released under the BD format.

Bautista says that one of two reasons for this is the fact that commercial content is encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which can only be decrypted using a HDCP-compliant graphics card that offers DVI or HDMI connections. Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that support HDCP, this isn't yet possible.

The second reason, according to Bautista, is that BD playback software that can decrypt HDCP isn't "released as a saleable item yet". Today, the only HDCP-supporting BD playback application is the OEM version of Intervideo WinDVD BD that's bundled with Sony's VAIO VGN-AR18GP notebook. The AR18GP also offers an HDCP-compliant HDMI connector, which makes it capable of playing commercial movies without issue.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[interiot]

Actually, copyright/patents/etc allow an author to include a license along with the work, and if a judge will uphold a license with a clause prohibiting inverted bean baths, then it's actually entirely possible for them to do so. eg. GPLv3 includes the no-DRM restriction, that's ostensibly legal... GPL v3 added the no military use restriction too...

Has anyone stopped to look at the requirements?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Here's my semi-objective analysis, based on that screenshot:

Processor: Maybe. They're looking at a 1 ghz machine. But dual-core processor? Mine plays HD fine, and it's only a 2.4 ghz amd64. In 32-bit and 64-bit mode. Think about it -- the only reason they're recommending dual-core is so that they can guarantee they have one mostly to themselves, so the other can run your spyware.

Graphics card: 256 megs seems a bit much. I mean, I have that, but let's think here -- what exactly would it use video RAM for? It's just pumping raw video to the screen. Unless there's a hardware decoder (thus invalidating the high CPU requirement), the most I imagine you would want or need here is a cheap PCI Express card -- a year ago, I got one for about $50, they should be even cheaper now.

OS: I play all my media on Linux. So yeah, won't work here, but that's a DRM issue more than anything else.

Driver: Why is this even an issue? My driver updates automatically. Why has nVidia still not done this on Windows? At least notifications? Please?

Blu-Ray Drive: Ok, nice that the software checks for it, but no. You should be able to play high def content off of other media. Elephant's Dream was 10 minutes long and 815 megs, about a tenth of a DVD, so it seems like if you cut the commentary and crap, you can fit some movies (an hour and 40 minutes worth) on existing dual-layer DVDs.

Software player: What player, exactly, are they looking for? Shouldn't Windows Media be able to handle it? MS already has its own high def standard... But then, the software player should be cheap or free. Remember, you're competing with VLC, mplayer, xine, quicktime, Windows Media... Granted, CyberLink makes PowerDVD (I think) which was pretty decent on Windows, but it's been so long since I've bothered that I don't really know.

HDCP: That's your own damned fault. My monitor is big enough and sharp enough, I have DVI, which is easily fast enough, and my video card is probably several times faster than what's needed. But nevertheless -- "upgrade recommended?" You mean not required? Oh right, because you won't start actually requiring it until we've all bought enough hardware and media that you can force the issue. Which is hopefully never, but I'm not taking the chance. No deal.

Only good news? SP2. Yeah, thanks for not being total asshats and making me pay $200 for an OS upgrade just to watch movies, on top of all the hardware shit you'd be making me buy.

Re:Has anyone stopped to look at the requirements?

[EXrider]

Only good news? SP2. Yeah, thanks for not being total asshats and making me pay $200 for an OS upgrade just to watch movies, on top of all the hardware shit you'd be making me buy.

Actually, if it's an OEM Windows license, and you replace all that hardware... You will be paying $200 for an OS upgrade =P ...if it's retail, then your fine of course.

1080P HD content already on DVD

[Gandoron]

This whole BR and HDdvd stuff is just dumb. Why do I want all new hardware to play some new bloated medium? You can already get 1080P content on DVD's..you just can't play it on a DVD player. Too bad the labels will never put HD on DVDs. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musi candvideo/hdvideo/coralreef.aspx

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The license that includes the 'no military use' provision isn't GPLv3, it's a modified version of GPL (v2 I assume) used only by GPU.

they think the lure of HD is enough

[TheAxeMaster]

And it isn't. Not when I have read studies that showed that most people, from normal viewing distances, couldn't tell the difference between DVD and HD content. Not when an HTPC or a proper TV scaler can upscale DVD content so that it looks just as good. And not when you have to buy so much new hardware for it to even work as advertised.
 
Sure there will be people that will buy it. I suspect most of them will have a need to archive things, not to watch movies. I personally won't, I don't even need the space a CD provides to archive things. I would even believe that the archive need will be small when you can get hard drives for less than a dollar a gig.
 
Would I like 720p movies? (the max my current TV can support) Sure I would. Is it worth it? Not even close. DVDs will be around long enough to ensure HDCP is cracked and the price comes down, then I (and I suspect most) will consider using it. HDCP has already been proven to have holes in it, it is just a matter of time before someone pokes their finger through.

Re:they think the lure of HD is enough

[jandrese]

I have to admit that I was considering upgrading my TV to a HD set and possibly start looking at Bluray/HD DVD players until I went into Best Buy and walked back to the HD lounge they had set up. The demo disc they were playing was trying to show off Bluray by playing a movie with a line down the middle, on one side of the line the movie was supposedly playing in SD, on the other side it was in HD. Watching the movie for a bit I could definatly see more detail on the HD side as long as I was standing reasonably close to it, but it in no way enhanced the experiance for me. The effect was surprisingly underwhelming actually. It pretty much killed my interest in HD for the time being, especially with all of the DRM crap you have to go through if you want to get the HD content.

As I've said before, it seems to me that HD DVD and Bluray are going down a path already well worn by the likes of DAT and SVHS. Customers don't seem interested in trading off convienence, price, and simplicity for modest quality improvements. You have to offer them something compelling if you want them to adopt a new technology.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[bnenning]

Actually, copyright/patents/etc allow an author to include a license along with the work

I don't believe this is the case. It only works for software because of lousy court decisions holding that "copying" software to RAM in order to run it is a copyright violation unless you have a license, which is utter nonsense.

GPLv3 includes the no-DRM restriction, that's ostensibly legal

Because it only applies if you want to do something that is otherwise forbidden by standard copyright. No GPL version attempts to remove your existing rights, as EULAs do.

GPL v3 added the no military use restriction too

No, some nutjobs took the GPL and added that clause, thereby making their software non-free.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[pluther]

If you can't agree to those terms, don't buy it.

Exactly!

Don't like the inane restrictions? Download, don't buy! Couldn't agree with you more!

"have to be HDCP compatible" - FALSE

[llZENll]

"Graphics card, driver and monitor have to be HDCP compatible"

FALSE. They ONLY have to be HDCP compatible if the HD movie requires it. I read as of now there are no HD movies on HD-DVD or Bluray which require HDCP compatiblity, I think this was in a recent Sound and Vision Magazine article or perhaps somewhere on CNET.

Unethical, like printing presses?

[GodWasAnAlien]

AC is confusing ethics with legality.

The DMCA is unethical because it protects an unethical monopoly business protection model, DRM, which unethically oversteps copyright law, which was already about 100 longer than the "limited time" monopoly protection of the constitution. The constitution attempted to balance a limited monopoly(14 years) with freedom of the press.

Suppressing freedom of the press/publishing is unethical on a large scale (current 120+x years) is unethical, as it limits speech, progress, medicine, science and the arts.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[Fallingcow]

Don't like the inane restrictions? Download, don't buy! Couldn't agree with you more!

Man, and just when hard drives and 'net connection speeds where getting big enough to make downloading whole, raw DVD images and rips not just possible, but actually easy and convenient... they went and made Blu Ray and HDDVD with much, much higher capacity.

Guess we'll have to wait for 1TB drives to be cheap & common, and 1Mbit internet connections to be widely available and affordable :(

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[really?]

"and 1Mbit internet connections to be widely available and affordable"

Err ... 0(zero) key not working? You certainly mean 100, or, at the very least, 10 Mbps. No?
Outside the "lite" users - Shaw Lite, Telus Lite, here in Vancouver - I don't know anyone with under 1M connections. And, this is in what I consider the backwoods of tech, as I used to have 100Mbps fibre in Tokyo quite a few years back.

(Yes, yes, I know there still are a lot of people on dial up; but, the majority of these people don't have the need, or, can't afford better connections. Either way, it's rarely the technology that is lacking.)

same as when DVD was out

[aztektum]

come on like this wasn't the same situation when DVD was originally launched. would your PCI video card, 32MB SIMM P200MMX with a CD drive play DVDs back in the late 90s? no, it required an upgrade didn't it?

yeah i think HDCP is sh!t, but all that aside, it's not like new formats havent required upgrades before.

Re:same as when DVD was out

[Anonymous Coward]

come on like this wasn't the same situation when DVD was originally launched. would your PCI video card, 32MB SIMM P200MMX with a CD drive play DVDs back in the late 90s? no, it required an upgrade didn't it?

Actually, if you read the original source for DeCSS you will find lots of comments about pointless byteswapping and other cruft built into the standard in order to deliberately make it require more CPU power to decode. Otherwise it probably would have (excepting the CD drive of course).

The captcha for this post was "lonely". Slashdot sure does know its audience.

Wrong Question

[the eric conspiracy]

The real question people want to know is what hardware and software do we need to clone an HD-DVD or BluRay disk.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[Fallingcow]

For the vast majority of people in the U.S., 512-768Kbps are the best you can expect from the mid-range connections. You might be able to get up to 1.5Mbps, but it'll cost significantly lot more. That's it for the home and small business market.

I'd kill for 10Mbps :(

All and good

[Lord Apathy]

That is all and good for playback, but what is it going to take for me to be able to rip these SOB and turn them in to xvid's?

HDCP not a requirement!

[benwaggoner]

It'll play HD movies just fine.

There is a technology called ICT (Image Constraint Token) that content publishers could turn on (but haven't) that'd reduce your output resolution to 940x540 if using a non HDCP output. But given how many players and sets there are out there that don't support it, all the released HD DVD titles don't use this, and will allow you to use every pixel of your current display.

what about Xine?

[chmod a x mojo]

I seem to remember there being an option in Xine to set the full screen resolution to whatever you want, couldn't that be used as a base "hack" for linux users? Thats as soon as open source drivers are written for these drive (assuming that they can't use standard cdrom access drivers).

Niche Market

[cafelatte]

HD-DVD and Blu-ray are so overrated. In the future everythings's going to be going through the internet. People are going to buy streaming video on demand over a cheap and very fast internet connection. No need for storing media and movie companies get royalties from streaming video on demand providers. These 2 optical disk technologies will be a niche.

DMCA is a joke re DVD playback

[jmorris42]

> Didn't buy DVD until DVD Jon make it usable.

>That doesn't make it legal. It'll be real interesting if companies ever decide to crack down on everyone
> who is breaking the DMCA.

Not happening. They understand how badly they would get burned in court should they try. I'd represent myself even. All I'd have to do is let em bloviate till they run out of hot air then take five minutes before a jury to explain the situation.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, now that those idiots have wasted a week of your life let me sum this whole thing up in a few short words without any technical, legal or other jargon. I must confess. I did indeed play a DVD I bought in our local friendly neighborhood Walmart in a DVD drive, that even those retards never contended I didn't buy, on a computer I have free and clear title to. If you can find anything wrong in that you should send me to jail. Otherwise you should return a unanamious not guilty verdict so that these guys will get the point and not go looking for a way to get a retrial and put another dozen people through something this boring, pointless and stupid."

Might even go for the visual aid of having my computer sitting there, and then take a DVD out of the case and start it playing. If any DVDCCA lawyer thinks they can find a normal person who will see a crime in doing that they are criminally insane, about to go postal and wipe out a shopping center crazy.

Then spend the remainder of the five minutes giving em the Fully Informed Jury lesson. An hour later I'm looking for a shark of my own to do the countersuit on contingency. He/she/it could even have 90%, on the grounds that I don't want their money I only want to make stupidity a little more painful.

What the DMCA does is prevent RedHat from shipping mplayer, even years fron now after the MPEG2 patents expire.

Re:DMCA is a joke re DVD playback

[Locomorto]

Except, your more then likely to be making this case to a judge not a jury, and I doubt that they will be so easily swayed. Still, I don't think that this would help anyone else all that much, as I believe the GP was referring to copying/format-shifting DVDs

Crack only a matter of when

[jmorris42]

> Because playback of HD-quality video utilizing BR Discs or HD-DVDs under Windows XP and cracking
> the DRM of BR Discs or HD-DVDs under Windows XP are exactly the same thing.

Essentially, yes. Standard PC hardware lacks any sort of real hardware protection like TPCM is going to add eventually. If Windows XP can execute the player a debugger can watch everything that happens and/or a virtualized copy of Windows can log every byte passing in or out of every port, memory location and processor register.

The attackers have the encrypted content, the decryption key and all of the algorithms, just obscured a bit. Add time and a few motivated attackers and hilarity will ensue. Yet another crypto scheme created by people who just don't understand and are going to be shocked by just how fast the cracks appear.

Re:Crack only a matter of when

[SyncNine]

Now, I'm not a crypto expert -- but as I recall, the only reason that DeCSS occured was because some idiot company made a player where the stream of data that contained the encryption/decryption key was, in itself, not encrypted.

While I'm not stupid enough to believe that a mistake will never be made again, I don't believe that just because the keys are around means that anyone will be able to crack them. Look at all of the other cryptographically signed things that people use on a regular basis, like the PSP or the X360 or the PS2 -- those keys are sent around inside the unit all the time and people have the code that sends the specific crypto keys, but they still can't crack it because it essentially is still a brute force crack.

What of that is mysteriously different for BR and HD-DVD?

Think for a second about how to you and I, BR and HD-DVD are just another player to pick up and a new set of media to purchase. To the studios investing in these projects, it is MUCH much more. Do you really think that they are going to release a software package (intentionally) that helps someone crack the DRM of their brand new format?

Also, the keys for BR are title specific -- meaning that cracking one BR disc doesn't help crack any others. Also, the keys are encrypted using AES -- I'm not sure if it's 128, 192, or 256-bit keys that their using, but even 128 bit keys would take a top of the line computer *years* to crack. Not very effective.

Of course it's only a matter of time -- but just because playback is going to be enabled on WindowsXP doesn't mean that the 'matter of time' is any longer or shorter.

Re:Crack only a matter of when

[jmorris42]

> Now, I'm not a crypto expert

Obviously. But thats ok, I'm only a clueful layman myself.

> but as I recall, the only reason that DeCSS occured was because some idiot company made a player
> where the stream of data that contained the encryption/decryption key was, in itself, not encrypted.

Close. Xing released a player where they didn't bother to obfuscate the player key. Just made it a little easier. At any rate, once the real crypto weenies saw the code they saw through to fundamental flaws so bad current Free players don't even use that Xing key anymore, they simply break the crypto. But had Xing not screwed up it would have just forced someone to hook up a debugger and go looking a bit. In much the same way as copy protection is removed from PC games within days of release, if not before a new game actually hits the street.

> Look at all of the other cryptographically signed things that people use on a regular basis, like the PSP
> or the X360 or the PS2 -- those keys are sent around inside the unit all the time and people have the code
> that sends the specific crypto keys, but they still can't crack it because it essentially is still a brute
> force crack.

Different problem. The player (or game console) doesn't possess the signing key. But it must have the player key. The problem I am talking about would be more akin to making a clone Xbox play official games instead of signing a new game to make it play on existing consoles. So yes, getting the signing key isn't likely without ninjas on a nocturnal mission, but to playback legally obtained content that isn't required. Any player must have a method to decode the media, otherwise it is sorta pointless. Disassemble any software player and the secret will be revealed.

> Also, the keys are encrypted using AES -- I'm not sure if it's 128, 192, or 256-bit keys that their using,
> but even 128 bit keys would take a top of the line computer *years* to crack. Not very effective.

Who cares. The player software has all of the decryption keys so you don't need to attack the cypher, just rip the keys out of a Windows PE executable along with the protocol to knock the secret knock on the drive.

> ..but just because playback is going to be enabled on WindowsXP doesn't mean that the 'matter of time' is
> any longer or shorter.

Yes it does. PC hardware has no hardware protection, unlike embedded systems. PC hardware and Windows in specific is fairly well understood and many underground groups already possess the required skills to unobfuscate a windows executable.

Re:Crack only a matter of when

[SyncNine]

Well, now I'm just sad I've posted in this topic already because I can't give you the +1, Informative that you deserve. Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day to help explain something very complicated to someone not quite so complex-minded.

:)

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[kimvette]

Actually, WATCH commercials for DVD.

Remember the "Narnia" (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) DVD commercial? "Own it on DVD today."

The Snow White commercial? "Own it on DVD today."

It is a commodity good sold off the shelf, not a work for hire. It is SOLD, not LICENSED. When you BUY it, you OWN it, and can do with it what Copyright Law does not prohibit.

HTH!

Yes, polygons on the fly!

[benwaggoner]

Yes, absolutely, both formats can generate ploygons on the fly. Beyond HD, the rich and interactive media aspects of next gen formats are vastly better than SD. If you want a sense of what the HD DVD interactive layer can do, check out Peter Torr's blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/

It's a lot more like writing a modern XHTML web site than anything else. And it's a good thing - there's lots of great stuff coming out in titles that extend the movie experience.

If you feel the titles aren't user-friendly, go down to a CE store and try one of the HD DVD titles. They work great. You can bring up menus and navigation without having to stop the movie, for example. Definitely easier to use than DVD.

As for HBO HD, you're watching over cable or sat, right? So it's highly compressed, horizontally squeezed MPEG-2. HD DVD is a big quality jump from that - you get 6x the pixels of DVD, with higher average per-pixel quality. It's great stuff, and the first time a consumer can really fill a 1920x1080 displa y24 times a second with great video.

Re:"Is my computer BD/HD ready?" command-line tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tool is cross-platform too.

Nice job.

HDCP really necessary?

[dark_requiem]

HDCP is only necessary to play back in full resolution if the Image Constraint Token is used. If the ICT isn't used, it will play at full resolution through even analog outputs. So it stands to reason that if the ICT isn't used, you don't need HDCP-compliant video cards and monitors to play back at full resolution. IIRC, Sony and some other major movie studios pledged not to use the ICT initially, after the consumer outcry that resulted from the initial disclosure of the ICT and its effects, which means that at least the first few years worth of movies should play back at full res without HDCP.

Will movie companies back down?

[eliot1785]

If companies selling the content want to hold out any hope of making money by introducing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, they're going to have to make it so that people can play it on their existing computers and disc players. Most people can't afford to go out and buy a new computer or a new DVD player in order to get HD resolution. So the Microsoft restrictions are just going to guarantee there is no market for this for several years until the replacement cycle eventually replaces them. Unless, that is, the movie companies back down and allow their content to be played at HD resolution regardless of one's graphics card.

my system's not enough!!

[tkjtkj]

right.. i ran the 'tester' .. on this dual cpu (4 AMD 64 cores!!) with 4 gigs ram RAID 0+1 , and an NVidia 7800 , running two ViewSonic 20" LCD's .. and it reported that its not enough... Perhaps the tester needs to be tested?

AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ not good enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently I needed to get a 4200+ (2.2G), 4400+ (2.2G), 4600+ (2.4G), 4800+ (2.4G), or 5000+ (2.6G). This is comical.

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[Surt]

The confusion might be coming from bits vs bytes. I've lived in 4 different areas of the country in the last 5 years. At every one, a connection with either DSL or CableModem delivered at least 150 kilobytes (roughly a megabit) per second downstream, at a cost of less than $40 per month.

4 to 6 megabit/sec cable connections that can really deliver 2 megabit in practice are quite common.

Upstream of course is considerably more limited, and if you're using something like bittorrent where your peers may artificially limit you to 2x your upload rate may leave you seeing much lower transfer rates in practice.

Dual core CPU

[dcam]

4. Dual-core processor + 256 MB graphics card

HD content from a Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc requires quite a bit of processing power; Cyberlink recommends using a dual-core processor like the Intel Pentium D, Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon X2. As a graphics card you should at least use a nVidia GeForce 7600 or ATI Radeon X1600 series with a minimum of 256MB video memory.

Why? What is it about Blu/HD that requires so mch processing power? Is it the compression standard? DRM? What kind of processors are the sticking in the consumer players they match that kind of processing power?

It will crack fast because....

[Anonymous Coward]

...to the real pirates, the syndicates who set up dupe factories, it is worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in the 15/16ths of the world that gives shit one about US copyright laws. Insiders will sell the cracks for some cash. Bound to happen. I bet a buck it has already happened actually.

What does that get you?

[Elwood P Dowd]

I thought HDCP was just the protection mechanism for consumer electronics, and had nothing to do specifically with decrypting either of those formats.

You could build an extremely high bandwidth peice of custom hardware that let you record the decrypted, uncompressed video stream coming out of your player. Then you could recompress it & distribute.

You could build an extremely high bandwidth decrypter pass-through that allowed you to use DVI devices wherever you're forced to use HDCP otherwise.

But cracking HDCP isn't going to let you play your Blu-Ray or HD-DVD movie on any computer that couldn't play it anyway.

Unless there's something I'm missing, HDCP being cracked won't help adoption of Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

Re:does not matter. dual-layer coming to US soon

[kalmite]

Don't worry the dual layer discs will make into the US someday. You can buy a single dual layer disc here in Japan for about $40USD. There are at least 4 brands of burners (Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Buffalo). Of course this doesn't seem to matter for the home video market.

A way to crack

[octopus72]

This software is obviously a loophole for extracting HD content. As decrypting and decoding is obviously done in software, hackers will rip the h264/VC1/mpeg2 high-def video and AC3/DTS/whatever audio streams from Intervideo software implementation. Similar hacking occured before before with a software DVD-Audio players. Only problem is that it's a fairly big download for only a movie, I believe that HD formats won't become mainstream unless media houses decide to push out exclusive HD releases few months before regular DVD releases (though it won't be very well accelted by theater holders and might annoy regular public which don't intend to buy new equipment just for a few exclusive titles).

Any P III does the trick

[KarmaOverDogma]

My sister has an old dell inspiron PIII which plays DVDs just fine.

I have an old dell inspiron PII (300Mhz) from 1998 with 256MB ram which runs Windows XP just fine and also plays DVDs (but it has a hardware decoder). It *can* play DVDs without the hardware decoder via PowerDVD, but the playback is a bit choppy.

So yes, I agree that even the slowest PIII will do the trick with 800x600 mpegII (I'm not sure about other formats like XviD) unless the CPU has its bandwidth being sucked up by other applications.

Personally, I think a new computer every 5-6 years is sufficient for Windows slaves like myself (longer for penguins), but some people love to push the envelope so they can have the latest goodies, like this baby: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx ?c=us&l=en&cs=19&oc=W3007

Re:Very irresponsible journalism

[Josh Hiles]

But that will cost the industry tens of dollars a year! How will our multi-million dollar movie industry survive if it loses its massive profits on DVD's that cost a few cents to produce but are sold for 30-50 dollars!?!?! I do feel so very sorry for those multi-millionares with their private jets and super-model girlfriends. Oh crap! I'm late for work, I hope the truck dock that pays me seven dollars an hour for ten hours of backbreaking labor doesn't fire me... But really, my concern is all for the movie industry, those poor guys just can't catch a break...