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RFID To Track Play of DVDs And CDs?
jayp00001 writes, "A Taiwan-based maker of DVDs and CDs for major studios is about to begin putting RFID chips in disks. The eventual aim is for DVD and CD players equipped with an RFID reader to prevent copied or out-of-region disks from being played."
Because when it starts getting that hard to be honest..
I buy loads of CDs from other countries, mainly US & Japan and if this will stop me being able to play them then sorry guys, I'm going to start to explore other avenues..
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
and everyone pays for a more expensive RFID-capable CD/DVD player because...?
Costs more, does less.
As long as they include a warning label on the CD case (like the 'copy protected' ones), so we can choose not to buy it that will be fine.
This means a new standard, and new players all round. It's no longer a DVD, and I'm certainly not running out and buying a new player for it.
On another, rather important, note, they mention it for HD-DVD. HD-DVD doesn't even _have_ region encoding, so they can't tell me the disc is from the wrong one; that's why I want HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
With RFID chips embedded maybe we won't have to peel three seperate stickers off the DVD case.
That would be nice.
HD DVD doesn't have region encoding YET, but they're planning to add it via firmware update.
I've bought thousands of cds. I also have hundreds of records and various other forms of music media. And music isn't cheap! I refuse to buy into music stores such as iTunes because I feel it's ludicrous to have to pay what adds up to almost the same price as buying the physical disc to have digital copies of music files that are encoded lower than I would have encoded it myself if I had the disc. But, I swear, the second they pull a stunt like this, I'm out. See ya. I'll still buy cds from all the independant artists I love, because I'm sure they'll avoid this like the plague. But it looks like the only option will be music services such as Yahoo! Unlimited that charge me $60 a year to listen to whatever I want. Now if only I had broadband in my car, I'd be set...
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
In that event, I have to ask a simple question:
Will the revenue previously lost to piracy be fed back to the consumer? Will we see cheaper CDs anywhere?
Of course not. It's basic fucking economic theory that you can charge more if you segregate a market. Piracy be damned, fair-use my arse - this is just a desperate attempt to control the market, which can only lead to higher prices for legitimate, law-abiding consumers.
Bastards.
Meta will eat itself
To the people saying that a person could just "cut the wires" to the RFID reader module inside vis drive:
Ever heard of system-on-chip?
I can tell you right now that it is extremely doable to put the necessary rfid reader circuity inside the drive controller ASIC and connect it to a simple loop antenna by a couple of pins (remember it only needs to have a range of an inch or so).
The controller chip could even scan for the correct impedance to prevent people from breaking the antenna trace, or (this is a good one) have a 'verification' RFID somewhere inside the drive case:
If the RFID reader part of the controller can't read the unique id of it's matching verification RFID (remember nowadays it's possible to have a small pseudo-PROM area of an ASIC) it won't let you use the drive..
We are seeing the end of the consumer-hackable hardware era; modern hardware can and will prevent all but the most dedicated hardware hackers with expensive logic analyzers from making unauthorized copies.
NOBODY WANTS REGION CODING. (except the publishers)
. The people who actally make the films really don't care. They get their royalties if the disc is bought in the US, Europe, Taiwan or anywhere else. They really just want to make a living doing what they love.
The end users hate region coding. It means they often have to wait, often end up with an inferior version, and basically reduces consumer choice while increasing their costs.
The manufacturers don't like region coding. It makes their players considerably less popular. They go to considerable lengths to find ways around the region coding requirement. Multi-region is a key selling point of a player to anyone with any interest in importing discs. They're going to do the ame thing to try to get around RFID chips. Or anything else you might like to try. And they're really not going to be happy about having to increase their costs to add an RFID reader. These companies are working on tiny margins. No matter how cheap, RFID readers will eat into this.
New chip to thwart DVD piracy is a long way off and faces considerable challenges
Yes - by your new definition of the word "stealing", which now includes playing out-of-region disks.
On another, rather important, note, they mention it for HD-DVD. HD-DVD doesn't even _have_ region encoding, so they can't tell me the disc is from the wrong one; that's why I want HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray.
This statement needs to be changed to say that HD-DVD doesn't have region encoding now. The fact that it is not being imposed now does not mean that it won't be imposed in the future. A web search can provide some interesting comments on this.
The thing that I find most interesting about HD-DVD is that the whole idea of PAL or NTSC discs is going away. At least so far it appears that HD-DVD's standard will be 24 fps video and it will expect the hardware (HD-DVD player and TV) to correctly display the image in whatever format is necessary.
You'd still sell the different format discs, encoded for the appropriate country. Just not the region coding. I don't think it would matter though. Australia (PAL) and Mexico (NTSC) are in the same region. And Europe (PAL/SECAM) is in the same region as Japan(NTSC). There have even been a few NTSC region 2 encoded discs sold in Europe. Many people in England import US discs, and they don't complain about the drop in quality.
How playing "out of region" DVDs is bad?
... but I live in Canada. Why would it be bad for me, or the producers of the media, for me to BUY a copy and have it shipped here?
Suppose I'm a fan of movies made in France
What they really should call that is "out of monopololistic control zone."
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.