New Copy Protection to Make Playing DVDs on a PC Difficult

The Cowardly Pirate writes "ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog is reporting that new copy-protection software for DVD publishers from a company called ProtectDisc not only makes it difficult to rip movies that you've purchased but also prevents discs from playing in a Windows PC at all. From the article: 'Protect DVD-Video is the brainchild of a company called ProtectDisc. Part of the copy-protection mechanism is a non-standard UDF (Universal Disc Format) file system which results in the IFO file on the DVD (this is the file responsible for storing information on chapters, subtitles and audio tracks) appearing to the PC as being zero bytes long.'"

Comments

Re:You misunderstand their motives

[Technician]

make money off of the idiots at the studios who think this will actually protect their content.

I wonder if the idiots at the studios have any idea how much money they will lose in returns and then future sales as sour consumers leave and shun the studio's product. Seriously, How many people now simply refuse to by a SONY Music CD because of the rootkit thing?

I didn't get stuck with the SONY rootkit thing because I already stopped buying CD's due to the already defective by design CD's already out. Some have to get burned much harder before they break away from bad products.

It's a shame the studios want to release a bad product that people will think they want until the ugly facts hit them.

I guess if Apple can sell DRM'ed audio tracks at 128kbps instead of 192kbps MP3's or 16 bit stereo sampled at 44K samples/second (CD's) for close to the same price, then I guess some will fall for crippled DVD's and like it.

I never understood selling DRM low bitratre propritory format audio tracks for way over half the price of a true CD. I guess if you like Toxic Culture, Slipknot, Emenim, and other compressed to the max CD's a little extra compression artifact distortion won't be noticed. On material with less then 20 DB of dynamic range, very little is lost to compession and stereo phase imaging isn't important. Too bad you can't find CD's anymore with the DDD logo for audio purity.

For those who don't know, for a while some quality CD's took the time to use a digital mixing board instead of analog for the source D and recorded on a hard drive or DAT for the second D and the third D is for digital mastering. Old beatles stuff was often on CD's as AAD indicating originaly mastered on an analog board, recorded on analog tepe (Reel to Reel) and then remastered for CD digitaly. Some of the awsome Telarc recordings were done digital all the way and as such are totaly absent of tape hiss, mixer hiss, and such. Most stuff now simply is compressed to eliminate much dynamic range so you can't tell if there was any hiss in any of the quiet parts simply because there are not any quiet parts.

Too bad the engineering of quality recordings is degraded to make it loud.

I'd hate to see movies go the same route. If movies went the same route as DRM audio, then the biggest screen you would want to watch them on would be a cell phone and don't worry you can's see a dark scene in a brightly lit room, because we compressed the dark scenes so they are all light and can be seen in a bright room. There is no need to worry the dark scenes are going to show a little video noise as there is no dark scenes.

These compressed movies may be OK for watching in the car on a LCD video system, but they would not have the resolution or dynamic range to enjoy a Science Fiction space thriller on the big set at home. The compressed music is ok for headphones while riding a school bus, but it's not something I want on the stereo in my den. Video has been heading to HD. Why is audio heading to LD at the same price?

OK I guess it's time to end my rant on the sad state of low bitrate compressed content.

Re:Security policy

[Balthisar]

That reminds me, how do I get around XP GPO's when on an NT domain? I've got root while not on the domain.

playing regioned DVDs

[wisdom_brewing]

What is the best program for windows to play DVDs from any region?