The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent

Ars Technica reports that the first HD DVD movie has made its way onto BitTorrent, showing that current DRM efforts to prevent illegal sharing of copyrighted content are still futile and fighting an uphill battle. From the article: "The pirates of the world have fired another salvo in their ongoing war with copy protection schemes with the first release of the first full-resolution rip of an HD DVD movie on BitTorrent. The movie, Serenity, was made available as a .EVO file and is playable on most DVD playback software packages such as PowerDVD. The file was encoded in MPEG-4 VC-1 and the resulting file size was a hefty 19.6 GB."

Comments

Sky

[Anonymous Coward]

Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me

Re:Sky

[A beautiful mind]

But you can obviously take the bandwidth! At least temporarily...

Re:Sky

[charlieo88]

The top post should have been, "Can't stop the signal"

Re:Sky

[Andrew Nagy]

January 16, 2007 Headline: The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent

April 22, 2029 Headline: The First HD DVD Movie Finishes Downloading from BitTorrent

Link?

[Anonymous Coward]

No direct link to the torrent? What kind of submission is that?

The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Boap]

At 20GB this alone will limit pirates as having even 100 of these movies will take up about 2TB of space.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[solevita]

Not really - Hard drive space is still cheaper per GB than HD-DVD is. If you want to store big movies, it's cheaper to do so by downloading them than it is to buy them on disk.

In other words, if you can't afford to keep 100 HD-DVD movies on your computer, you really can't afford to keep then on HD-DVD.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[garcia]

Until the burners become affordable. The limiting factor is really the bandwidth, not the storage space.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Chang]

I'm sure we'll never have a solution for limited drive size ;-)

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[jonnythan]

If you buy 100 HD DVDs you will have spent upwards of $2000.

With 500GB of storage costing $150 or less, 2TB of storage space will set you back $600.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Threni]

> Maybe they'll come up with a distributed storage system where the pirated file is split up over
> 10-20 machines.

I get it - you have to borrow 20 machines if you want to watch a film. No, it makes sense, I never thought of that.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[__aaclcg7560]

Is this news?

Absolutely. If pirates are willing to rip off a HD version of "Serenity", then there should be enough demand to make another movie.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Lazerf4rt]

Yea, this is a pretty wild way to spend your bandwidth. Supposing you get 150 KB/s sustained on the torrent, your computer's still going to be chewing on it for over 37 hours.

On the other hand, if you drive to the store and back, you can probably have that HD-DVD in about an hour. That's over 5.5 MB/s of bandwidth. Pick up a few more movies at the same time, and your bandwidth increases to 22 MB/s. Sneakernet has a lot going for it, in this case.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Total_Wimp]

I'm sure it'll fit onto a 700meg cd just like all the others - it'll look much the same on a 15inch laptop display. Like mp3s, it's more important to have a fair few to choose from, rather than filling your 300 gig hard drive with 15 highly polished turds.

This is not meant to be rude. I don't feel I have any right to dictate taste or quality. That said, it's guys like you that keep me off of file sharing networks.

If you want to compress a perfectly good HD rip down to CD size and watch it, go for it, it's your business. But when I see that stuff being offered to me as if it's some kind of precious gift, I'm flabbergasted. Why would someone give me Budweiser under the label "Chimay" and claim "it's just as good"? Why would I seek such things out?

Besides the bad music that's rampant on file sharing networks, there have traditionally been quite a lot of bad rips. Often, there's no way to tell except to download and listen, then wonder whether the artist really wasn't as good as you thought, or whether someone didn't know how to work their ripper. Have you ever seen someone download a 128KBPS file from iTunes, then make a CD, import it at 192KBPS and tell you, with sincerity, and even honesty, that they "ripped it at 192KBPS"? Those are the files you're downloading.

I know Budweiser has it's place. I've been known to down more than a little bit. Sometimes that's all you want or need. I'm more than happy to watch a certain amount of TV or movies on the ol' 13" TV upstairs. But when I'm looking for high quality, why would I want to download something labeled "HD-DVD" that's less than DVD quality? It's idiotic.

I have some advice for you. If you want to make low-quality, overly-compressed movies for the "I don't care" viewer, save some money and buy it on DVD instead of HD-DVD. Then when you rip it, clearly label the source, source compression if relevant, output format and output compression for everything you rip. That way I'll know to avoid your work.

Thanks,

TW

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Malc]

I believe VC-1 can get 90 mins of 1080i down to 5GB. Look at some of MSFT's HD video samples on their web site - 60MB/min, which is ~5GB/90 min. Much better than MPEG2. Obviously they haven't compressed it that much in this case.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Malc]

Not necessarily. A download doesn't equate to a lost sale, no matter how much the like of the MPAA and RIAA say so.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[ffejie]

Actually, assuming you maxed the dial-up out at 56 Kbps every second and didn't waste anything on overhead, you could finish downloading it in 32.57275132 days. Not too bad, but probably easier to run to buy it, buy an HD DVD Player, hook it up, watch the movie, return both.

On 768Kbps DSL, it would take 57 Hours (2.375096451 Days).
On 3Mbps DSL/Cable, it would take 14.59 Hours.
On 5Mbps Cable, it would take 8.755 Hours.
On 30Mbps FTTP, it would take 1.45 Hours.
On a T3 (45 Mbps), it would take 58.7 Minutes.
On a OC-3 (155 Mbps), it would take 16.9 Minutes.
And finally, on an OC-768, it would take 3.94 Seconds.

That last one is 40Gbps....sweet.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[CastrTroy]

If you can do that, why not just stick with the DVD and upgrade the players to play MPEG4? Why are we creating new media when we could easily store an HD movie on a dual layer DVD?

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[ivan256]

But when I see that stuff being offered to me as if it's some kind of precious gift, I'm flabbergasted. Why would someone give me Budweiser under the label "Chimay" and claim "it's just as good"? Why would I seek such things out?

Because it's 'rar'ed and broken down into 16MB chunks, of course.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[really?]

900 is the future? You, like me, must be in North America. My Japanese friends would be crying in their cups of hot sake if their speeds dropped to such a low level.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[jonnythan]

There are currently 154 HD DVD titles in stock, ready to ship at Amazon.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[codemachine]

Actually, DVD sales have brought back TV series before, so if anything, buying the actual HD-DVD or the regular DVD would be a better move if you want another movie. Showing interest is not enough to help a studio profit.

Though I assume you knew that anyways. The real news was back when the HD-DVD protection was broken. The fact that rips appeared online was inevitable after that point. One might argue the breaking of the DRM was inevitable too, but still possibly newsworthy to report when it actually happened.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[thepotoo]

You are aware that Movie.Name.Codec.Source.MediaType-ReLEAseGROUP actually means something, right?
And that you can go to vcdquality.com to check things out before you download, right?
And that you can download one rar file, check the "keep broken files" box (or append the appropriate flag in Linux), and play it in VLC before you download the whole thing?
Just checking.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[DragonWriter]

100 HD-DVD movies at $20 each = 2000 dollars.

A quick look says that newegg has 500 gig drives for $144. If each movie is 20 gigs, then you'd need 4 of those drives to store each movie, which comes out to 576 dollars.

You mean, you'd need four of those drives to store all 100 movies, which is $576 vs. the $2,000 to buy all 100 movies, rather than needing for 500 gig drives to store each 20 gig movie.

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[AeroIllini]

On 30Mbps FTTP, it would take 1.45 Hours.

W00t! Realtime streaming!

*calls Comcast*

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[poot_rootbeer]

Supposing you get 150 KB/s sustained on the torrent, your computer's still going to be chewing on it for over 37 hours.

But I want SERENITY NOW!!!

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[Eskarel]

Actually that 800 is KBps(or more likely actually kiloclusters since it tends to be a factor of 10) if you're getting it off most programs. Which is actually 8 Mbps give or take. So you're actually getting your full connection speed. IE and Firefox, and Mozilla, and pretty much every other application I've ever used have been reporting they're speed in KiloBytes(not bits) for as long as I can remember, and I've been on the net for more than a decade.

Why is it that on slashdot of all places there are still so many idiots. Haven't you noticed that your max download speeds have been 1/10th of your max connection speed for the last 15 years? Did you really think you just couldn't max out that dial up connection when you were connection to a major server? Did it not dawn on you that there had to be some other explanation for that?

Re:The size will be the limiting factor not DRM.

[monsted]

If your usage drops below 20 GB a day on a swedish internet connection, i think they come knocking on the door to check if you're still alive...

Best copy protection? just don't sell anything

[192939495969798999]

I have a great idea. Just don't sell the product, or release it for distribution of any kind. I guarantee there won't be any piracy, but you'll have a hard time making money!

Everyone complained about piracy when tape decks came out, but everyone knows in retrospect that the bootleg tapes, even the good quality ones (which could easily be as good as the one you bought) were actually helping bands get noticed. This is all about just controlling the supply line so that only studio-backed projects can get money. They want the ability to sh*t can a movie by not distributing it, and vice versa, to make money from only the ones they are investing in.

Re:Best copy protection? just don't sell anything

[CastrTroy]

I think that the only real solution is to not allow the movies to be played on a computer. Only on dedicated set top boxes. I realize that the cat is out of the bag now, but I think this is the only way to prevent these movies from being copied by the average Joe. Look at the GameCube and it's proprietary discs. While it's possible to get pirated games, it's just too much trouble for the average joe to bother. As it stands right now, I don't think too many people would buy into a technology that wouldn't play on your computer, since we already have DVD, and that plays fine on the computer. There was a lot less piracy going on when you had to dub the tape, instead of just clicking on a link. There is a big difference in terms of how much stuff you can pirate when you are putting music on tapes versus putting them on a hard disk. And the quality of the copy was pretty inferior.

Re:Best copy protection? just don't sell anything

[tkrotchko]

"I think that the only real solution is to not allow the movies to be played on a computer. Only on dedicated set top boxes."

It is my opinion that unless a new medium works on the PC, it will never become all that important.

Think about all the laptop computers that are sold with DVD drives in many cases to allow travelers to watch movies as they travel. If those people can't do that, then they'll just stick with DVD's.

So the market for the new-fangled-DVD-replacement will be limited to people with large TV's who just want to watch in their living rooms and never watch it anywhere else, despite the fact that we have desktop & laptop computers, slingboxes, Video iPods, Zunes, etc etc.

I mean, if that's the market, god bless them, but I want to see someone with that pitch before the board of directors.

Maybe it would be cheaper to just do something where people have to go to a large room and watch it with a bunch of strangers. They'd pay like $8-10, and buy popcorn, and hope the people next to them will shut up and let them watch in peace. Hey! I may patent this idea. I'll call it "Moving Pictures in a Dark Theater" or something snappy like that.

3...2...1...

[Jordan Catalano]

alt.binaries.hddvd?

We win

[MasterPoof]

Case closed. Give it up, MPAA, your days are numbered. Just like Windows, soon you won't be needed anymore.

Moo

[Chacham]

The First HD DVD Movie Hits BitTorrent

News at 11:00.
On Bit Torrent at 11:05.

Oy!

[Aladrin]

"It's so big they'll never have enough storage space!"
"It's so big they'll never have enough bandwidth!"
"It's so big they'll never have enough ... !" -- Fill in whatever.

These are no serious impediments. Pirates routinely download 5GB (and 9GB) DVDs all the time and they don't have problem with that. Their ISPs don't suddenly cap them. They don't suddenly find their quality of life has depreciated because they can't download enough porn.

It doesn't happen like that.

ISPs increase bandwidth. Hard drives get bigger. Writable media gets larger. Compression gets more advanced.

It's no big deal.

Serenity in high-def for FREE???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be in my bunk...

Definitive Proof-of-Concept

[mandelbr0t]

I was skeptical when I saw the first article about HDDVDBackup, but there's definitely a posted title key on the Doom9 forum to correspond with this release. I guess the other 2 keys they posted should be released soon as well. The only way to truly implement volume encryption that can't be beaten is to avoid the software player altogether, as the title key needs to be in memory, if only briefly. The posts on the Doom9 forum claim that this is the way that title keys are extracted, and I'm inclined to believe them.

Good job beating the DRM MAFIAA again! Information truly was meant to be free :)

mandelbr0t

Yo.

[neimon]

Not cool. Joss needs the money so he can make more cool stuff. Go buy the DVD.

'nuff said.

Re:Yo.

[Xerotope]

Mail him a check for $5. I'm sure that's more than he gets from the studios for an HD-DVD sale.

Re:Yo.

[adamstew]

I know that there are costs involved in producing music...just as there are costs in producing movies...however, the costs involved are on a MUCH larger scale in movies as they are in music.

Now, before you say that i'm being hypocritical, let me explain:

The digital distribution era has made the old way of doing things obsolete. As you said, for a couple of grand, someone can setup a recording studio and put together a pretty decent album. The problem starts with the record companies.

The record companies sign the artists, front the very large amount of money it takes (under the old system) to record an album , and promotes and distributes the album. The contracts that the artists sign say that the artist gets so much money per album sold...usually around a dollar...only problem is that most of those contracts also stipulate that the artist doesn't see a dime until their $1 per album that they are supposed to get has paid for every single cost that the record company has incurred...from the recording, to the promotion, to the packaging and distribution...from what i've read, except for the HUGE pop artists, most artists would be lucky to see $100k from an album from the record sales...and how many artists release more than a couple of albums? Very few.

Under the old distribution system, the exchange was pretty simple: The artist gave the record company the rights to sell their album in exchange for the promotion. The record companies had a monopoly on the distribution channels...If you were an artist, you didn't get any publicity unless you went to a record company. So the artist got their name out there, and then they were free to exploit that publicity...in the form of concerts, merchandise, public appearances, endorsements, etc...which almost every artist does in one form or another since they make very little, if anything at all, from the sales of their albums.

Okay...now flash forward to today...the internet has sparked self distribution...Now for a couple of thousand dollars, someone can setup a website, produce their own album, and get free publicity on the internet by GIVING away the music. Oh, by the way, if you like the music, buy our CD direct from the source, or get a t-shirt, bumper sticker, poster, or come see us perform!

So...you may now ask what's the difference between the music and movie industries: It's simple...obsolescence. As you've said...you can produce a pretty professional album with a few thousand dollars, and enough time and dedication to make it work...assuming your music is good. Suddenly there is no need for all those people to be working on an album. The times in the music industry have changed...it's time for them to find a new line of work...these modern day candle stick makers are being put out of business by today's light bulb.

When you compare it to the movie industry: It's just not possible to produce a feature length film with only a few thousand dollars...even Memento, which was a great indie film with practically zero special effects and all using no name (at the time) actors cost $9 million...according to wikipedia.

So...lets compare: Cost to produce a low budget album: $5,000. Cost to produce a low budget movie: $9,000,000...cost difference: 1,800%. Cost of album on iTunes: $10. Cost of movie on iTunes: $10-$15. Cost difference: 0%-50%. Something just doesn't add up here.

So, the way I see it: I support the artists/actors, and the people who are truly needed to produce a work. All you need to produce an album is the artists time, and a few thousand dollars in costs to get it recorded...Artists can (and have) distribute/promote their music free over the internet, myspace, etc. They can sell their songs on iTunes using that indie music label (can't think of their name right now). They can use companies like cafe press, or even just have merchandise printed and sell directly using paypal and a $20/mo web hosting account.

The point: Artist can (and have) produce, distribute, and prom

Probably not a good idea just yet

[Rorian]

Of course, this will just make them work harder to fix up the faults in the encryption software/hardware before they really start to mass-produce players / discs, so releasing a pirated movie this early will just make further piracy that little bit harder.

However, I really don't understand why the RIAA/MPAA bother at all - There are just to many people out there who find it _fun_ to spend their time cracking things simply because they can, and it is a great challenge to take on. It's not the money, it's not the legality, it's probably not even the fact that they want to rip the movie onto their hard-drive. It's the fact that when the RIAA says "You can't do this", their first thought is "Just watch me". No-one can compete with that, not even multi-billion dollar companies. And I love that fact :)

Also.. 20gb?! Somehow I enjoy the thought of piracy a lot less when everything I save in not buying movies, I spend in buying hard-drives / bandwidth! :)

Are the pirates winning or the content providers?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says there is a battle between the pirates and the content providers and imply the pirates are winning.
I am not sure that is the case. I have not been interested in a format that has no provision for backup or ability to shift to other players -- like linux laptops. I have no interest in a disk that won't look as good as a DVD if I play it in my 1 year old non-HDMI HDTV.
If HDDVD disks can now be reliably ripped, I am interested.
I'll buy a set top player and a computer drive sooner.
I'll pester Blockbuster to start renting the disks.
If Muslix64 et al. are blocked, I am back to no interest.

20GB is a lot now. But it won't always be

[jmorris42]

> At 20GB this alone will limit pirates as having even 100 of these movies will take up about 2TB of space.

I'm sure people made the same observation when DVDs first became available a decade ago. 4.7 or 9GB over dialup or even early cable modems stored onto hard drives barely able to hold a single disc was not a threat to DVD sales either. But bandwidth and storage keep on improving while a media standard like DVD or HD-DVD remains constant for years. The reality is that if an HD movie is fixed at ~20GB the cost to move/store that will soon drop to managable costs.

With the copy restrictions removed it is an absolute certainly that they WILL be copied. For now just to prove it is possible, to stick it to the man and to prove 313t3 5k177z but eventually it will be as commonplace as Divx;) CD-R copies are now.

Call me paranoid...

[Short Circuit]

...but I bet the MPAA is watching the peer list on this torrent very, very carefully.

Re:Call me paranoid...

[StikyPad]

"Dave...what's this TOR thing I keep seeing on the ip list?"
"It means they have no chance of completing their 20GB download before the next format wars start."
"Ah."

There.. fixed that for you.

Re:BitTorrent isn't a thing

[CelticWhisper]

Right. BitTorrent isn't a dump truck. You have to send it through the tubes.

Apparently...

[F.Prefect]

...you really can't stop the signal. :-)

For now. Maybe.

[Opportunist]

Think back about 5, or even 10, years. Could you have imagined downloading 3-4 Gigs just for a movie? Or a game?

When the CD came into existance, it was not thought that copy protection could ever be necessary, people did hardly have the space on their HD to store those 650 Megs on. Today, a CD is not even a deterrent to downloading it, storing is even less a problem.

Give it a year, and you will probably not even think twice about transfering 20 Gigs just to check out the movie (and deleting it immediately afterwards when you notice that it is indeed copyrighted material, of course).

You can't stop the signal.

[Lester67]

They have gone to enormous trouble to find your little friend... and found her they have. Do you all know what it is you're carrying?

There already are software BluRay players

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Better get used to watching Serenity over and over because you're not likely to see any more movies released with PowerDVD keys. That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.

There already are BluRay software players. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD have versions that support BluRay. Guess that's what happens when you talk off the top of your head with no facts or research to back things up.

Re:The first and last movie

[pla]

That takes care of software players for HDDVD and there will definitely be no software players for Blu-Ray.

Naive view, at best.

Though a strange turn on our normal bashing, think about this from Microsoft's POV... They sold their souls to the MPAA by including DRM from the kernel on up. If the MPAA then backstabs Microsoft by not letting Windows machines play HD content...

I think it would run something like, "In response to overwhelming consumer outcry, we've decided to strip all DRM (except WGA, of course) from Vista. We sincerely apologize to our users, and hope you'll forgive us for erronously trusting the content industry."

Microsoft doesn't give a damn about us, but it doesn't care about Hollywood, either. It only plays nicely with the MPAA so long as the MPAA provides the ball.

Yes, Look for my 3000 UUEncoded posts

[meanween]

May take a while to find them all :)

Re:We win [not]

[ScentCone]

Case closed. Give it up, MPAA, your days are numbered. Just like Windows, soon you won't be needed anymore.

Ah, because "Serenity" (since that's the movie in quesiton) would have been just as good if made collaboratively by a bunch of volunteers with little or no budget and no expectation of making enough money to pay back good acting, writing, animation, and other talent? Who do you think the MPAA is, anyway? It's a trade association populated by the companies that moviemakers, actors, writers, tech people and all the rest choose to work for. People compete to work for these companies, and to make projects that will be well received and which will reward the risks taken.

You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity. No money, no Serenity. You don't "win" anything by ripping off the very people that you're hoping will scrape together the money, talent, and time to make another movie you'll like.

Re:All discussion of pirating aside

[TheoMurpse]

Actually, fair use is not Constitutionally guaranteed. It comes from the common law, and the first codification of it was in the Copyright Act of 1976. Additionally, it's an affirmative defense, not a right. I only point this out because, if Slashdotters want it to be a right instead of a defense against criminal or civil penalties, they should lobby for it instead of assuming it is already a right.

I'd really like to see you get modded down because you're spreading falsehoods, not being insightful.

Re:What's the news?

[SScorpio]

The rip on Pirate Bay is off an HDTV signal. This copy is directly off an HD-DVD and likely includes the interactive menus and all of the other content off the disk packaged in a single file.

Priceless...

[Greyfox]

Product design for HD-DVD player: $8 million.
DRM Engineering team: $1.2 million.
Marketing for release of first movie: $3 million

Having some wiseass kid from Sweden post a torrent of your movie the day before the commercial release: Priceless.

Re:We win [not]

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

There was talent involved with the production of Serenity?