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Here We Go Again — Video Standards War 2010
Andy Updegrove writes "Think of the words 'standards war,' and if you're of a certain age you're likely to think of the battle between the Betamax and VHS video tape formats. Fast forward, and you'll recall we just finished another video standards war between most of the same companies, this time between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Well, here we go again, except this time its the movie studios that are duking it out, and DRM issues are a big part of it. On the one side are five of the six major studios, dozens of cable, hardware, software, distribution and device vendors, and on the other side there's just Disney — and maybe Apple as well, and that's enough to have the other side worried."
How is this going to affect torrents except now we'll have to wait for one of two useless DRM schemes to be stripped away?
[T]his time its the movie studios that are duking it out, and DRM issues is a big part of it.
I tend to prefer those video standards which are inclusive and unencumbered such as xvid and x264. They've survived. Our library, some of which is many years old, still plays.
No central server to authorize and track our viewing habits. No chance of having my devices' keys revoked. No need to keep all our gear connected to the net.
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Trolling is a art,
"Whoever wins, we lose."
What side is the pr0n industry on?
Actually, Disney used a very effective anti-copy technique when they were still using VHS. It would scramble the picture if you tried copying it, it required special equipment and a lot of know how to get around it.
As with the Betamax/VHS formats, Circuit City's DivX and HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, the ace up the sleeve is that people always have the choice not to buy. If people don't want a format or technology, nothing the studios or content providers do will get them what they want (our money). They never seem to factor that in to their plans.
Another "slave to the server" DRM scheme. Those have a finite lifetime.
What's the longest-lived "slaved to a server" DRM scheme? Has any such scheme been working for ten years? iTunes may be the oldest, but they didn't support video until 2005, and they've been moving away from DRM on audio.
Think of what al-Queda could do with the signing key for Windows Update.
They've got some cheek, acting like letting us view the same content on multiple devices is an amazing new revolution. We could do that before DRM, and it would've been easy for them to manage DRM such that people could grab more authorised, licenced copies in different formats. That's the whole point of having a licence instead of a physical product.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The only good news here is that is actually possible for both of them to lose ... if consumers don't buy into either scheme.
Formats lead to acceptance. Acceptance leads to dominance. Dominance leads to a de facto standard. De facto standards lead to the dark side.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Macrovision? It required special equipment, but that equipment wasn't terribly expensive or difficult to find. The biggest advantage to Disney is that because VHS tapes wear out with repeated viewings and because kids love to watch the same movies over and over again, they had a built-in audience of parents that would need to repurchase the movies at regular intervals. They didn't have to worry about people dubbing the tape and then redubbing it whenever the copy wore out.
It never really slowed down pirates though, just honest people.
I read the internet for the articles.
True standards will only be set by the end users. If nobody buys it, is it a standard?
If there are 1000 Xvid copies around for every BD copy sold... which one is the standard?
In the face of this reality, the industry has come up with a pretty practical solution: pay once for a video, and the seller will track your ownership for you, and make that information available to anyone who hosts the same content anywhere.
If you RTFA, the two "sides" in that article are really on the same side, that is, the side of removing the consumers' rights for the content the consumers purchase.
KeyChest isn't really DRM, it's a central repository for purchase information of DRMed files.
The idea is that companies opt into it, and then every device knows what you own. So when you go download Finding Nemo off iTunes, you can suddenly watch it on your cable box from the cable company, because they are both members of KeyChest and both know that you have a license to that media.
Basically, it solves the "tied to one format" problem. Each file still needs a "real" DRM format, the KeyChest just serves as a central clearing house of what licenses you have.
This would fix one of the MAJOR problems with DRM. It's still DRM, but it would be better than what we have now.
There was a short article on this somewhere (Gizmodo, Engadget, Ars Technica, somewhere) last week. I can't find it right now.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Look, what happened between Betamax and VHS is well know, Sony were full of themselves with their better format, and didn't want to license it to anyone whereas VHS was licensed to anyone that wanted to build that platform.
But since then it's been easier to figure out which format will win. It's not which is technically better for consumers (ie. less / no DRM), but which company has the biggest pocket to give the biggest backhanders. Follow the money.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
With the multiyear HD DVD Blu-ray battle still a recent memory, we have a new standards face off in video, just as we do in eBooks, and just as it looks like we may in on-line print, where a new consortium led by the News Corporation and others is launching a standards-based "digital newsstand." All of these devices, of course, are targeted at you and I, and each has the potential to not only extend the woes of the music/video/print vendors behind these standards battles, but to waste your money and mine as well.
Does that strike you as a shame?
Hell no. The last thing we need is easy to use, standardized DRM. Apple derailed Microsoft's attempt to make Plays for Sure the boot stamping in the face of the music lover, forever, by making sure NOBODY won the music DRM wars. It looks like they're up to their loveable tricks again, and I salute them for it. A fragmented, hard to use, unreliable DRM ecosystem is to the consumer's benefit in the long term.
The TFA talks about the war between Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) from 6 of the big movie studios versus Keychest from Disney. But the important this is that Keychest is not DRM . As the name implies its a Key management service, proposed by Disney. It needs DRM such as DECE or Apple's Protected AAC stuff to work. The TFA's author doesnt seem to grasp the basic difference.
Legally obligatory sig : My opinions are my own... etc etc
Ok, I read TFE, and it seems to me that for consumers (which is what I personally am concerned about) there's a clear choice -- buy content (if reasonably priced) from Warner Brothers, Paramount, NBC Universal, Sony and Fox, and torrent content from Disney. What standards war?
Of course, if both solutions are confining and/or expensive, neither will be adopted en-masse. For the first time, consumers have a third choice -- free -- and to compete with that, content providers will have to provide something that benefits consumers instead of annoying them. I wonder if the content providers get this yet.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Technically, Steve Jobs is the largest single shareholder of Disney. His shares come to about 7% of Disney. He is also a shareholder in Apple but I'm not sure what about how many shares he has.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
All the major media companies except Disney and Apple are supporting a media-purchase-validation system that won't work unless your purchase is DRM'd. Disney and Apple are proposing one that works equally well with un-DRM'd media.
Jobs is at it again.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
So you are saying it will play for sure.
I really don't mind paying for my movies, tv shows and music. I do regret that such a big part goes to the studio vs musicians but that's the way it is in every industry.
What I do mind is not being able to use what I have as I should.
I want to be able to move recorded shows from my PVR to my laptop/ipod/psp/whatever
I want to par a reasonable price for rent vs buy and cheaper for the electronic compressed version. Why would I pay 20$ for a compressed movie when I can get a DVD for often half that price and the DVD will be easy to rip to PSP so my kid can watch it in the car?
-I.E., DVD/BluRay discs, any DRM is useless and will be subverted.
Encode the bits all the way to the monitor/TV display. It makes no difference. Someone, somewhere will figure out how to convince the data stream that it's driving an encryption compliant display, while in actuality, that now unencrypted data stream is being written to a hard drive as an H.264 video/audio file.
Even if eventually, everything comes from the cloud, the Chinese will be happy to sell you a greymarket flatscreen TV/Monitor with all the audio/video out ports you could ever want on the back of the display. All ready to plug into your computer.
Until then, ffmpeg and Handbrake/MacTheRipper are your archiving friends.
As for torrents, I look at the Internet as my own personal Digital Video Recorder that automatically edits out the commercials.
Oh, and lastly, I buy almost all my DVDs used. No point in paying the studios/networks/production companies that DRM their products.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
From TFA:
There lies the rub: Few want to replace all their gear just for a new DRM. I think Disne's seems the least unreasonable. If they eschewed DRM entirely, that would be reasonable, since DRM itself encourages piracy by making the legit data hard to work with and the pirate content easy.
IMO we're in a world wide recession because the Ferengis who run things aren't very reasonable, nor smart. If they'd stop worrying about pirates they'd sell more "content" and make more money.
Free Martian Whores!
Now, these numbers are slightly skewed by the fact that seasons of TV shows count as single DVD or BluRay titles but each episode counts as a separate streaming title, but it's more interesting when I look at the numbers added in the last three months:
They're still adding a lot of new DVD titles. That's still where their money is. I don't have a BD player and I watch things on a projector that only does 800x600. The streaming titles look a bit worse than DVDs, but not much. Things I stream from iPlayer are very close to DVD quality now, and I'm not even watching the 720p streams. By the time I replace my projector, in a couple of years, iPlayer will probably have increased the 720p streams to 1080p. There doesn't seem much attraction in renting BD over streaming.
If you buy films then it might make sense, but I rarely watch films more than a couple of times, and I'd rather watch a new film than re-watch an old one. I have a library of around 100 DVDs that I almost never watch. I can rent more than a dozen DVDs over the course of a month for less than the cost of buying one BD, so there's no incentive to buy.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I can't wait for this. When I buy a bluray film I will then be able to download the film to my iPhone and my netbook. Well, I will if iTunes and whoever also stock the film. And, of course the downloads may well be heavily censored versions of the film because you can't expect them to stock everything. Oh, and there will be lots of targetted ads that i can't ffwd through pasted into the films. Oh, yeah, and the netbook will have to be trusted so cannot be using that evil linux operating system.
But that aside, yay, woo, I have my credit card ready.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
And all of this means that NOBODY will support it. There is no way that the cable company, or iTunes will show you a movie for free because you purchased a copy from Best Buy or something and registered the key when you brought it home.
I am perfectly capable of managing my own digital rights. I don't need someone else's server to handle it, mine does so just fine. Keep sending out encryption of the same caliber as DVDs and I'll keep supporting your industry. If you treat me like I can't be trusted, I can, will and do act like it.
You _aren't_ going to get a key for "The White Album" you are going to get a key for "the 2011 release of 'The White Album" in MP3 format from Sony Interactive for use on sPlayer #xxxxxxx" simply because they _can_ be that specific and they _don't_ want to sell anything once that they can sell a million times.
DRM == RENT, and illegal prior restraint, and a scheme that can never actually work because it is a system that violates every principle of both software engineering and cryptography. No matter how you slice it, DRM is a stupid waste of leptons, time, and money. It is a system based on a complete lack of modularity and locality.
DRM is a classic case of "who will watch the watchers?" and not just at the corporate and financial and cultural levels. As a simple exercise in software engineering DRM must fail. It is a system that must be part of every element of a system (which is the failure of locality and modularity etc) to the degree that you need to have DRM policing the DRM system.
DRM is the Perpetual Motion of Software. People keep inventing new versions of it that don't quite work because no version of it can _ever_ deliver what is promised. Companies keep buying into the hype because they are blinded by "the potential". The only difference is that we are all being forced to buy these perpetual motion machines. Sure _this_ one has a battery in it, _that_ one has to be hooked up to the electrical mains. Some other one needs a waterwheel or a solar panel, and they will all tear off an arm or crush your child if you aren't careful... but we are _almost_ there... just one more scheme and we'll have it right...
The whole thing is a tax, levied by the stupid, paid by the sheep, and ready to break businesses when, I don't know, say Microsoft (or whomever) forgets to update a certificate (or whatever) before it expires (or whatever).
Where the heck do I find the Opt-Out?
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
This would fix one of the MAJOR problems with DRM. It's still DRM, but it would be better than what we have now.
CSS is DRM, but my DVDs will play no matter if I have an internet connection or not. If DVDs needed an internet connection, you wouldn't be able to watch them from a plane, train, or even a car most of the time. As it is you can take your laptop to the park and watch a movie sitting under a shade tree. With this stupid sceme you won't be able to.
Free Martian Whores!
Instead, what's involved are two different approaches intended to help content vendors somehow survive in the face of plummeting revenues
2010 was a record year at the box office and (I believe) the video store. Where's the damage that they are attempting to mitigate?
DRM just seems like a way to force me to rebuy what I already own 10 years from now.
I can't wait to register every device I own with one central authority.. Especially registering all the ones that connect to the internet!.. Bye bye freedom of speech, and anonymous cowards...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
DRM systems will live in their own insular little worlds until they fail financially (e.g. DIVX disk and self-destructing DVDs). But for everything else, it's simply a matter of firmware. There was nothing a user could do to turn a Betamax deck into a VHS deck, but as long as the disks are still round and read by lasers, it's largely just a matter of firmware, which in many cases can be upgraded without much difficulty.
For the computer/HTPC/media player box, it's even simpler. Those boxes already include CODECs for dozens of different formats, and many of those boxes include near automatic firmware upgrades to permit installing more CODECs and capabilities continuously.
DRM is the software version of Perpetual Motion. It is simply not possible to make the device described work as intended. But because of "the enormous potential income" should someone succeed, the greedy interest keep flushing money into the pockets of charlatans and charging the populace a tax for their stupid avarice.
Since DRM can only work if all the parts of the system are controlled by external DRM, including all the DRM enforcement parts, you end up with "its elephants all the way down."
So we will never be done until it is simply illegal. Just like the patent office will not accept patent applications for perpetual motion machines, and the FDA will not let unproved drugs out into the wild (in theory anyway 8-), the FTC (etc) will eventually need to refuse to let people try to sell things with this snake oil in it.
But like those remedies and limits, it will take a couple hundred years of corpses and bankruptcies cause by the offensive practice of duping companies into "DRM" before anybody finally acts to stop the scam.
And even then, people will still try to sneak it in the back door as "holistic systems engineering" or whatever.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
It is impossible to get behind any DRM scheme while a full flat ban on decryption remain in effect. Works that have fallen in the public domain but wrapped in encryption need to have a provision in law before we can even begin to talk about universal DRM.
Good-bye
Unfortunately, I only made it halfway through the article before I had to stop due to an unmatched '(' this 'bugged' me to the point I just had to quit reading...
They solved the DRM problem decades ago. Macrovision worked. DVD_CSS works.
They both stopped people from making casual copies.
I don't understand this drive for unbreakable DRM. It can't work. At some point you must possess both the lock and key in order to view the content.
You're never going to stop the motivated ones. Someone will always break the DRM. If for no other reason than to prove they can.
Both macrovision and DVD_CSS stop the casual copier and unless you tried to copy you didn't even know they were there. You still had your rights of first sale. You could play on any device. You could lend it out.
The only flaw they both have is the physical media requirement.
I find being offended by me offensive.