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Avatar Blu-Ray DRM Issues

Posted by Soulskill on from the revolutionary-zero-d-technology dept.

geekd writes "Once again, DRM only hurts legit content purchasers: 'An unusual glitch has angered some Avatar Blu-ray owners. For these unlucky people, since the disc won't play on their Blu-ray players, their new Avatar DVD serves no real purpose other than to sit idly on the coffee table. ... It appears the main culprit concerning playback issues with Avatar is, ironically, the disc's DRM (digital rights management). ... Even with updated firmware, a lot of Blu-ray players weren't prepared for these security measures. Despite the security problems, bootleggers are having a field day. Pirated copies of Avatar, according to Los Angeles Times, were available as early as January.'" Reader Murpster adds that this problem isn't specific to the Blu-ray version: "Got a regular Avatar DVD and it won't play on either of my DVD players. It will play on one computer DVD drive, if I want to watch it on a 12-inch screen."

43 of 376 comments (clear)

  1. DRM by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everytime they shoot themselves in the foot like this, public awareness and knowledge of DRM goes up. Even though the consumers are being hurt by this, it will make them realize that it's not always as easy as "buy, own, use however I want" anymore -- word of mouth is a powerful force in this industry.

    And right now, the word is... fail.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm increasingly convinced that "consumers" do not associate DRM problems with DRM itself -- rather, they view it as one manufacturer's problem, or even just a flaw in the DVD mastering. When the same DVD plays perfectly on another DVD player, that just "validates" that the DVD player was at fault, not the DRM.

      As such, wide-scale problems like this aren't viewed as *DRM problems*, just a DVD player problem.

      Terms like DRM are thrown around, but I don't see them sticking in the minds of most consumers. It's just another 3-letter-acronym that tech people like to use so much.

    2. Re:DRM by c-reus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Does spending a certain amount of money on a movie give you the right to sell a copy of the movie to anyone but only allow a subset of those people to view the movie they have bought?

    3. Re:DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a mobile phone. You wouldn't st... DISC ERROR.

    4. Re:DRM by sjames · · Score: 4, Funny

      Pay and pray that they do not alter it further?

    5. Re:DRM by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Whatever this does - it will essentially make it a PR win for the downloadable non-DRM-infected versions.

      But of course - the movie industry will be VERY silent about problems caused by DRM.

      It only takes one way to crack an encryption and the content is out of the box - and every player does contain means to decode the encrypted content. As soon as somebody is able to go into it a non-DRM version of a movie will appear, and it will also miss the hated copyright warnings that is pestering us to death.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    6. Re:DRM by dnahelicase · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm increasingly convinced that "consumers" do not associate DRM problems with DRM itself -- rather, they view it as one manufacturer's problem, or even just a flaw in the DVD mastering. When the same DVD plays perfectly on another DVD player, that just "validates" that the DVD player was at fault, not the DRM.

      As such, wide-scale problems like this aren't viewed as *DRM problems*, just a DVD player problem.

      Terms like DRM are thrown around, but I don't see them sticking in the minds of most consumers. It's just another 3-letter-acronym that tech people like to use so much.

      I disagree completely. DRM does stick in the mind of consumers in a case like this, and they do not blame the players, but do blame the disc.

      As soon as one disc doesn't work, they stick another disc in to see if it works. When the previously owned disc works just fine, and the new one does not, they blame the new disc. I imagine quite a few get upset, return the disc in exchange for another just like it. Then they get frustrated when two in a row don't work, call their IT Guy/Friend/Teenager and ask why. I/they explain DRM to them, how they must wait for an update to come out to play the disc, and nobody is happy.

      Even if they ask "do I need to buy a new player?" The best answer I have is "Who knows? A new one might have a better firmware, might not."

    7. Re:DRM by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Everytime they shoot themselves in the foot like this, public awareness and knowledge of DRM goes up.

      I tend to think of it as lost revenue. Because of this issue, people could be forced to return the BD+. Then some percentage of them will download it as opposed to wait for the problem to get fixed.

      Hell, the people who ripped it and uploaded it may already returned it, claiming to have been affected (people who rip and upload movies not being well-known for honesty concerning disk purchases).

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    8. Re:DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      My copy of Avatar works fine. I bought it in 2001 when it was called Disney's Pocahontas.

    9. Re:DRM by v1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I never went to the theaters, I don't need to be a part of that much of a circus. I had an (impressively good quality) screener a few days after it was out and that sold me on getting the bluray when it came out.

      I bought it the day it was released, but found that I was unable to feed it to my playstation because the BD+ DRM was too new for my ripper to support. The solution of course was to find the appropriate torrent and download the unprotected MKV file. Ahh 1080p on the 53" is nice. My laptop doesn't have the muscle to decode and scale down 1080p on the fly at that bitrate (the mkv is 19gb) so I transcoded it down to a more reasonable 720p so I can watch it on my computer when I feel like it.

      See what's wrong with all this, all you hollywood people? The only reason I am having anywhere near the experience I want with your product is because the pirates are delivering me a better product than you are. Figure it out. I just happen to be one of the people that supports you despite your insulting business methods. You have very little right to complain about the other % of us that just cut you completely out of the picture.

      Interestingly enough, I haven't even bothered to put the bluray in the PS3, so I don't even know if it will play properly. It was only out of its case long enough to rip (43gb?) to hard drive in a vane attempt to transcode. Nice touch including the DVD, and the coupon for a discount on a bluray player, interesting angle to get people to get a bluray player.

      --
      I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
    10. Re:DRM by paintballer1087 · · Score: 5, Funny

      This deal's getting worse all the time.

    11. Re:DRM by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If I could magically cad-cam-3d-print-replicate a car I would without a second thought.

      So would every bible-thumping person on the planet.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    12. Re:DRM by Protoslo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's really not fair. Were you going to watch it for the plot? All it had to offer was technological innovation in film making, something which it certainly did not steal from earlier movies.

    13. Re:DRM by Pharmboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      he problem with calling it "doublespeak" is that it's true.

      No, it is false. DRM doesn't stop pirating, and they know this. If anything, DRM *causes* more piracy than it prevents.

      1. DRM doesn't stop people from making bit for bit copies of the disks and selling them.
      2. DRM has never prevented any movie from being released to bittorrent.
      3. DRM on movies or games seldom slows down the release of pirated versions by more than one hour, or one day.
      4. DRM *does* force legitimate buyers to sometimes seek an unencumbered version, to use it the way they want to use it.
      5. DRM is about control, not piracy.
      6. Profit! If you live in zone 1, you can't buy and use DVDs in less expensive zones. They use DRM to make more money by controlling when and where you buy the copy.

      In this case, the only way the people who bought Avatar on DVD and Bluray can watch it, is to download a copy, effectively making them pirates because the manufacturer sold them a defective copy, since it won't play on all players.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
    14. Re:DRM by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 5, Funny

      With the cost of ink, it would cost less to just buy a car.

  2. Troubles with the plot by happy_place · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One could argue that DRM actually fixed this movie. :)

    --
    http://www.beanleafpress.com
    1. Re:Troubles with the plot by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Funny

      Whatever can you mean? How could you not love "Dances with Smurfs"?

  3. Don't buy blu-ray. by FlyingBishop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It isn't worth the price premium when you can't backup and it won't play without more tools to prevent you from backing up or even watching it.

    1. Re:Don't buy blu-ray. by jonbryce · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually the ripping tools work fine on it, and it the only way I could watch my legal shop-bought copy of Avatar was to rip it to disk and watch it from there, so they've failed completely.

    2. Re:Don't buy blu-ray. by cgenman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is the thing we need to get through to the content producers.

      Once the movie or game has been ripped and put on a torrent site, the ONLY people who encounter DRM are your customers. It's vaguely like having a security checkpoint at a concert with no fences. All of the people who are legitimately standing in line for hours and giving money will be inconvenienced, and all of the people you're trying to keep out will just walk right in. By definition, you're only stopping legitimate customers to verify that they're legitimate customers. Or, in this case, absolutely everyone the DRM is catching and rejecting is by definition a legitimate customer. Otherwise, they wouldn't encounter the DRM, and they wouldn't be rejected.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  4. That's not a bug, that's a feature by vm146j2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because when only criminals can watch movies, then ... er ... all the children will have guns. Or something.

    --
    "Lost time is not found again."
    1. Re:That's not a bug, that's a feature by Jeng · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When only criminals can watch movies then everyone will know how to hack their way into watching a movie they bought with their hard earned money.

      If DRM needs to be bypassed it will be bypassed.

      --
      Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
  5. Already cracked. by brunascle · · Score: 4, Informative

    The stable release of AnyDVD HD (6.6.3.4) doesnt support Avatar, but the beta version does ( http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=40115 ). It took me longer to update the firmware on my bluray player than it took me to update AnyDVD HD. Though the actual ripping still takes about 4 hours...

  6. Digital Restrictions Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the main culprit concerning playback issues with Avatar is, ironically, the disc's DRM (digital rights management).

    What's ironic about that? If you had expanded the acronym correctly, you would probably understand that it's just consequential.

    1. Re:Digital Restrictions Management by ShadyG · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ironic, you know, like rain on your wedding day.

      --
      Nerd Rock In Progress
    2. Re:Digital Restrictions Management by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Funny

      And what's ironic about rain on your wedding day?

      Its totally ironic if your parents arranged the marriage with a neighboring family in order to get access to their water rights in a drought-stricken land.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  7. No matter by Pojut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was a bare-bones release anyway. I'm waiting for the double-dip release which will inevitably contain a metric assload of extras. I have no desire to watch the movie again (although I did enjoy it strictly from an entertainment point of view)...I do, however, have great interest in watching any making-of featurettes that may be included.

    DRM issues or no, I'm steering clear of this release.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:No matter by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I do, however, have great interest in watching any making-of featurettes that may be included.

      They did it on a computer.

      --
      Comment of the year
    2. Re:No matter by Pojut · · Score: 4, Funny

      LOL, that's pretty much what my fiancee said :-)

      "Why would I want to sit there for six hours watching overweight bearded guys talk about where on the screen they clicked with a mouse?"

      --
      Living With a Nerd
    3. Re:No matter by vivek7006 · · Score: 4, Informative

      "This is not from the master. This is from an analogue print"

      Mods, the parent is bull-shitting. I own an Avatar blu-ray and the audio and video quality is outstanding. In the latimes interview, James Cameron even stated that he wanted to use all the available space in the disk just for the movie to ensure highest possible bit-rate

    4. Re:No matter by Jerf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Seriously, though, modern "Making Ofs" are all the same.

      Whereas the late 70s and 80s are actually interesting, because they had to do things. The "Making Ofs" for Tron and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, regardless of your opinions on the movies themselves, are actually interesting because they faced challenges that normal people could understand and met them with answers normal people can understand.

      In fact, a really technical "making of" of Avatar might be really interesting to us, but because the "making of" will be targeted at people in general, it is unlikely to have more than a few seconds of really interesting technical content, because people in general do not understanding complex computer graphics issues. (Nor should they have to.) All they can say is "They made it with computers. Here, here's some shots of rotating computer models."

      Tron 2 and the latest Star Trek movie are, of course, "They made it on a computer."

  8. pirates provide better product by Dan667 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Too bad you don't have a choice to buy it. The movie company is treating you like a Criminal, making you sit through FBI warnings, and is providing a product that may or may not work compared to the pirate version, which is what most people want.

  9. Warning Requires Constant Internet Connection by sweatyboatman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From TFA:

    In reality, the disc works fine; the problem stems from the Blu-ray players themselves. In order to run optimally, the firmware for these fancy Blu-ray machines needs to be updated regularly via a download from the Web. ...
    If a Blu-ray player owner doesn't have a home Internet connection, the chances are good the player's firmware will be out of date.

    Wow, this is cringe-worthy. I mean, Blu-ray quality is so awesome, it needs a connection to the internet! Did someone from Ubisoft work on the blu-ray spec, or was it the other way around?

    --
    It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
  10. Consequence of copy protection; is a fail by Bearhouse · · Score: 3, Informative

    FTA:

    In reality, the disc works fine; the problem stems from the Blu-ray players themselves. In order to run optimally, the firmware for these fancy Blu-ray machines needs to be updated regularly via a download from the Web.

    Of course they need this, to try and avoid the problems with older DVD encryption that had to store the keys on the disk and the player.
    Hence easily broken.
    Still, it's a bit of stretch to think that everyone who has a Blueray DVD, (especially a stand-alone one), will be able to keep it updated via the tubes.
    As always, DRM punishes the honest customers, and is busted fast by the hackers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy

    1. Re:Consequence of copy protection; is a fail by JavaBear · · Score: 4, Informative

      To make matters worse, the first few generations of Blu-ray players don't have any network connection at all.

  11. Take them back by bobjr94 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you want the problem solved, take your copies back to best buy or walmart and exchange them 4 or 5 times. Tell them this wont play, it must be faulty. If that becomes so much of a problem with hundred of returns at each store, they will complain to the distributors about how many returns they are getting and how much it is costing them. If walmart is not happy, things will be changed.

  12. Pirated product is actually better! by steveha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When will the studios ever figure out that the DRM isn't stopping piracy at all, and only hurts the honest customers?

    It's a bitter irony that the pirates offer a better product: it will play in any player (no DRM), it probably doesn't force you to watch an "FBI warning", it probably doesn't have a commercial about how evil it is to pirate things, and it probably doesn't have endless trailers for other discs.

    And it seems like discs get more and more annoying over time. Now it's not just the FBI warning, but also a studio logo, a distributor logo, a warning that "if you listen to the commentary, the views expressed may not represent the official views of the movie studio", and then finally an annoying long intro sequence (that may contain spoilers) before the menu finally appears to allow you to actually play the movie. The trailers are usually skippable but all the rest are not! You have to put up with this stuff anytime you want to watch the movie! Again, I'm pretty sure that the pirates don't do all this stuff, making the pirated product better.

    Once anybody, anywhere in the world, has released an illegal copy of your content, it's all over. No amount of DRM that punishes the honest customers can get that content back once it's on the Internet. Why do they even try?

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    1. Re:Pirated product is actually better! by godrik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As said xkcd before. pirate this comic : http://xkcd.com/488/

  13. let me get this strait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Due to restrictive policies put in place by the big evil corporation to restrict the power of people who own the material, I can't watch a movie about a big evil corporation who is restricting and stealing from a people who own the material?
    Wow. I think I figured out why the natives were blue.

  14. ironically by cstdenis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "It appears the main culprit concerning playback issues with Avatar is, ironically, the disc's DRM"

    That word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    --
    1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
  15. Re:The DVD I bought by godrik · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, 12 inch screen? Lame.

    Mine is larger. Otherwise, blue pill helps.

  16. your opinion is not a consensus one by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/2915/avatar.html

    'As for its other image quality attributes, this 'Avatar' Blu-ray is, frankly, perfect. I can find nothing at all wrong with it. The digital video picture is razor sharp and has enormous amount of fine object detail that puts the comparable DVD to shame. There is absolutely no grain or noise in any shot. Nor are there any digital processing artifacts such as artificial sharpening, Digital Noise Reduction, or compression flaws. The vibrant, vibrant, vibrant colors are stunningly beautiful. Cameron uses colors in 'Avatar' that you just don't see in other movies. The contrast range has solid blacks and excellent shadow detail. For a 2-D image, the picture has a terrific sense of depth. Really, this is the best-looking demo material yet released on Blu-ray, regardless of which aspect ratio you watch it in. I'd give it 6 stars if I could. '

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  17. Bought the Blu-Ray and DVD Combo - Both Broken by gadlaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yup, I happily bought the Combo pack of the Blu-Ray and the DVD. Put the Blu-Ray in and it flat out would not work. It helpfully informed me that if it didn't work it was the fault of my Blu-Ray, which I bought to oh I don't know - PLAY BLU-RAY videos! Three days later, a USB Gigstick and two tedious updates later it finally got to work. A horrible horrible experience I didn't expect to have to go through and I should not have had to go through. Insane to make it harder for me as a customer to use the product. The DVD? Oh it plays alright, but it plays with english subtitles permanently on and there is nothing I can do to turn them off and they cover the bottom third of the screen. Absurd. Thank you for creating a unusable product FOX. Of course, there was no place to complain except at Amazon - I gave a bad review of the Blu-Ray and DVD and I complained to the website of my Blu-Ray player. DRM - Broken by design.

    --
    Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.