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Avatar Blu-Ray DRM Issues
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."
One could argue that DRM actually fixed this movie. :)
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Because when only criminals can watch movies, then ... er ... all the children will have guns. Or something.
"Lost time is not found again."
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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
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.
This deal's getting worse all the time.
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!
With the cost of ink, it would cost less to just buy a car.