Microsoft, Chip Makers Working On Hardware DRM For Windows 10 PCs

writertype writes: Last month, Microsoft began talking about PlayReady 3.0, which adds hardware DRM to secure 4K movies. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm are all building it in, according to Microsoft. "Older generations of PCs used software-based DRM technology. The new hardware-based technology will know who you are, what rights your PC has, and won’t ever allow your PC to unlock the content so it can be ripped. ... Unfortunately, it looks like the advent of PlayReady 3.0 could leave older PCs in the lurch. Previous PlayReady technology secured content up to 1080p resolution using software DRM—and that could be the maximum resolution for older PCs without PlayReady 3.0." Years back, a number of people got upset when Hollywood talked about locking down "our content." It looks like we may be facing it again for 4K video.

Comments

This never works

[HBI]

Whatever they design, it'll be broken fairly easily and circumvented just like DVD and Blu-ray and every other DRM format. This is just keeping the plebs from making easy copies.

Re:This never works

[rudy_wayne]

It will either be cracked within a week, or, it will prevent 4k content form becoming popular.

Re:This never works

[BitterOak]

Whatever they design, it'll be broken fairly easily and circumvented just like DVD and Blu-ray and every other DRM format. This is just keeping the plebs from making easy copies.

"Keeping the plebs from making easy copies" would be a huge victory for the movie industry. There will always be some piracy, but the piracy the Industry fears most is that which occurs solely in the home, without the use of file sharing sites, cause it is ultimately the hardest to police.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Would 4k be popular without projector sized screens? With my ever fuzzier vision, 1080p on a 52" tv screen is about the right ratio. I can't imagine trying to setup a 100+" screen without using a projector. Would make local co-op even more fun. 4k Mario Kart 64 or Perfect Dark. If only.

Re:This never works

[HBI]

Then also, one has to wonder why anyone cares about 4k content. Sure, it's prettier, but is it enough better looking than a 1080p Blu-ray to make it worthwhile to obtain?

My bet is "no".

Re:This never works

[CohibaVancouver]

the piracy the Industry fears most is that which occurs solely in the home, without the use of file sharing sites, cause it is ultimately the hardest to police.

I find this hard to believe. If I buy Big Hero 6 on DVD and then rip it so my kid can watch it on my tablet I can't imagine the industry would care that much - Certainly much less than if if I didn't buy the DVD and instead just torrented it.

Re:This never works

[harvey the nerd]

4k is pretty but I can live without it. Besides, if they keep this up, asia will pass them by sooner or later.`

Re:This never works

[BarbaraHudson]

With an aging population, 1920x1080 will be what the eyeballs can use, and anything higher will be money spent for nothing.

Re:This never works

[mattventura]

It wouldn't do much. DRM circumvention is generally done by someone who actually knows what they're doing, and then the DRM-free version is posted for all to easily enjoy.

That being said the DRM will probably still be a joke.

Re:This never works

[SuricouRaven]

Under normal living-room conditions, you need a side-by-size comparison to tell 720p from 1080p. Anything more is just a gimmick.

Re:This never works

[mlts]

I wouldn't say it will be cracked in a week. The latest gen consoles don't even have a single crack or mod in place, much less an actual break, and with hardware DRM, it will be the same thing.

However, what will kill it is that DVDs, streaming, and Blu-Ray is "good enough". If people realize that their UHD content only can play on PlayReady hardware using only PlayReady monitors, cables, and other items... they will give it the same treatment as they did DIVX players and just not bother to buy it.

In fact, it might even slow down PC sales (which are stagnant already) if some misguided, false rumor gets around that the latest DRM spies on you or lets malware on your system. There was a lot of FUD about Secure UEFI booting... just wait until people encounter hardware DRM and cannot play their new 4k content.

Then there is bandwidth. 4K content is great... but bandwidth in a lot of places just can't handle it, so people will not be streaming it for the most part.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, manufactures will just partner with optometrists and roll everything into monthly financing payments. Get your 4k monitor and LASIK today, pay later!

Re:This never works

[jedidiah]

Keeping the plebs from copying their own stuff doesn't do anything but make paid for content less useful than the pirated stuff that someone else went to the trouble to liberate. And it only takes one. Past that point, all of the rubes can make extra copies as easy as if the original media had no DRM to begin with.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you are in their sights as well. The end goal is to get compensation for every separate ingestion of content. No first sale doctrine, entertainment as a service.

Re:This never works

[QuantumReality]

I think it will not be so trivial. Think about it, let's analyse this method. They are working with GPU suppliers, all decryption will take place on GPU. Which means no software will be capable of ripping it from screen like you can do it now. Because none of decoding takes place in software, which means you do not have access to decoded stream in OS. It means you need to rip it between GPU ----> Monitor path. Your GPU and CPU will have unique ID which will be probably sent to content supplier. Content will be encrypted for your hardware only. So the only way to get the video and audio streams is to use additional hardware.

Re:This never works

[g0bshiTe]

I give it a weak.

How long did Blu-ray last?

Re:This never works

[JaredOfEuropa]

Exactly. Why buy a locked down 4k bluray, when the Pirate Bay has a free copy that will play where I want when I want. I'll pay for content but not for digital restrictions added on.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

"The latest gen consoles don't even have a single crack or mod in place"

That you know of. :3

Re:This never works

[Megane]

I came to say roughly the same thing. 4K resolution is absolutely overkill for video. Sitting six feet away from a 37" 1080p TV set to 720p in Windows (otherwise I can't even read the small text), I can watch a 480p video without feeling like I'm losing anything. I still don't have Blu-Ray, aside from a BD reader drive that a friend gave me because he wasn't using it. I put it on an Ubuntu box and have not even been able yet to play that Talledega Nights movie that was one of the earliest releases (I got it real cheap at a thrift store, it's my only BD disc at all).

Re:This never works

[Megane]

I have a 1080p 37" TV set in the living room hooked up to a PC, six feet from the couch. I had to set Windows to 720p just so I could read the icon name text.

Re:This never works

[g0bshiTe]

The latest gen consoles don't even have a single crack or mod in place, much less an actual break

http://wccftech.com/hackers-break-ps4-firmware-176-webkit-exploit/

http://www.kdramastars.com/articles/71455/20150129/xbox-one-jailbreak-jtag.htm

http://www.se7ensins.com/forums/forums/xbox-one-modding.463/

Re:This never works

[PRMan]

6 months.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The difference between 720p and 1080p is vast, and I suspect 4K will deliver similar improvements.

People like you always use terms like "living-room conditions" and "normal viewing distance" but what I find from visiting friends house is that there is no such thing. The distance people sit from the television various widely, with some sitting right in front of it and others sitting up to 5m away. Likewise the size of televisions differs greatly, with some having 200inch projector screens while others just having 40inch displays.

Certainty, I'd agree that many people do sit too far from the screen or have too small a display to benefit from the higher resolution. I personally sit at a distance were I can view the video comfortably without having to move my eyes around too much. At my viewing distance 720p can look pretty bad and 1080p offers a vast improvement. While 1080p looks good, there's definitely considerable room for improvement. You only have to look at some high PPI tablets and phones to see how much better content can look when shown in a higher definition.

If you can't see the difference between 720p and 1080p you really need to move closer or get a bigger display. You're missing out on a lot.

Re: This never works

[CohibaVancouver]

Nope, you are in their sights as well.

I'm sure I'm in their sights, but what I said was I disagreed that this type of piracy was what the 'industry feared the most.'

Re:This never works

[itzly]

The latest gen consoles don't even have a single crack or mod in place, much less an actual break, and with hardware DRM, it will be the same thing.

A crucial difference is that a movie is read only. There's no interaction. So, all it takes it playing the stream, and finding the weak spot where it can be grabbed, for instance by hooking up special hardware to the LCD panel.

Re:This never works

[AnotherBlackHat]

Just checked a torrent site for Game of Thrones S05E01

Res:624x352, Size:424 MB, Seeds:8622, Leeches:399
Res:720p, Size:1013 MB, Seeds:6849, Leeches:643
Res:1080p, Size:2.66 GB, Seeds:2181, Leeches:171

So it looks like about 10% want 1080p, 40% want 720p, and the remaining 50% are fine with 352p
From that, I'd guess 80% of the market can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

But the main takeaway is that most care more about the story than they do about resolution - the acting isn't any better at 1080p.

Re:This never works

[PRMan]

"Was this hack always an inevitability? Perhaps not. Fail0verflow claims it only started to work on the PS3 system when Sony made the decision to disable the machine's Other OS functionality."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2011/jan/07/playstation-3-hack-ps3

It takes a long time when nobody's trying. As soon as Sony removed OtherOS, it only took a few weeks.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

I so want to agree with you two but I am afraid it will be wrong. lol

When I got my first 1gb drive and added it to my BBS, I swore no one would ever fill a gig! *looks over at his 10tb array that is almost full* guess I was wrong.

Re:This never works

[Penguinisto]

Under normal living-room conditions, you need a side-by-size comparison to tell 720p from 1080p. Anything more is just a gimmick.

...depends on the size of the set.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

https://d18oqavmcmo3u.cloudfront.net/resolution_chart.html is one example of how the high resolutions aren't worth it. There are many more as well. There is a reason, other than limited shelf space, as to why TV stores and makers all want you to see their stuff close up.

Re:This never works

[ckatko]

Congratulations, you now know you need glasses.

I went from using my 23" 1080p screen to a 40" screen at 1080p and it's blindly low DPI. You can see the damn ClearType subpixel rendering at a few feet away.

Re:This never works

[vanyel]

I vote on the latter - even now, with an 8' projection screen, I often select 720P instead of 1080 because the file sizes are much smaller and the visual difference is negligible. 4K media may be worth it on a 10m screen, but not at home.

Re:This never works

[barc0001]

Of course they care. You're supposed to buy it on DVD/BR to watch on your TV, then buy another copy in iTunes/Play to use on your tablet. Duh! You just cost them a sale with your tricksy format shifting ways. Won't someone think of the poor entertainment execs who have to slash their coke and hookers budget due to piracy like yours?

Re:This never works

[realilskater]

For many it is the file size not the resolution that determines which one they will download.

Re:This never works

[wbr1]

All it takes is a few with the ability to break and rip then seed the torrents. how many people rip themselves now vs torrenting? I have the capability but rarely do.

Re: This never works

[Eponymous Coward]

entertainment as a service

I'm okay with that if the price is reasonable. Netflix is a good example of an entertainment service that I think is very fairly priced.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.
Subtle facial expressions are part of acting, better resolution can show them better.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

But the main takeaway is that most care more about the story than they do about resolution - the acting isn't any better at 1080p.

Generally true, but I might make an exception for something like Game of Thrones where something like a nuanced facial expression can make a difference. (But mostly the costumes and sets of GoT are just so freaking awesome that seeing them at 1080 on a decent sized screen is worth it. If I were watching on a 7" screen, 352p would be plenty. I've already read the story, I want to see what the producers and actors do with it.)

Re:This never works

[Kjella]

He shouldn't have said in the home - probably more the school yard and campus. We used to pirate stuff on floppy discs and later burned CD-Rs with MP3s. Before online activation was possible as a requirement you could just install as many times on as many PCs as you wanted. And it wasn't like we hoarded it, here's my collections of MP3s for your collection of MP3s just pick anything you like and if you don't want the rest just delete it. But I think that's a bit 80s and 90s thinking, then you had Napster and the 00s. If there's "casual copying" like we did today, it's a secondary effect of a torrent download, one downloads and spreads it around to friends and extended family. That seems quite likely to still be going on.

Re:This never works

[CohibaVancouver]

how many people rip themselves now vs torrenting? I have the capability but rarely do.

Me, but I'm sure I'm in the minority.

I've never torrented, but I've ripped most of my purchased media for use on my own devices. I don't share my ripped media.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

This should read, "keeping plebes from making the FIRST easy copy." Once the DRM is stripped, subsequent copies are trivial. Plebe or not.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest gen consoles don't even have a single crack or mod in place, much less an actual break, and with hardware DRM, it will be the same thing.

A crucial difference is that a movie is read only. There's no interaction. So, all it takes it playing the stream, and finding the weak spot where it can be grabbed, for instance by hooking up special hardware to the LCD panel.

Or, you know, just doing a screen cap with a 4k projector off the wall you project it on with hour projector.

The way day one rips are already made in theaters by the projectionists.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be only the first copy that is redistributed through torrents that matters for the plebs who are interested in pirating content. The current media were already too hard to copy for the same plebs. This new technology is just another step to cripple the hardware, and Windows PC's will be even worse than the Apple vendor lock in. It will be Windows lock in and it is something they have been planning to do since the 90's but didn't dare to do because of the anti-monopoly lawsuits. This time nobody seems to care anymore, and they can slowly lock in an entire market (the desktop market) where no alternative can be installed. We will soon face the same technology so that only supported OS can use the hardware, because other OS will just be used to pirate.

Re:This never works

[kheldan]

Implying that 4K content will ever really catch on.

Re:This never works

[Dutch Gun]

I can certainly tell the difference between 1080 and 720 on my 60" TV when watching from about 10 feet away or so, although it's certainly not a dramatic difference. According to charts I've seen, I'd need an 80" TV to even begin seeing any benefit to 4K, and it tops off at 160". For most people, at least for TVs, 4K just doesn't make any sense.

Here's a handy chart to see the optimal resolutions given a particular TV size and viewing distance.

Re:This never works

[BrookHarty]

I have a 27 inch 2560x1440 monitor, with youtube 4k and test 4k media, I can tell the difference with 1080P vs 4K. Its a very big difference.

4K downsized to 1080P gives a great more detail, due to downsampling gives a higher detail, due to 1080P using 4 blocks with the same pixel, so 4k downsize, each 4 blocks are have a different pixel, its very noticeable. Chroma Sampling

Plus 60fps over 30fps YT is very noticeable, so thats another technology I want to see take off.

Also have a HDTV that is a normal 1080P HD tv, works great, yet i can tell the difference due to the low encoding rate on movies and the much higher on sports. Sports look absolutely amazing, none, none of the HD Prime movie channels are selling true blue ray quality tv. Comcast is ripping people off.

So do I want 4k? Hell, I want as fine pixels per inch as you can get, with the bandwidth to push it. We are no where a 50 inch tv running a high PPI, going to be a few decades away,which is a shame.

Re:This never works

[taustin]

It won't even do that. As DVDs shows, when the keys are built in to the hardware, they're impossible to update when they're cracked, and they will be cracked.

I really admire the snake oil salesmen who can convince Hollywood, time and time and time again (remember DIVX - the original DIVX, that is?) that what is done in hardware cannot be trivially duplicated in software.

Re:This never works

[taustin]

They're more worried about you buying the Big Hero 6 DVD and ripping it so your neighbor's kid can watch it on his tablet, thus causing the neighbor to not buy a DVD he wasn't going to buy anyway. It's still stupid, but not as stupid as what you propose.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of the Smart Cow Problem?

How do you think any content is pirated? That they simply read up on the work others have done before them and put the pecies together? (Actually, that would be a better outcome, if anything due to the fact the people doing it would learn more about the technology they use...)

Short answer: No they don't.

Long answer: No they don't, they simply download the pre-compiled exploit tools and follow the instructions.

So long as there is one person who can break it, their DRM will NEVER work completely, even for "the plebs."

Because it's /. some sarcasm:
The only other option they have is to include an *AA rep complete with a shotgun who lives with you for the entire duration you "own" the media, ordered to shoot to kill at the first possible moment you "deviate" from acceptable use of the media. That's the only possible way to completely prevent the piracy currently, but "Don't worry citizen!" (TM) The MANDATORY true AI anti-piracy system deployment with full round the clock monitioring of "plebs" will soon released as soon as they finish ironing out the bugs. (It still seems to have a desire to "Kill the fleshy meatbags.") /sarcasm

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if this works and can't be broken, there haven't been any decent movies produced for ten years or more. Blu-ray never caught on, neither will 4K streaming if it is encumbered with DRM, and bandwidth caps still exist!

Re:This never works

[mcl630]

...and your distance from the set.

When HDR comes along, you'll see the difference, regardless of resolution, screen size, and distance.

Re:This never works

[mcl630]

From that, I'd guess 80% of the market can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

From that, I'd guess 80% of the market is willing to trade the slight drop in resolution for much smaller file sizes.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep everyone knows it wont work including ms. But mainstream media will still want it and most importantly will pay for it. Even when it fails everyone with their fingers in the pie will cash in.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

You have it completely backwards. You already demonstrated a willingness to buy the product, that means you are more likely to buy a second copy if they make it inconvenient enough to rip. The hardcore pirates will not buy the product even if they can't obtain it any other way, so there is no point going after them except to make examples that will scare the honest consumers such as yourself into compliance.

Re:This never works

[sexconker]

Just checked a torrent site for Game of Thrones S05E01

Res:624x352, Size:424 MB, Seeds:8622, Leeches:399
Res:720p, Size:1013 MB, Seeds:6849, Leeches:643
Res:1080p, Size:2.66 GB, Seeds:2181, Leeches:171

So it looks like about 10% want 1080p, 40% want 720p, and the remaining 50% are fine with 352p
From that, I'd guess 80% of the market can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.

But the main takeaway is that most care more about the story than they do about resolution - the acting isn't any better at 1080p.

The first 4 episodes of season 5 were leaked before episode 1 (of season 5) premiered.
That leak was SD resolution, and it's throwing off your stats. A lot of people are seeding it because it came out first. A lot of people are getting it because it's listed alongside the torrents for episodes 2, 3, and 4 in many places across the web.

The comparison between 1080 and 720 is more valid.

Re:This never works

[thegarbz]

However, what will kill it is that DVDs, streaming, and Blu-Ray is "good enough". If people realize that their UHD content only can play on PlayReady hardware using only PlayReady monitors, cables, and other items... they will give it the same treatment as they did DIVX players and just not bother to buy it.

In fact, it might even slow down PC sales (which are stagnant already) if some misguided, false rumor gets around that the latest DRM spies on you or lets malware on your system. There was a lot of FUD about Secure UEFI booting... just wait until people encounter hardware DRM and cannot play their new 4k content.

The same treatment as DivX players? You mean that everyone in the world now has a player that is capable of playing them?

Also I think you have a strange view of the minds of the general populace. The majority of Americans don't side with Snowden and don't give a shit about spying. It's a sad reality for those caring about content freedom. All your same things were said about Bluray players which promised the absolute earth DRM wise including the ability to nuke players from orbit in people's living room.

We all still bought them.

Re:This never works

[sexconker]

If the GPU is doing the decoding then you just record frame buffer.

24*3840*2160*23.976

Just under 4.5 Gbps. 2 hours gets you just under 4 TB.

You can take advantage of the pre-existing chroma subsampling to reduce that, and you can do as much encoding (lossless or not) as you can keep up with to reduce it further. But even at full, lossless RGB, 23.976 FPS 4K video recording is easily achievable today.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they keep producing the discs and the hardware in China, there will be incentives for people who work in those factories to steal the content or parts to trade on the black market.

If these Hollywood types really want to see the end of piracy, they have to do all the disc duplication in-house, or get rid of discs entirely and "stream only", but for that they need to coerce ISP's to get rid of bandwidth caps.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why on Blu-ray they built-in provisions for revoking cracked keys, to avoid precisely that scenario.

Re:This never works

[Khyber]

"Which means no software will be capable of ripping it from screen like you can do it now. Because none of decoding takes place in software, which means you do not have access to decoded stream in OS."

Framebuffer rippers are absolutely nothing new and are software implemented. It's like the most trivial way to capture exactly what is being displayed on your screen. Cuz guess what? It' Microsoft - it's going to pass through DirectX FIRST. BAM the 'weak point' that most any game streaming service uses.

Re:This never works

[colordev]

Very much so. DRM for audio-visual content can and will always be circumvented - as long as humans need to be shown the content in decrypted form. Once a media file is shown in decrypted format, someone will record and convert it into non-DRM format.

If someone manages to create a really paradigm shifting and exiting media format "scent enhanced oculus-3D-hologram vibrating world with transparent multi-layering technology", then there may be temporary chance for effective DMRs - but even then only until alternative (open source) DRM-free formats are created.

Re:This never works

[hairyfeet]

What he is talking about is DIVX (all caps), named to make people think of the OTHER DivX , which was an attempt at "DRM in a box" that went over about as well as a loud ripping fart in an elevator.

I predict other than the *philes (the same folks that bought Beta, Laserdisc, and anything else that claimed to be "better" than the rest) 4K is gonna flop as bad as 3D TV, the reasons why are numerous, 1.- DVD is "good enough" for the majority, which is why after all these years BD is still not a blip compared to the massive DVD install base, 2.- The bandwidth in the USA to stream 4K without getting capped? EXTREMELY rare, most folks would be lucky to be able to watch 2 vids before they get capped, 3.- The not insignificant investment from users that really like what 1080p looks like now, and 4.- The fact it won't work with anything they already have, thus causing the "I gotta buy the Beatles albums again" syndrome which in a "jobless recovery" isn't gonna fly.

Considering the majority of PCs still don't come with BD? I'm really not worried about 4K DRM, it'll be another WMA, only bitch is the wasted die space used by your GPU and/or board for this shit you'll never use. Damn, now I'm gonna have to grab that R9 270x before they have time to add that shit.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

4k makes the analog hole more feasible, particularly if you don't care about 4k. Also, given how complex televisions are lately, I'd expect the weak link to be there. It is not as if the average manufacturer cares about keeping all the stuff they sold up to date with the latest patches. They have, after all, already been paid... For that reason, I certainly would be wary about plugging into the internet any television with a camera on it...

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between the DivX codec, and the player which was sold by Circuit City.

The player by Circuit City required a modem and would dial into a number to validate that a piece of media was allowed to be played. Yes, you could buy a "silver" piece of media which was supposed to play indefinitely, but most media only had a certain time that it was authorized to play. IIRC, the media was also bound to the player, so even the paid-for "silver" DIVX media could only work on one player.

The market gave that the middle finger over DVDs.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

why would I want to download 4k and then downsample to 1080 rather than just downloading 1080 to begin with? are your filtering algorithms better in some way? box/sync/gauss what?

do you even Nyquist bro? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency

Re:This never works

[Ol Olsoc]

Under normal living-room conditions, you need a side-by-size comparison to tell 720p from 1080p. Anything more is just a gimmick.

Re:This never works

[Chas]

You're right. It'll either be broken or it'll just deep-six the format.

I wish these jackasses would just stop wasting time, money and other resources telling people how they should consume content and put the cash they save towards...more/better content.

Fuck me! If they'd just stop with this idiotic shit, I'd look the other way and CHEER if they just used the saved cash to line their own pockets!

Look at the current situation of Blu-Ray.

There are NO free players out there that work reliably.

Most Blu-Ray player software, that isn't the trial versions that come with a drive, costs between $50 and $70
And all the PAID ones stop working for newer disks and force you to pay AGAIN to upgrade 4-12 months after purchase. Not to mention most of these programs are buggy as shit too.

Something like AnyDVD costs the US equivalent of $90 with updates for 2 years (and can be bought with lifetime support/upgrades for $130).
And you can recycle an old PC, toss in a few disks and BOOM! Media server!
At that point, it's actually less hassle and expense to RIP a Blu-Ray to a video file than it is to LEGITIMATELY play the disk!

Why? All this stupid DRM crap standing between the content makers, the content and the consumer.

Re:This never works

[Ol Olsoc]

Under normal living-room conditions, you need a side-by-size comparison to tell 720p from 1080p. Anything more is just a gimmick.

Your doctor called - You're booked for next Tuesday for your Cataract Surgery.

Seriously though, Mt better half used to have the same opinion you do, and yes, on her next visit to th optometrist, they told her she'd be having cataract surgery soon. Now? She very well knows the difference between the formats. As in "Oh wow" 480 to 720p, an "Geeze wow" 720p to1080p.

There are more bullshit myths about HDTV ever since the days when the get off my lawn crowd were telling us that you couldn't see the difference between HDTV and NTSC.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Deserves the +5 Informative!

Re:This never works

[TheDarkMaster]

I'm in this situation. The only way I can watch the Avatar Blu-ray I bought is using AnyDVD to remove the DRM, because even the "official" players can't play the movie. Ridiculous.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

We purchased the Samsung 65" 4K curved in the after Xmas sales and the 4K picture is amazing with nature videos. I imagine improvements all around will continue the theme. If anything, this seems a chance for AMD to re-surge.

Re:This never works

[AnotherBlackHat]

Other shows have about the same ratio, though smaller totals.
We can quibble about why more people download lower res versions, but it's clear that people are.
1080p is currently losing to 720p is losing to SD across the board.
Maybe that's because of the file size, but that's just another way of saying 1080p isn't that important to people.
Personally, with my equipment, I can't see a difference between 720p and 1080p, even up close, so I assume that's the reason (some) people don't bother with 1080p.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a very dangerous attitude to take. I mean yes, it may be broken, but this runs dangerously close to "it will get broken, so no need to oppose it's creation in the first place". Which will be taken by those in charge as a tacit acceptance of DRM - after all they can now claim that there was no opposition when they introduced SuperSecurePlayReadyLookShiny v15.2, so no-one will mind when they lock the bios down even harder "to protect our valuable movies from nasty pirates" (and coincidently lock you into windows 12 with forced obsolescence in 3 years) or whatever other insult to assumed freedoms they come up with next.

Also it's a big claim to say that DRM will be cracked so quickly, if at all. Sure, ripping old-school DVDs is trivial because it was designed by a drooling idiot, and their attempt at region coding was a joke. But blu-rays? Can be done, but not so easy now for some titles. What about the next gen? What if they *don't* make some stupid mistake and get the crypto right... right up to the monitor hardware? What then? Sure you could rip the back off the monitor and stream straight off the feed to your LCD module feed, but for most people you might as well tell them to fly to the moon and collect magical cheese.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

These sites should all be hosted on anonymous overlay networks such as I2P and Tor.
They are way too vulnerable to takedowns.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, it is NOT the file size. 8TB disks are cheap.

I choose LOSSLESS. That way I NEVER have to get another copy ever again.
And I can shrink it to whatever I want.

Today LOSSLESS means...
Rip a CD, convert it to FLAC.
Rip a DVD, store it as the raw VOB rip files themselves.
Rip a BluRay, shrink it down to a full DVD-9 using FFMPEG. If you consider you're storing DVD as VOB's, a shrunken BluRay to a full DVD-9 will be even better than those. You kinda have to shrink them to DVD-9 if you expect to create and share a 500+ title library over the anonymous darknets ;-)

Re:This never works

[Bing Tsher E]

That's storage, which scales to infinity. Screen resolution is something you look at all at once. To put it another way, you'd never run all 10tb of whatever is contained on your hard drive array all at once. At most the typical user accesses an 8-10gb file at any one time.

Re:This never works

[tepples]

Couldn't you just set your monitor to 1080p (its native resolution) and increase the DPI setting in Windows?

Re: This never works

[DoofusOfDeath]

Whoa there. You wouldn't steel a car, would you???

Re:This never works

[Donkey_Hotey]

I disagree. Subtle facial expressions are part of acting, better resolution can show them better.

I reckon that makes Kristen Stewart one of the greatest actresses of all time.

Re:This never works

[jones_supa]

A negative cannot be proven.

Re:This never works

[jones_supa]

and finding the weak spot where it can be grabbed, for instance by hooking up special hardware to the LCD panel.

That's extremely hard. Good luck getting something like that to actually work. The senior electronics engineer who might be able to create such grabbing system has probably a better-paying job somewhere else.

Re:This never works

[Luckyo]

Have you tried looking at it without pushing your face into the screen yet?

Re:This never works

[AnotherBlackHat]

While I agree with you that 1080p is the way to go, it seems that most people do not.

Could you point to a specific "nuanced facial expression" that was visible at 1080p, but not at 720p?

Re:This never works

[Gavagai80]

Large file size means slow transfer rate on typical limited internet connections. And most of us still don't have 8 TB disks, and even if we did that'd fill up pretty quick with TV series at 1080p.

Re:This never works

[Gavagai80]

If you've purchased the DVD, you've shown you have the money and inclination to pay. They may have a better shot at forcing you to pay a second time for your kid than they have at getting a pirate to spend money. It's better for their bottom line to focus on stopping you from copying your DVD than to worry about the basement-dwelling pirate who lacks disposable income.

Re:This never works

[SuricouRaven]

If I were working for the evil empire and designing a DRM scheme with a hardware GPU component, I wouldn't have the video going into the frame buffer at all. The buffer will just contain lots of black pixels. The video goes in a seperate area of memory, partitioned off, which cannot be accessed by anything on the PCI-e interface at all. The GPU just overlays it into the image as the final step before it goes into the HDMI/HDCP logic for transmission.

Re: This never works

[cyber-vandal]

It might not take off in the US but luckily for TV manufacturers they can sell to people all around the world. My bandwidth is 80/20 uncapped which can easily handle 4K streaming.

Re: This never works

[cyber-vandal]

Many people might if the chances of being caught and punished were the same as being arrested for ripping a DVD. I would certainly copy a Ferrari if the tech existed.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you now know you need glasses.

I went from using my 23" 1080p screen to a 40" screen at 1080p and it's blindly low DPI. You can see the damn ClearType subpixel rendering at a few feet away.

If you watch a 40" screen from only a few feet, then maybe you are the one needing glasses ?

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

4K downsized to 1080P gives a great more detail, due to downsampling gives a higher detail, due to 1080P using 4 blocks with the same pixel, so 4k downsize, each 4 blocks are have a different pixel, its very noticeable. Chroma Sampling

H.264 supports 4:4:4 sampling (and so does even the old JPEG image format, for that matter), in other words, full chroma resolution. Obviously, this increases the bit rate required for the same quality, but not quite as much as encoding at 4K resolution and then throwing all the extra detail away.

Re:This never works

[serviscope_minor]

Have you tried the latest OSS stuff with BD+ decryption support?

I only ask out of curiosity: I don't own a BR drive so I have no experience. There's also not a huge amount of info online on how well it works in practice.

Actually part of the reason I don't own any BR discs is because of this. Watching a smallish screen from a distance (my TV isn't huge) doesn't require 1080p all that much and I CBA to fuck with encryption, unskippable ads, lack of proper seeking and so on during my leisure time. And the discs are a bit pricier. Add that all up and I have no BR player.

Re:This never works

[Megane]

Congratulations, you now know you need glasses.

No, it means I have a lawn. Can you see it? Good. Now get off of it.

Re:This never works

[Chris Mattern]

What you're overlooking is, although they'd like more, they still regard "keeping the plebs from making easy copies" as a worthwhile goal.

Re: This never works

[Megane]

But I might aluminum a car.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point. The argument isn't really that you can't tell the difference. The argument is that most people don't care about it. That was not true with HDTV vs NTSC, but one also has to realize that flatscreen televisions were introduced at the same time. The form factor was enough to trigger adoption.

That is not the case now. I know if getting ultra high resolution means dealing with Hollywood and Microsoft bullshit then I don't want it.

Part of that is general principles. I will own my hardware and it will do what I want and nothing else. There's another part though: Even though it's possible and I have the knowledge to do so, I don't even pirate the stuff they have now because what they produce is so bad I don't want it even for free.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Expert here. You are wrong.

Re:This never works

[doccus]

I've already had a chance to see the 4K format on Youtube.. Bloody awesome on a large iMac. Maybe they're going to use hardware DRM for DVDs , but what about 4K content purchased on YT?

Re:This never works

[Reziac]

Just curious, what monitor do you have?

Re:This never works

[Reziac]

I own a shitload of DVDs. But I usually watch downloads. Why? Because no need to rip it first, it's already handy, and no risk of scratching my disks. The disks are backups.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't give a shit about what happens outside of the USA, I thought you guys knew that by now.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Newb here, you're wrong.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, according to the video industry, you're right up there with the Boston Strangler.

The MPAA/RIAA are not "reasonable"-- they believe you should pay every time you view or listen to a copyrighted work. Anything less than that is theft of their potential income, made worse by the plethora of identical sounding music "acts" and blue/orange graded movies with recycled plots.

They're in a race to the bottom, with the brilliant idea that if they make it more and more difficult to view their material (which is less and less interesting), they'll make more money.

In short, they are quite insane.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather carbon fiber it.

Jokes aside, the issue isn't "stealing" vs "not stealing"-- it's defining what rights I have to something I paid actual money for.

We are paying real money for virtual items (the right to view content) that may be taken away from us at any instant, for any reason whatsoever, with no recourse whatsoever.

At this point, I have no interest in the survival of any media corporation. I hope they all burn as a lesson to future generations that greed is a terrible business model.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean 24 "weaks" ;)

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Insightful. Wish I had points today.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Subtle facial expressions are part of acting, better resolution can show them better.

When was the last time that you walked up on stage to view an actor's facial expressions?

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

All it takes is a few with the ability to break and rip then seed the torrents. how many people rip themselves now vs torrenting? I have the capability but rarely do.

I've recently had to rip a Region Locked DVD for my sister (Jack et la mécanique du coeur) and transcode it into a watchable on Xbox format for her, this was the first time in something like four-five years I've ripped anything.
I considered looking for a torrent, but thought, what the hell, I might as well try ripping this with handbrake.
Bad move, on my machine it took over four hours..I would have been faster downloading the damn thing than ripping and transcoding, I suppose this is the same for most people.

Re: This never works

[hairyfeet]

Name ONE high end consumer product, just one, that did NOT sell big in the USA that sold enough overseas to be kept in production due to its popularity there...yeah thought so, HAND.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

..t's a secondary effect of a torrent download, one downloads and spreads it around to friends and extended family. That seems quite likely to still be going on.

Locally, there are several active sneakernet distribution chains/systems/whatever in existence. Basic modus operandi is several large TB portable HDs are shared around, people take what they want off them, and if anyone has something in their collection not on the disk, they add it. Even though under normal circumstances these disks stay within maybe a 5 mile radius, some of them are well travelled (I've been told one does a round trip of 860 miles every couple of weeks). A torrent downloaded in another country, two weeks later spreads to initially between 5-9 other machines, they then pass copies around to their friends and relatives..and so on...
   

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

you wouldn't steal a policeman's hat!

you wouldn't murder that policeman!

then shit in his hat, and give the hat as a gift to his grieving wife!

stealing is bad folks! worse than german cannibalism!

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

That's extremely hard. Good luck getting something like that to actually work. The senior electronics engineer who might be able to create such grabbing system has probably a better-paying job somewhere else.

Ah you mean like engineers who worked for Big Blue, but who also made rather nifty cartridge->floppy disk copiers/cartridge emulators for the Megadrive back in the day? .
Do not underestimate the power of boredom, you'd be amazed what some senior electronics people get up to, especially if they've been dragged kicking and screaming into the mindless paperwork mill that is management..sometimes in life it's not just about the money.

Re: This never works

[JackieBrown]

We don't give a shit about what happens outside of the USA, I thought you guys knew that by now.

If only that were true...

Re:This never works

[Munchr]

I've noticed the same thing when watching Youtube 4k videos on my phone - hurrah for high dpi screens. You'd think with a physically small screen the difference wouldn't be that noticeable, but it really is. The only downside I see is blowing through my monthly data cap in a single afternoon :P

Re:This never works

[Hognoxious]

To be honest, you're not missing much.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm okay with that if the price is reasonable.

If it were up to the MAFIAA, you'd be paying each time you watched/listened to it, with a cost dependent on the number of people in the room at the time, whether or not they were paying attention, because they are, whether they are interested or not, an incidental audience for the performance.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the 80s micro computers that were made in the UK; ZX Spectrums, Amstrads, Acron machines, etc. They all lasted several generations in Europe before the market collapsed.

Re: This never works

[DoofusOfDeath]

you wouldn't steal a policeman's hat!

Well, not before coming across Netflix's Jeeves and Wooster videos. Now I'm not so sure.

Re:This never works

[rtb61]

Let's be honest by far the bulk of content except maybe landscape channels sucks balls at 4K. Botox dead faces, awful plastic surgery, crappy acting, set flaws, bad special effects, poor camera work, stupid shit like lens flare and the list goes on. Never of course to forget the blatant bullshit of 3D double vision (now there was a truth they managed to hide for years, lying bastards). DRM or more accurately the theft of everyone digital rights pushed under the PR=B$ lies of digital rights management (they really are sick people when they come up with that blatant double speak).

This has nothing to do with anyone's digital rights and everything to do with censorship in hardware, in your home, that you are forced to pay for. Don't pay a licence fee for your wedding videos, see them blocked until you do. Can't play old content on new hardware because you can not transfer it as you are actively blocked from doing because they specifically want to charge you for the same content over and over and over again, well, suck it on up losers. Are M$ evil, you, betcha. Why are the evil fuckers at M$ so desperate for it, monopoly in collusion with a 'PATENTED' DRT (digital rights theft) method, that is the pay off for them, that and a long term plot to become the dominant global publishers and drive most others out of business.

Re:This never works

[Akaihiryuu]

Honestly, I'm still happy with DVD's. And I see zero point to higher resolutions than 1080p at this time. Especially since I'm less than a foot away from my monitor when using it. I don't own a TV, if I watch something it'll be either on that computer or on my laptop (which is 1368x768). And DVD is more than good enough for my needs. Does 1080p video look better? Yes. Does it look better enough to make it worth dealing with all of the DRM (I won't use proprietary software to play movies)? No, not at all. Honestly, the only DVD's I have that look "fuzzy" at 1080p are old TV shows...and the DVD is basically the same quality as the masters they had since they weren't recorded at high resolution.

Re:This never works

[Akaihiryuu]

Right now, I download my TV shows/movies from Pirate Bay or wherever, and then I get the DVD's when they are released. I can easily play DVD's without using any proprietary software, and I can also rip/re-encode them to any format I want (for things like watching movies on my phone at work). The physical media has value to me because of how useful it is (and the fact that I don't have to keep terabytes of videos around). I don't care about Blu-ray, or 1080p...most DVD's look fine to me on my 1080p monitor (considering I am usually less than a foot away). I don't own a TV. The only DVD's that look "fuzzy" are old TV shows, and it's not the DVD format that's making them fuzzy, but rather the fact that they are old shows that weren't recorded at a particularly high quality. If they make it so the physical media no longer has that value to me...then I will simply stop buying it and download everything. I'm not paying money for LESS convenience. If there is going to be less convenience, I will simply put that money into lots of extra hard drive space instead.

Re:This never works

[OmegaWolf747]

If you can see it on your screen, it can be recorded in one way or another.

Re:This never works

[AlCapwn]

That's extremely hard. Good luck getting something like that to actually work. The senior electronics engineer who might be able to create such grabbing system has probably a better-paying job somewhere else.

If you could manufacture a device that would bypass virtually all forms of video/audio DRM, you could make some nice pocket change I'm sure. Or at the very least you could impress at a convention.

Re:This never works

[BadDreamer]

4K downsized to 1080P gives a great more detail, due to downsampling gives a higher detail, due to 1080P using 4 blocks with the same pixel, so 4k downsize, each 4 blocks are have a different pixel, its very noticeable

That downsampling can be done before the pixels are pushed to your TV and will yield the exact same benefits.

Re:This never works

[Megane]

I knew some wise-ass Windows 8 metrosexual type would say that. Hint: I'm not running that new of a version of Windows. Also, the game that is the reason I have Windows installed wouldn't respect the DPI setting anyhow.

Re: This never works

[cyber-vandal]

Nokia N95. HAND.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you say is true and that 4K downsampled to 1080 makes a big difference, then you can simply downsample the source. It doesn't have to be downsampled client side.

Re:This never works

[dave420]

It doesn't really matter. If there is no DRM, the content creators/distributors will not be as willing to release on the affected platforms, limiting choice. It's only when the DRM is "catastrophically" broken do they pay attention.

Re:This never works

[dave420]

You can adjust font sizes in Windows going back over 10 years...

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Good arguments, and I couldn't agree more. At best, it will sneak into laptop sales where users are sucker-punched with whatever is installed. In whatever case, it will be slow adoption - if at all. I, for one, will vote with my dollars and buy other media. And as one person pointed out - and I've argued many-a-times - if you can read it, you can rip it - even if it takes some hardware hacking with some sneaky cables.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Precisely.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? So as to direct money to things you enjoy. Buy it. Then download it from PB as well, for the device-shifting ... Having cake? $14.95. Eating it too? Priceless.

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's nice to share.
That's the way it is.
Truly ooly ooly is.

Re:This never works

[CohibaVancouver]

But it's nice to share.

I have several friends and family members who work in the 'entertainment industry' so I don't torrent. Drop in the ocean, but at least I can say I don't.

I'm close to an animation director, set carpenter and set landscaper.

Re:This never works

[Muad'Dave]

Actually the studios axed DiVX. The agreements were for so many movies per year, and as the studios didn't want to hurt DVD sales or their own (nonexistent) streaming services, they began to provide movies like "I'm Gonna Git You Sucker", I kid you not. The DiVX platform was way ahead of its time - it was a tiny embedded JVM on its own processor that had a standard interface for the DVD player system to interact with. The same hardware ran on every single DiVX player - write (and build) once, run anywhere.

Supposedly the concept of the 'jar' file was a direct result of DiVX research.

It was a really cool idea - I could buy a disk from 7-11, toss it on the shelf, and watch it when I wanted to - no timeout on the first viewing. You could watch it as many times as you wanted to within 48 hours of the initial viewing, and be charged a buck or two thereafter (including on someone else's device). Each disk was individually serialized, so the backend always knew which disk had already been played.

Re: This never works

[toddestan]

Sony's MiniDisc pretty much bombed in the US but was fairly popular in Asia, especially in Japan, until about the mid-2000's or so.

Re:This never works

[toddestan]

Changing the Windows DPI setting works on Windows 2000. Some applications may or may not play nicely with it though. What are you using, Windows 95?

Re:This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Drive space isn't the problem, it's downloading the files that's the problem. Or, in the case of torrents, uploading it again as a seeder, as most people have slow upload speeds. Unless it's something really special, I'll grab the lowest resolution each time because most likely I'll watch it once and delete it afterwards. No point in maxing out my upload bandwidth for several days for that.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if its your eyes or the distance, but you should see a clear difference.

From further back like 10ft from my 52" plasma, I can tell if the video is 720 or 1080p. It's less than the difference between 480i and 720p.

I have no plans for 4k until this plasma dies past extended warranty and cannot get it serviced.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

On the small size screens, the improvement is coming from other things, like brighter white and darker dark. There's very little apples to orange comparisons due to this for 720p vs 1080p.

Unless you view your phone from 3" away.

Re:This never works

[topologicalanomaly47]

I don't understand. Nobody bothers pirating physical/legal media, that's why DRM only hurts paying customers. Any of the "plebs" knows he can get the file off piratebay and incidentally that file won't require DRM chips, phoning home, standing on your right toe while tickling your left ear in order to play.

Re:This never works

[topologicalanomaly47]

For many it's also patience, HDTV comes first, 720p hours later and 1080 can take up to a day to appear.

Re: This never works

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say or was hard but certanly not extremely hard. I am a software guy so I would just point a high end videocamera at the screen. If the camera was â screen I would do it four times for each quarter of the screen. If I couldn't use a higher frame rate I may even do it all twice etc.

In a dark room, knowing the exact dimensions and resolution of the source and having a rough idea the the lenses distortion I can take multiple samples per pixel to create an extremely fathful copy.

This isn't even a lot of data now a days; I wouldn't bother optimising the code, but I expect someone who did could get it done real time from multiple cameras.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

And why would anyone willingly submit themselves to this abuse? I absolutely will not be adding hardware that only serves the purpose of limiting what I can do with my PC.

Re:Why?

[harvey the nerd]

I agree. I doubt asia will stop mining or manufacturing old hardware as long as someone has a use and a few bucks.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you will not be adding the hardware that does this. Because chip makers are doing it for you. If you want a computer, it will have DRM built in at the lowest hardware and software levels. Period. Deal with it, and stop making stupid and empty threats.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same reason people buy Apple hardware and games on Playstation.

Most people don't care about "serving to limit what they can do".

Re:Why?

[MrL0G1C]

Absolutely, I never bought a blu-ray player because there was always talk of DRM related playback issues - especially for the PC. Also they didn't drop in price like DVD and CD Drives, I suspect that's because of a shit-load of DRM patents.

Re:Why?

[Kjella]

And why would anyone willingly submit themselves to this abuse? I absolutely will not be adding hardware that only serves the purpose of limiting what I can do with my PC.

Does your computer have a HDMI/DisplayPort or DVI port made in the last 10+ years? You got DRM. Nothing keeps you from running the RMS-approved distro of choice and play all the creative commons content you like though, you won't notice it's there until you try to play protected content. And that's why boycotts won't work, the only reason to buy a DRM-incompatible version of the same hardware is so you can try to play protected content and bitch about it not working, kinda like buying a Mac and complaining it won't play PC games.

You must understand that the entire movie industry is in a "now or never" mode, DVDs was broken, BluRay was broken and these 4K discs will rival the cinema master (DCI 4K) in quality. If the standard is established enough they can't just ditch it and the DRM is broken, they won't be able to do one better. So they're trying to make this the most unholy DRM abomination ever, because if it fails it's game over. It's really that simple.

Re:Why?

[mcl630]

So I guess you won't ever buy another PC or graphics card after this becomes standard?

Re:Why?

[Somebody Is Using My]

More to the point, why is Microsoft doing this? What do they gain by adding this to their software? I can understand when a media-producer forces DRM down the pipe, but are the advantages of Microsoft adding DRM into its OS really more than its disadvantages, especially when it is already slowly but inevitably losing marketshare.

Certainly there is no hue and cry from their customers demanding this new "feature". I doubt Microsoft themselves really need it; while they make some attempt to crack down when their software gets pirated, they are well aware that if they cut off the pirates entirely then those potential customers might just start looking to other software ecosystems. Movie and music publishers will love this, of course, but are they really so important that Microsoft can't just ignore them? Especially since this is something new to the OS, not a feature being added to make Windows10 compatible with existing media. I can imagine Linux, Android and Apple positioning themselves as the "freedom" alternative by not including this DRM; certainly those markets are large enough that neither the MPAA or RIAA will prevent their wares from running on all those computers, tablets and cellphones; is Microsoft really willing to let that happen? Or is it software developers that are crying out for a centralized DRM store? Is that whose needs Microsoft is trying to satisfy?

Windows still has a majority stake in desktops, but it is losing overall market share when you add in tablets and phones. People are becoming more and more comfortable using other operating systems and desktops are becoming less and less relevant. You would think Microsoft would be bending over backwards trying to make a product that the users would want to use but they seem hellbent on pushing forward a vision that meets the needs of nobody but themselves.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't do it for me either. I won't be buying this encumbered garbage. I already have a computer that doesn't have this malware as part of it. In fact, I have many computers. I won't be throwing them out, I will keep using them into the future.

Deal with it, and stop making stupid comments about what you think others will do.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'd prefer to have my DRM'd software to only check with the security processor of the CPU than trip the copyright protection after three hardware modifications, removals included. It's horribly stressful to maintain a system with a software license instead of a hardware dongle.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, why is Microsoft doing this?

Because it locks down the system and puts your PC under Microsoft's direct control. It will be trivial to connect this with the earlier this week lunacy about their Apple wannabe "Device Guard" which will require all your software be purchased from the Microsoft store (or other "authorized" vendors, which won't include open source). And don't forget about their current "Secure Boot" scheme where they are attempting to prevent Linux (and all other non-MS OSes) from even booting on modern PC's.

Certainly there is no hue and cry from their customers demanding this new "feature".

If you think the average PC owner is Microsoft's customer you are sadly deluded.

I can imagine Linux, Android and Apple positioning themselves as the "freedom" alternative by not including this DRM

If the DRM is based in hardware the currently running OS won't matter. That is why MS is trying to bully the hardware manufactures to build it directly into the next gen chipsets. Support for the DRM will be in the microcode drivers that allow the motherboard talk to the BIOS.

You would think Microsoft would be bending over backwards trying to make a product that the users would want to use but they seem hellbent on pushing forward a vision that meets the needs of nobody but themselves.

I think that Microsoft has not yet clued into the fact that they are no longer the 800 pound gorilla that they once were. Their management doesn't realize that the days of PC owners running the gauntlet of endless MS product upgrades, bending over and saying "Thank you sir, can I have another" are done.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

EFI and secureboot could lock out other operating systems if they really wanted to make it happen.
At very best, they could make it a complete hassle to install any operating system that doesn't have a signed key for it.
What operating systems would that leave for the general population to use ? YEP ! The ones who comply with the new DRM system.
Apple have so many devices out there that it would be a bit stupid for them not to take advantage of royalty benefits.
Microsoft need all the help they can get because windows is on a downward spiral.

The media industry can generate a lot of money, and therefore, tax.
If the media industry lobbied for secure-boot-only motherboards and won government support for it, they can then force the signed keys to change. From there, they can put such a big price on licenses for signed keys that other operating systems won't realistically be able to afford it without losing so much in resources that they start becoming resource starved.
Ripping out support for newer high definition media would be a good way to save on resources and developer time :)

DRM-free hardware ? I don't think it will be on the same level of quality as what Intel, AMD, Nvidia currently have to offer, and it almost certainly won't be as good as what it will be in the future.
There could be a "dark age" in quality hardware for a while.

The general population is quite "monkey see monkey do".
When your kids watch a movie that shows someone using windows, they will come home asking for windows.

In the end though, it would only apply to higher definition media which incorporates the new DRM.
Unless monitors are also forced into using this new DRM scheme, there will be a way around it.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is that you won't have a choice. It will be ubiquitous. So inevitably, at some point, you'll need to upgrade your motherboard (possibly because the new hard-drive you bought is only compatible with DRM-enabled hardware), and you will have to chose between this shit or... nothing.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It will stop you currently if you're using an ARM powered machine.

And it will stop you when they bring out Win11 and make "secure" boot a requirement for all PCs.

I just won't get a new PC and when the ones I have finally die I'll just do without. Until then I'll use the old games and ignore the industry entirely.

Note, this even screws up those few publishers who do not use DRM to "protect" "their" game, such as CDProjekt if their games require an OS that won't run on my current PC setup.

However, they won't be allowed to blame loss of sales on anti-piracy.

Re:Why?

[SuricouRaven]

They gain exclusivity. If the latest content is available only on this new PlaysReady 3.0 DRM system, that means it's a Windows-only feature. Want to watch Netflix in 2017 on linux? Can't do that! It'll be encrypted and only under Windows will decryption be possible. Watch a 4k-blu-ray? Nope, Windows only! Apple may have the clout to negotiate some alternative DRM scheme, but linux et all certainly won't. This creates a barrier to all non-Windows OS: A capability they lack and that people want, much as used to be the situation with DVD before it was fully cracked.

It also drives upgrades, which is a serious concern to MS. Their biggest competitor isn't linux, it's themselves from ten years ago. Look how they struggle to get people to move away from XP - it's inevitable that the situation will repeat with Windows 7. What they need is some new in-demand feature that is only supported on their latest OS. Like 4K video playing.

Re: Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people don't care NOW because as offensive as DRM is to a lot of us, it doesn't really stop their stuff from working as they intend.

By that I mean they buy a console game and it works in their console. Buy a DVD and it works in any DVD player. Well, except when it needs an update anyway.

When Hollywood and Microsoft change that model, people will care. They cared about the flop that was DIVX, and there's obviously something about BLU-RAY that people don't like overly much since it's market share is pretty bad.

The thing is most people aren't principled enough to vote with their wallets on things that don't cause them grief, plus they don't understand the limitations this stuff brings. When those things get in their way though, that's something else entirely. Look at the fail that was DRM for music. Now we have totally legit mp3 stores because people wanted them. DRM was getting in their way.

So we end up with something that will be cracked, or we end up with a good crypto implementation that won't be cracked. They lose in the first scenario, and they lose in the second due to people not wanting things that actively hinder their enjoyment of what they bought. Ultimately if they do anything except produce content people want at a price they want to pay they lose because THAT is how you stop piracy.

Re:Why?

[jmac_the_man]

Also [Blu-Ray players] didn't drop in price like DVD and CD Drives, I suspect that's because of a shit-load of DRM patents.

It's not. CDs and DVDs won their wars and became universal formats. You still see more DVDs sold than Blu-Rays, and realistically, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both lost out to direct streaming (Netflix et al.)

Re:Why?

[Somebody Is Using My]

I doubt Netflix (or whomever) would be willing to lock out all the millions of Linux (read: Android) and Apple users, many who use a smartphone or tablet far more often than a dorky desktop, so its unlikely that Microsoft would get this desired exclusivity. And it's not as if Netflix wouldn't offer those wares on Windows if Microsoft hadn't embedded the DRM. I really don't see other developers or media companies as the reason behind this move.

But it occurred to me after I posted that more likely reason is because Microsoft is betting hard on moving towards a service-based (read: subscription) model for its software. They need a foolproof way of locking people into its pay-to-use ecosystem, one that cannot be easily bypassed with cracks or fake serial numbers. Its does them no good if users can bypass the software that shuts down Windows if you are behind on your monthly payments. Furthermore, they want to make it as difficult as possible for people to put another OS on the hardware so you can avoid the subscriptions entirely.

Protecting their potential subscription income, more than any other thing, explains to me why MS is suddenly so interested in hardware-based DRM.

Re:Why?

[jmac_the_man]

It will be trivial to connect this with the earlier this week lunacy about [Microsoft's] Apple wannabe "Device Guard" which will require all your software be purchased from the Microsoft store (or other "authorized" vendors, which won't include open source).

Microsoft plans to distribute a key generator for Device Guard. You can take a binary of a commercial (or open source) program and SIGN IT YOURSELF and it will work with Device Guard. (Also, Device Guard is intended for Enterprise situations, where the IT department is blocking unapproved software based on their corporation's policy. This isn't a consumer thing anyway.)

Re:Why?

[0123456]

And you'll always be able to turn off Windows Boot on a new PC.

Ha-ha-ha. How dumb do you think we are?

If you read between the lines

[ArmoredDragon]

What they're saying is "If you want to enjoy your content unencumbered, it's probably best to just pirate it."

Re:If you read between the lines

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and I will. When are the fools going to learn that it's going to backfire on them?

it's hard to patch hardware

[WillgasM]

Once it's cracked, it's cracked.

Re:it's hard to patch hardware

[sqlrob]

That depends on the break.It's easy to replace keys.

Re:it's hard to patch hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Not when the keys are embedded in the hardware...

The hardware becomes junk when the keys are changed for encoding. Of course, if you can replace the decoding keys then they will be cracked even faster.

Re:it's hard to patch hardware

[peragrin]

Tens of thousands of unupdated bluray players beg to differ.

Here we go again.

[marcello_dl]

Reminds me of the blu ray DRM that made them unsuitable for linux.
Result, no blu ray here.
Not even when the player got cheap and linux supported it.

Re:Here we go again.

[gmack]

I have yet to see a good Linux blu-ray player. The result is that I simply rip the blu-ray with makemkv and then run the result through handbrake to bring the size down a bit. This has the added advantage that my quad core xbmc box ($110 CAD) lets me browse though my movie collection on my NAS using my remote and that's far less effort than swapping discs. This also came in handy when I was in Spain and Amazon sent me the US region movie instead of the EU region movie and the blasted thing wouldn't play in my EU locked blu ray player.

Re:Here we go again.

[SuricouRaven]

The only reason linux can even play DVD is that CSS has more holes than the Conservative party budget proposal.

Re:Here we go again.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Wow. Much Left

Re:Here we go again.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about PS3? It uses Linux and has a Bluray player.

Finally a DRM that can't be broken

[Anonymous Coward]

By the average user!

You cannot stop the DRM Behemoth

[Anonymous Coward]

Content producers want DRM. They will never accept arguments about why it should not exist, nor will they accept that it won't work. They will honor persistence as their primary virtue and they will *never* give up.

Count on this being in your future, now and forever.

Re:You cannot stop the DRM Behemoth

[taustin]

Folks like you said that about digital music, too. And yet, pretty much all music is sold without DRM these days.

Fine by me...

[neminem]

You know the content will still be uploaded to thepiratebay literally within seconds of release (or sometimes before... thanks, anonymous GoT leaker!), right? And everyone who wants to pirate it will just do that still? So this is only going to hurt, or at least vaguely annoy, people who weren't going to pirate it anyway?

faint whiff of BS?

[sribe]

So, it will be totally impossible to create software to decrypt these video streams? They now have an algorithm which can be implemented in hardware, but not in software? Yeah, right...

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes. DRM is always a scam. They're ripping off the copyright holders who pay for it. Just like spam is nothing but a scam, whose victims are the stupid companies that pay spammers to advertise for them.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[rudy_wayne]

Where exactly is this "hardware DRM" going to be? On the computer motherboard? On the DVD/Blu-ray drive? It seems that hardware DRM would require everyone to buy new hardware and i really don't see that working out well. One of the reasons that DVDs are still more popular than Blu-ray is that Blu-ray requires buying a new, more expensive player.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you can do almost anything in software that hardware can do. If that software is allowed to run. I imagine that all software on the PC that accesses protected resources would have to be signed/authorized to run and that there is a chain-of-trust baked right into the boot process. That chain-of-trust would not trust *you* but it would trust *them*.

Anyway, good luck securing video. There are already HDMI dongles and do-dads that completely break HDCP and they don't cost a lot. If you can't rip it from inside the PC, you can always rip it at the HDMI connector.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[hraponssi]

No idea how it might work. But if its anything like the TPM stuff the compewter would hold some chip with keys you could not access except by running the funcitonality stored on the chip that has access to the internal keys. You then use that to decrypt the video. Which would have to be encoded to your key. Perhaps it has some specific key to communicate with MS, who uses the chip public key to send you some AES type symmetric key with the video. Then you could only look at it with the compewter that has the chip. Of course, once your compewter blows you could forget the videos, or watching them on any other system. Unless you could register several and the video would be encoded for all those keys.

Just making stuff up here, not that I know..

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that Blray costs $10 more than DVD for the same movie.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[AmiMoJo]

Actually hardware security is pretty good. Secure description chips where the key is stored in a special memory and wiped instantly if you try to open the chip up have proven fairly resilient so far.

Each computer will have a unique key that is used to encrypt media before it is downloaded, and a private key you can't read out of the chip to decode it. Like AACS for bluray the crack will probably be a flaw in the algorithm, not in the hardware.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lookup Intel SGX in Skylake and stop laughing... This is super serious, Intel is even willing to make a slower processor than Broadwell just to do lowest-level DRM. Guess why they are going to offer both Broadwell and Skylake desktops at the same time?

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[Anonymous Coward]

And once it's cracked, the hardware encryption code won't be upgradable. Unless the code is upgradable microdode or firmware, in which case it'll be cracked even sooner.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[taustin]

And if you can't rip it at the HDMI connector, somebody will crack open the shell of the monitor and tap in to the ribbon cable attacked to the LCD screen itself.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[ArmoredDragon]

SGX sounds like malware heaven. Who needs a rootkit when a normal process can hide itself in plain site? The NSA would have a field day.

Which by the way, that last part might be a good rallying point to nip that technology in the bud.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[SuricouRaven]

I tried to find out, but I got nothing: Microsoft has published a fair bit of material about how effective the new DRM will be, but nothing at all about the technical side. Not publically, anyway - I expect that material is only available to potential customers, under an NDA.

Re:faint whiff of BS?

[Anonymous Coward]

The scheme is most probably based on Intel SGX extensions (that will soon be implemented by AMD and forced upon ARM as well). Basically, a process can request all its memory to be encrypted and invisible even to hypervisor. The catch is that somebody from outside (like any of your favorite TLAs) who has a private key to your CPU/batch can see anything in memory, whereas you as an owner can't. You might not even be able to observe a foreign process (be it a criminal malware or investigation tool) on your own computer (today with 64-bit Windows you have about fifty-fifty chance of spotting something if you know where to look.

but I can....

[harvey the nerd]

... stop buying from it. Even if I have to live in Archive.org.

The new analog hole.

[BarbaraHudson]

Play the video repeatedly, using a hi-res camera to focus on a different rectangle of the screen each time. Use the zoomed images to calculate the actual pixel value (since you'll most often have each part of the sensor picking up parts of each pixel and dark space, so you're doing a reverse sub-sampling). Stitch them all together.

Re:The new analog hole.

[dwywit]

Even simpler - point a 2K camera at a 4K screen. The result will be good enough for most people, and will quickly become popular on torrent sites.

Re:The new analog hole.

[Howitzer86]

Hardware DRM 2.0 Proposal: Videos only playable within intense the EM field of a Neutron bomb.

Re:The new analog hole.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, cameras will start acting like scanners and printers. If you attempt to print a high quality image of a US bill the printer stops part way through and refuses to finish. They'll add similar watermark detection into cameras and it'll become mandated that all new cameras have it (or the media companies will pay them to add it). The camera will stop recording when it detects the watermark. Think Cinavia on cameras.

Unfortunately (for them)

[tsotha]

Unfortunately, it looks like the advent of PlayReady 3.0 could leave older PCs in the lurch.

Other considerations aside, this alone makes the scheme DOA.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it just means it will get phased in over time as old PCs die and are replaced, and there's nothing new to buy except what supports this scheme.

It might take a few decades to get near a 100% penetration, but that's ok. They're patient.

Think about your PC from two decades ago. How useful would that thing be today? Well there you go.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[Anonymous Coward]

15 years ago I had a computer with dual core maybe 1.4 GHz, maybe 1 GB or 2 GB memory, 20 GB hard drive, etc. Really that should be plenty. Heck I was browsing the web on a 486 SX 25 with 4 MB memory and 170 MB hard drive in 1994. So the computers of today should be quite usable a decade or two from now, just don't use bloated locked down stuff like Windows.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[Megane]

But aren't PC sales on the decline these days? About the only thing driving PC sales these days (aside from simple replacement of broken computers) is when Microsoft end-of-lifes a version of Windows. And that may have been mostly because the computers that ran W2K and XP could be so low spec. Microsoft may have to force the end of legacy BIOS booting for this to happen in significant numbers.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[Moof123]

Worse yet, PC's today are barely faster than 5 year old ones at similar price points. Moore's law ran headlong into a thermal brick wall. The real speed increases are showing up with SSD's and better GPU's. The GPU's look to be approaching similar issues as intel is, they are just a process generation or two behind them. We can no longer expect a 2x speedup ever couple years, but more half that rate at best.

The net result of this and other trends (brain drain and money drain by mobile) is that we can expect that most home and work PC's will not be worth upgrading much faster than every 4-8 years, while 2-3 was the norm not that long ago.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[epyT-R]

How else do you think 'consumable' content is created? The death of the pc is the death of the internet as anything but cable tv 2.0. That's not what you want unless you own a cable company.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[duke_cheetah2003]

But aren't PC sales on the decline these days?

I'm with you on this. Seems to me the PC is on it's way out. For the common consumer, seems like tablets and smartphones are giving the majority of people what they want, without the big bulky PC and all its trimmings. PC's are gunna be a business tool and enthusiast thing again. Fine by me, might get the big corps out of the PC business and let us nerds have our way with them again.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[tepples]

How else do you think 'consumable' content is created?

By employees of established media production companies that can continue to afford PCs even after they become specialty products marketed only to businesses.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[tsotha]

No, it just means it will get phased in over time as old PCs die and are replaced, and there's nothing new to buy except what supports this scheme.

But then they have a chicken-and-egg problem. Nobody is going to make sure to buy a PC with the DRM hardware if they can get the content without it. Nobody is going to produce content exclusively for DRM'd hardware if market penetration of that hardware isn't more than a tiny blip. And consumers aren't going to wait five years for the industry to get its shit together and produce a system that works transparently for authorized users.

One of three things is going to happen: Tools to strip the stream of DRM will become ubiquitous, the scheme will die from lack of adoption, or Microsoft will succeed in prompting a mass move off of the PC platform, thereby finishing the process (started with Windows 8) of slitting its own throat.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[tsotha]

Worse yet, PC's today are barely faster than 5 year old ones at similar price points. Moore's law ran headlong into a thermal brick wall.

That's not really true. Design rules are still shrinking at about the same rate they always did. Moore's law, after all, is about transistors and not speed. Chip makers can certainly use that extra real estate to add cores and dedicated hardware for things like video processing.

But the real problem (from Intel and Microsoft's perspective) is far more pernicious. Five year old hardware is good enough for 99% of people who need a PC. If all I'm doing is commenting on Facebook, watching Netflix movies, and doing my taxes there isn't any reason to replace my old hardware. I'm sure that's a big part of the attraction for the chip makers - they'd love to force everyone to buy new hardware in order to watch videos.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even. New PCs running Win 8 are slower than 5 year old PCs running Win 7. Despite all the hype of Win 8 being improved - it isn't really.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[tsotha]

If the volume goes that low they're going to cost $2500 again, though.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[Akaihiryuu]

Except for gaming. Gaming is really the only thing that needs a computer newer than 7 years old now.

Re:Unfortunately (for them)

[epyT-R]

Sounds pretty depressing tbh.

Not going to work.

[SuricouRaven]

The video is compressed. It needs to be decompressed for playback. This can only be done by the processor. This means a vital link in the chain is software - and therein lies the weakness.

Re:Not going to work.

[PRMan]

Compressed HD video is currently decoded by hardware on your graphics card. Especially on your phone, which isn't powerful enough otherwise.

Re:Not going to work.

[QuantumReality]

It was weakness with the older software method. With hardware you will get encrypted stream until it gets to GPU. It means that you will not be able to touch decoded stream from software. Which means you can't crack it without additional hardware.

Re:Not going to work.

[DigiShaman]

Suricou sorta has a point though. Intel HD video is all processed on CPU; which is the majority of OEM laptops and desktop computers now. So being that Intel is taking part in this, either the hardware will be implemented in the next CPU revision, or on a bridge chip someplace on the motherboard.

Re:Not going to work.

[SuricouRaven]

Or on the GPU - which means you'll only be able to play DRMed 4k if you've got a PlayReady3.0-certified video card. Intel HD video may incorporate the GPU onto the same die as the CPU, but it's a logically distinct component - as far as software is concerned it's just another PCI-e card.

Re:This is horrible news

[Your.Master]

If you read the article, they give stats on this, but I don't understand them because they seem to contradict themselves:

According to Parks Associates, 68 percent of all American households watch streaming video on PCs, with about 53 percent of all streaming video consumed on computers. But many, many more have given up the PC to watch movies on connected TVs: 89 percent, Parks says.

So...53% of all streaming video is on computers and 89% is on TVs instead?

Other statistics I've seen corroborate the PC thing, even if that surprises you. I don't know where that 89% number comes from or what it refers to. Maybe people's future plans?

Re:This is horrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

um go tell that to the millions upon millions that have downloaded media players

nice propaganda piece hell my 1998 pc still with upgraded vlc plays all the latest stuff and it cost what in todays terms NOTHING

the truth is we arenot needing new crap no more...only idiots buy win 8 and beyond

Re:This is horrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are all those users of Plex, Xbmc, and MediaPortal running on then?

Hah

[Anonymous Coward]

4K is dead, basically.

That said, 4K was a fucking gimmick like 3D to start with.

Re:Hah

[koan]

I disagree as far as professional (or consumer since my GoPro does 4K at 30 fps.) videography, there are editing reasons to use 4K.

Re:Hah

[Megane]

Ditto for 24/96 and 24/192 audio. Too bad that Neil Young doesn't understand the concept that the purpose of higher resolution sources is to reduce artefacts during editing/mixing, and thinks that we need to carry around lossless high-resolution audio on dedicated player hardware.

Re:Hah

[koan]

Also recording and applying audio effects (reverb, etc) at high sample rates allows several advantages.
Some of which are covered here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Re:Hah

[BadDreamer]

A case can possibly be made for lossless, especially for complex music. A fan of Meshuggah can usually tell the difference between lossy compressed and lossless versions of their tracks. However, even a good mp3 compression algorithm at decent bitrate is so good it's very hard to beat chance in an ABX test.

As to 24 bits and any sample rate over 60kHz? Only useful for trying to blow up stereo systems and turning people deaf. The dynamic range of 16 bits alone is more than a healthy, young human can make use of outside the laboratory (or even for the most part inside it) and is much, much higher than that of any music. And if there is magical information hiding above around 20kHz, we simply can't hear it - or see it with any existing measurement tools, which means we can't record it either.

Have they learned nothing from Cord Cutters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it too hard and the kids will go out and play.. and shock, horror, confusion!.. discover there are better things to do than watch the same movie they saw at a theatre for ten times the cost, fifty times over.. its kind of like a drug.. watching re-runs.. but once its purged from your system.. its also like getting over bad food posioning.. you just don't go back.

Those that do.. just don't reproduce.. and then they're purged from the gene pool.

Re:This is horrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet that "53% streaming video" includes youtube cat videos and whatever, but the 89% on connected TVs is for watching movies. Then there's no contradiction between them.

Re:This is horrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand the difference between "streaming video" and "movies"?
Like, the former including things like TV series, YT, twitch, ...?

Psychic Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

| will know who you are
Ya, sorry I'm not using my real name, birthday, etc. anymore for anything but banking credentials nowadays.

Re:This is horrible news

[jedidiah]

> So what are all those users of Plex, Xbmc, and MediaPortal running on then?

They're such a small and geeky part of the PC market that Linux no longer seems obscure anymore.

The movie studios are full of idiots

[Karmashock]

I'm sure MS etc knows this can't possibly work. So they're doing this to placate the movie studios by doing something that the studios think will work even though it can't possibly work.

All that has to happen is ONE person has to break the DRM and then convert the movie or whatever into some other DRM free format and then that format is passed around the internet.

Look at all the crap on the pirate channels and it is all DRM free. And nearly all of it had DRM on it at some point. It was stripped off.

Now they say here that this is Hardware DRM. But that's bullshit. Some aspect of it is going to be software and that is where the cracker is going to break it.

So yeah. Headline should read "Movie Studios still don't understand how computers work."

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[Rob Y.]

But it may give either Microsoft or OEM's an excuse to use the new 'flexibility' in locking down the boot process. If the movie studios require secure boot to be turned on - or even require it to be manditory in the BIOS - before they allow you to view 4K content, then maybe OEM's will start selling Windows 10 machines with a BIOS that doesn't allow you to disable secure boot. Hopefully there won't be a market for that, since once that's in place, all that needs to happen is for Microsoft to switch to a new key for secure booting and charging an arm and a leg to sign Linux bootloaders. Not quite game over, but game made one hell of a pain in the ass.

I guess it's a race between Microsoft seeing a new opportunity to re-monopolize PC hardware and their realizing that Windows is enough of a 'natural' monopoly as it ever needs to be to be worth sacrificing any goodwill over. The whole 'Windows 10 will be a free upgrade' thing makes me think that their number one priority with Win10 is to get Metro on every desktop in the hopes that developers will then feel the need to port to it. Otherwise they've lost mobile for good.

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[Karmashock]

Not really because the hardware makers want to sell their boxes to linux users and linux users include corporate contracts and small fabricators.

A lockable boot process with some interaction between the bios and the core system files is not unreasonable. However, you are right that MS would have it locked if they could get away with it. But they can't.

Lets say one manufacter does that... which one are you going to use instead? Anyone else. They'll not all lock it even if it gets so far that ANY of them lock it.

I wouldn't worry about it. The PC world wouldn't tolerate it.

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[duke_cheetah2003]

I think the DRM industry just has some pretty good sales people who are fleecing the entertainment industry. Fear works wonders for sales! "We can stop people from stealing your stuff, really, it does work this time, promise!" Mmhmm. Sadly, the entertainment industry is still listening to these snakeoil peddlers.

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

There are one BILLION people in the world who would gladly pay $1 to own a lossless copy of the movie of their choice direct from the studio, no middleman, no shitty rips, no malware.
Movie studios never figured that out.
Oh well, pirates won.

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[Karmashock]

They've been at this long enough to know better. That they don't is merely incompetence.

Anyone that knows how a programmable computer works knows you can't prevent them from being reprogrammed without ruining their value.

They can't lock the operating system on a PC like they do with some smartphones. For one thing, the memory is physically exposed. For another, most of their customers require the machine to be reprogrammable.

And even if they were able to do it, they won't be able to lock all the machines just many of the consumer models. And the people ripping and uploading bluerays or dvds won't buy those machines if they prevent them from doing that. WHich means they'll either build their own using various parts to assemble their own system out of bits that aren't locked... or they'll buy a business class machine that won't be locked because business won't put up with this shit. A business IT department or data center or etc is not going to buy a machine they can't override or control or upgrade.

So this is little more then the Tech companies telling the apparently clueless studios lies that many children at this point would see through.

That the tech companies get away with that merely means the studios don't know how computers work. And that's pathetic. This is the 21st century. Figure it the fuck out.

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[Rob Y.]

I think you may have an overly optimistic view of the PC world if you think any significant share of shoppers for your typical HP box at Best Buy or Amazon would even think to ask whether it lets you disable secure boot. And I'd guess that lots of corporate buyers would like making it impossible to install a second OS on the box.

The missing part of the equation is any reason for HP or Dell to do this. It certainly doesn't cost them any more or less to allow disabling secure boot. So maybe we Linux fans just need to make sure they remember that. But HP and Dell being computer companies, hopefully they have enough Linux fans under their own roofs to get the point.

Still, if the movie companies have their way in restricting content to secure boot only systems, HP might just go along, and Microsoft would go along in a minute - as long as they can blame the anti-competitive aspect on somebody else...

Re:The movie studios are full of idiots

[Karmashock]

1. I said already that the big box people would probably not notice but the market is a lot bigger than those people. And it doesn't matter if they all get locked because the pirates are generally more sophisticated and they won't buy machines that don't let them rip movies. Which means they will rip the movies. Which means they'll upload DRM free movies on the internet. Which will let anyone watch it whether their machine is locked or not.

2. even if the big boxes get locked down that leaves the rest of the market which won't tolerate the locks and so they won't be locked. Those segments of the market are huge.

3. nothing is going to force every manufacturer to do this and those that don't will enjoy a competitive advantage because locking the machines against the will of the owner is a competitive disadvantage.

4. All it takes is the machine the pirate uses to rip the video to break the entire system. ONE person rips the video and then copies it to 10 other people. And those ten copy it to 10 other people each. And those copy it to ten other people each. And so until everyone has a copy of the DRM free copy.

The above is obvious to anyone the understands how computers work. The movie studios should understand this by now. They've had time and experience. That they don't is simple incompetence.

Cinavia hasn't been broken

[BenJeremy]

Audio-based watermarking that survives a variety of attempts to process it, and even overcomes being recorded second-hand. ...and yet, all it requires is somebody digging into a Blu-ray player's firmware to determine the detection algorithm.

There are claims by products $$$$ that it has been cracked, but all of those methods involve a database for specific films to apply their "fix".

Re:Cinavia hasn't been broken

[sexconker]

Cinavia HAS been cracked.

Re:Cinavia hasn't been broken

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't most people play their movies on a media player that doesn't enforce that crap anyways?

Re:Cinavia hasn't been broken

[ncc74656]

Cinavia HAS been cracked.

[citation needed]

(Not that it really matters to me, as none of my playback hardware pays any attention to it: not my TVs, not my OpenELEC boxes, not my surround-sound receiver. Maybe the Blu-ray players care about it, but they mostly gather dust while the OpenELEC boxes stream from a media server.)

Re:Cinavia hasn't been broken

[sexconker]

You can "[citation needed]" or you can look it up.
Your generation is useless.

Cinavia was cracked about 2 years ago and public tools for removing it from streams have been available for well over a year (often for money). Additionally, there are other (free) tools that attempt to round out the gaps that are left when the Cinavia signal is stripped out.

Even Wikipedia has this info.

Fucking bullshit

[AndyKron]

I am so sick of this fucking bullshit.

Re:Fucking bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, there is plenty more coming.

This sort of thing will not stop, so you will probably do your emotional health some good if you find a way to cope.

Re:Fucking bullshit

[DigiShaman]

Just side-step the issue and go with Netflix or HBO streaming. There's a lot of premium content worth purchasing online. No need to keep purchasing the same rehashed movie content.

The war against DRM didn't win or lose, rather, the war became obsolete.

Re:This is horrible news

[mrdogi]

Hiya. The apparently lone PC movie watcher here. That's just about all I do. I recently had my faithful Panasonic DVD player from ~2002 break, needed a replacement. The Sony piece of junk is a pain to try to use. Takes for ever to come up and forces me to wade through most of the beginning junk to get to the movie. VLC on my laptop is now about the only way I watch movies at home.

And I will never get a Smart TV, or if I do it will NOT be connected to any network anything.

Now get off my yard!

Keep those old PC's going!

[duke_cheetah2003]

They might become necessary to do any real GP computing in the near future!

Here's hoping mine doesn't let the magic smoke out any time soon.

Re:Keep those old PC's going!

[Anonymous Coward]

I collect vintage computers and even ones from the 1970's still work today.

FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even close to first. You are an idiot for caring about first post, and even more of an idiot for failing at it.

But you already know that, right? That is why you posted as A/C. Just like me. But I am doing it so the mean-spirited vitriol of my post won't hit my karma, whereas you are doing it because you are too ashamed of your worthlessness to have your login attached to your failed attempts at doing something stupid.

Re:FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Third!

So I'm getting paid to host their hardware, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the hardware serves someone but me, then it's hardly my hardware, so why should I keep it dry and feed it electricity?

DRM Industry

[duke_cheetah2003]

I'm really really starting to think the DRM industry is the ones pushing this crap forward. It just doesn't even make sense to anyone but the people peddling this junk. Consumers don't want it. Producers want to sell stuff, so they shouldn't want it either, because consumers don't.

Re:DRM Industry

[thegarbz]

Never underestimate the reaction from an industry who perceives itself as under threat. Producers and publishers definitely DO want this.

Re:DRM Industry

[duke_cheetah2003]

Never underestimate the reaction from an industry who perceives itself as under threat. Producers and publishers definitely DO want this.

Yeah, except, their perception would have to be completely out of touch with reality. It's already shown people will happily pay for content if it's accessible. Proof of this is all over the place. People don't mind paying if there's a reasonably easy way to do so. Frankly in my case, I pay for any content I desire, unless I can't FIND A WAY to pay, then I have to resort to other means if the content I want is inaccessible by legitimate means.

Though I don't think 'out of touch with reality' is impossible, just seems.. improbable. Entertainment industry can't be that ignorant can they?

Re:DRM Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

How do producers sell a movie when literally everybody steals it from them?

Re: DRM Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't pirate movies, so I guess that would make it "literally everyone, minus one".

Re:DRM Industry

[thegarbz]

That's not a "yeah, except..." statement

I thought it was common knowledge that their perception IS and always has been out of touch with reality.
Music sales went down when they hammered Napster.
Music sales went down when they started suing customers.

Yet here we are and the attacks continue.

I didn't say it made sense, I just said that the publishers and producers want this.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

More junk to get in the way of legitimate consumers while the pirates find ways to bypass this within 5 minutes!

Why Not

[Anonymous Coward]

At some point in the chain, the graphics engine has to tell a display device how to arrange the pixels on a screen for us to see the content. Why can't we just intercept those signals and record them instead of using them to control pixels?

Re:Why Not

[QuantumReality]

Sure you can, but you need additional hardware for this. Because you need to do it between GPU and screen. You will not have access to decoded stream from software, this is the main point of this DRM.

Re:Why Not

[xarragon]

Sure you can. But remember, from the TFS: "The new hardware-based technology will know who you are". Watermarking has been used for a long time in the content industry. A unique watermarking signal will be included in the final, visual output, traceable back to the source. Invisible to the human eye, hidden inside the hardware blackbox. To make policing easier, they could also mandate registration of your "playback device" with a central licensing authority as part of whatever new standard this will be pushed as.

If you want to go all-out paranoid, remote-access and hardware-based authentication for online banking is already moving into chipset and CPU. That could possibly help identifying and tracking down crackers. Tracking physical media at the point of sale is another long shot. Today it is mandatory for stores in Sweden to inform a special collecting agency (for Public Service television) whenever someone buys a television, for example.

Re:This is horrible news

[Your.Master]

What you said makes sense, but wasn't obvious contextually because they were talking about movies before and after. Now I get it.

Although I think TV series should be bucketed with movies as far as DRM goes.

Keep telling yourself that

[rsilvergun]

but every single crack and hack has been because the hardware manufactures cut corners because the hardware wasn't fast enough. It gets faster every year ya know? Maybe this won't be the year, but give it 5, 10 more and it'll be cheaper to secure the content than not.

Wow.

[0123456]

Microsoft have been pushing this for over ten years. I remember a Microsoft talk in 2001 where they told us they wanted hardware DRM in graphics cards to beat the evil pirates.

Now, when Windows has become almost irrelevant, particularly as a media consumption platform, they've finally achieved their goal. Microsoft FTW!

Re:Wow.

[Irate Engineer]

Microsoft is making a walled garden. They just forgot to invite their customers into this garden - they just keep planting thorny bushes around the locked gate with the "Beware of Leopard" sign on it. Microsoft is making itself irrelevant. It almost seems like this is their business "strategy" now. I really don't see how they plan on making money in the future.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't peddle the goal post moving, Linux zealot BS. Windows is as relevant as ever. It's still the #1 PC operating system on the planet, with no signs of changing in our lifetime.

Re:Wow.

[duke_cheetah2003]

Don't peddle the goal post moving, Linux zealot BS. Windows is as relevant as ever. It's still the #1 PC operating system on the planet, with no signs of changing in our lifetime.

Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. THE PC ITSELF is becoming increasingly irrelevant as tablets and smartphones take over. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are ditching their PC's for Android tablets and smartphones. They're getting that good folks. And if the PC becomes irrelevant, so does Windows.

Re:Wow.

[0123456]

Yes. With Microsoft working so hard to keep alternate operating systems off the PC, they'll soon just be legacy devices to run crusty old Windows software for which there's no alternative on other devices.

Re:This is horrible news

[Anonymous Coward]

But I use MythTV!

you're not normal

[Chirs]

Now try it ten feet away from a 120" projector screen. (Or 2 feet away from a 24" monitor, which is the same relative size.)

Why spend millions on advertising then do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, let me get this straight. big company throws away millions of dollars to convince me to like their product. then simultaneously kicks me in the balls. And they are surprised that I don't like them?

Honestly, in the software (games) market for 40 years, we've been telling the publishers to stop wasting their time + effort with copy protections, and just make a good game.

Yes, some 12 year old with no money, will pirate your game. Thats' not going to stop, and you were never going to get any money from him anyways.

But legit users, will be happier with you if you don't treat them all as criminals, and sell them some invasive crippled product, just in the fear of piracy.

I'm not going to say that Steam is not DRM -- but part of the reason that Steam has been fairly successly is that it doesn't act like its job is to kick the customer in the balls. It gives the customer some reasonable compromises. (Course, some publishers then add crazy bullshit conditions on top of that)

Itunes, used to have severe copy protection. And, you know what, I didn't buy any songs from them. I was expected a Zune fiasco. Then they started making the songs available as mp3's. granted, those mp3s have some tracking tags hidden in them, but mp3s none the less. a "reasonable compromise" at least from my point of view. so now I do buy from them.

Go lookup DIVX cd's. It was a format the movie industry was jizzing themselves over, because they created the rules so that everything was completely slanted their way, and it kicked the customer in the balls at every chance. it flopped so hard that most people have never heard of it.

Really, if the RIAA / MPAA would just come up with a deal that is reasonable for the customer, they'd probably find there are a lot of people who would appreciate NOT being kicked in the balls all the time, and who would buy from them.

Selling / Liscensing content doesn't have to be bad, but companies can't seem to figure it out... it's really too bad.

Re:This is horrible news

[writertype]

No, these aren't mutually exclusive. People watch movies/video on both devices. It's just connected TVs are more popular.

Re:This is horrible news

[jonwil]

Your problem is that you bought a Sony instead of (like I did) an el-cheapo DVD player out of China that doesn't have any of the extra crap the Sony does getting in the way.

HDCP 2.2 or later display also needed

[Joe_Dragon]

Also your display is going to need to be replaced.

Re:HDCP 2.2 or later display also needed

[silas_moeckel]

I'll pass, my first 1080 tv was so early no HDCP at all, I allready have 4k and again they wont support it. Oddly my plex now, xbmc before that, hd tivo's with pytivo before that all worked without hdcp.. I'm ok with paying for content once. I'm not going to buy it if I can not use it.

The linux / ESXI sever market is to big to cut off

[Joe_Dragon]

The linux / ESXI sever market is to big to cut off with locked down firmware.

Broken by design

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care as long as I am allowed to make DRM free backup copies of legally purchased media as is allowed by law. And as long as it keeps MY IP from being stolen by greedy corporations (like Facebook, Google, etc.) as well as criminal NSA/FBI crackers.

I know I'll wake up in a bit, but until then (queue Ricardo Montalbán voice over) "Welcome to FANTASY internet ..."

Haven't watched a "Hollywood" movie in years

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much just crap coming from Hollywood these days.

Not that upset as they put another nail in the coffin.

Older generations of PCs used software-based DRM

[Trax3001BBS]

At the least a selling point to investors, No mention of the TPM chip. I bought my motherboards due to their lack of a TPM chip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... (it's Hardware, it's a damn chip).

Now it's almost certain your new motherboard has a TPM chip installed. It's bloody overkill, the difference (I see) between PlayReady and the TPM chips are the availability and path the keys take.

To Quote Wikipedia:
"Almost any encryption-enabled application can, in theory, make use of a TPM, including:
digital rights management
protection and enforcement of software licenses.
prevention of cheating in online games.

right to read... never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't see this link in any of the comments:

                        https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

Is this the future we want? If any of you know people who are working to make this happen you should shun them... these people are the brown shirts to the NSA's SS. They are not your friends, they are working to enslave you.

Re:right to read... never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill, not shun. Shunning does nothing,

Re:right to read... never forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Right to Read was prescient but an instant after it became true, it then became obsoleted to history.

People figured out that if they couldn't read the broken books that they purchased, then they could just pirate the books, and the pirated ones work great and don't have any of the problems as the other books.

When you tell a paying customer "no," you're telling their money "no." Do it enough times, and they become habituated to browsing the indexes instead of the stores, so it's hard to get 'em back. It's an extremely dumb thing to do.

This works RIGHT NOW :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter one bit.
Stereo music is perfectly rippable from line level outputs.
Movies are perfectly enjoyable when ripped from a 1080p video camera on a tripod in front of an LED screen.
Real pirate technicians will erupt that tap the LED panel bus and record that.
Everything from the vinyls of the 20's, the CDs of the 80's, LaserDiscs of the 90's, DVD of the 00's and BluRay of the 10's are all losslessly rippable.
Those catalogs are HUGE, plenty to enjoy.

And you can share it all with bittorrent over anonymous overlay networks, no need to leech and run in fear, seed your massive collections 24x7x365 forever, and give a big and final FUCK YOU to the MAFIAA.
Look up Gnunet, I2P, Phantom, CJDNS, Tor, and Maidsafe.
Learn to make quality lossless uncompressed rips... CDs as FLAC, DVD as their raw VOB's, and BluRay encoded down to DVD-9 VOB's with FFMPEG.
Learn to use these networks.
Learn to use Unix.
Be boss!!!

Protected Video Path

[tepples]

If the GPU is doing the decoding then you just record frame buffer.

Drivers signed by Microsoft for use with "premium" video are already supposed to disable the API calls needed to record frame buffer when a video is playing through Protected Video Path.

It's not that it's our content

[Anonymous Coward]

It's that it's OUR FUCKING PC!!!!!

IF you want to own it more than I do, FUCKING WELL BUY IT OFF ME!

One way to kill this would be to require, if it becomes a standard for copyright DRM, that it be release free of charge and no licensing revenue comes from it. It still wants to take over my PC, so it should be MANDATORY that it can be turned off and in hardware so it can't be soft switched on again, and when done so is as if it doesn't exist. But if it just is released FoC for anyone to implement, at least I won't be paying to get this done, it is at least a miniscule cost that those demanding this be done to a PC I buy must bear.

Because taking my PC from me AND making me pay to do so is fucking barbaric.

Polly wanna biscuit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parroting "Nyqyuist Limit! Nyquist Limit!" means FUCK ALL. The downsampling you're talking about here is no more than an inefficient high-quality rip at 1080p compression.

You get as much information with fewer bits if you use a less lossy setting at 1080p if you took a 4k picture at the same relative quality setting (therefore 4x the bitrate). Set 1080p to half the *bitrate* of the 4k stream and you have the same quality image as the 4k downsampled for half the number of bits transferred.

Not even trying

[Kohlrabi82]

They are not even trying to compete with the major torrent trackers/piracy sites anymore. Instead of massively reducing pricing and DRM the media industry is putting up even more hurdles. If I buy a movie, I want to be able to play it on any device I own, at any time I want, and I want the right to make backup. Also I need to be able to downconvert it to lower resolutions to play it on lowlier devices. Nothing that is possible with DRM-infested media, and all of that is possible with pirated movies. They finally need to understand that piracy will stay, and treat it as competion.

Re:Not even trying

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite is buying the same movies from 4 difference suppliers (iTunes, Windows Video store, etc.). REALLY?
This shite needs to stop.

Re: Why spend millions on advertising then do this

[Anonymous Coward]

RIAA can start by removing the ridiculous FBI and copyright warnings (that can't be skipped) that is on the front of every DVD/BluRay -- at least allow me to skip them. The product the RIAA is selling, is inferior to what TPB offers.

I don't download movies/games/crap, but I do envy the people that do (they have a better user experience).

Virtualized Hardware DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

An entire computer can be virtualized right now. Even Macs with their copyrighted bios are currently runnig in virtual machined. It won't be long before an additional piece of hardware will be.

Seem like a lot of money spent on a speed bump.

Hello Microsoft, hello entertainment industry

[Anonymous Coward]

You can stuff your 4Ks up your corporate asses. Hopefully they feel warm and fuzzy there.

I *never* gonna *buy* such a thing. Most probably I won't even be interested in a pirated version. Let's see.

If it can be viewed , it can be copied

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can be viewed, it can be copied.

Please make DRM more prevalent. It will actually discourage me from purchasing the DVD, and either pirating the content, or waiting for it to come out on netflix or some other cheap streaming service, so I can watch it on my $30 box that I hookup to my TV. My computer will always run Linux. If it can't run Linux, I won't purchase the hardware.

BTW, crap in SD is still crap.

crap in HD, is still HD crap.

crap in 4k, is still 4k crap.

Please try improving the content, before trying to secure the crap content that I won't purchase anyway.

Skip the shows

[Anonymous Coward]

All these only make me skip the shows. Waste of time anyway

Not buying then

[wijnands]

So I won't buy it then. Fine! Haven't bought any film or video in ages. Modern content just doesn't interest me enough. Think I've outgrown motion pictures. Can recall only a handful made in the last 10 years that I actually enjoyed watching on tv.

wat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Ballmer kiss my hairy ass you fat cunt

Half-blind and proud!

[foreverdisillusioned]

I'm not sure what's up with the trend of people proudly proclaiming they can't notice the difference between different resolutions. Um, good for you? Me, I could see individual pixels in my old 15 inch 1024x768 monitor from 2.5 feet away. I'm not a freak of nature. I have slightly worse than 20/20 vision. But going from 480i to 1080i (CRT in both cases) with the same 34" screen size and the same 6 foot (more or less) viewing distance was a earthshaking difference noticeable not just to me, but to almost everyone who saw it.

Hell, I remember when the argument was that HD sucks (particularly for porn, but also in general) because you could easily see skin imperfections, the cheap props used in Star Trek, etc. Too much detail was supposedly ruining things... but now the argument is the exact opposite? And some people have even started pulling pseudo-scientific charts out of their asses showing the supposed screen sizes and viewing distances at which different resolutions become indistinguishable (the first thing you notice is the proscribed viewing distances are completely insane, like 11+ feet for a modest screen size.)

My current theory about all of this is that the compression used in online streaming video has you all extremely confused. Or possibly it's because most LCD screens still tend to look weird and indescribably shitty compared to 1080i CRT or 1080p plasma. Or perhaps the upscaling algorithms have become too good--to claim that 4k or HD is a waste, you have to compare 480p native to 1080p native, not 1080p (480p upscaled) to 1080p native.

High bitrate 1080p at 34" should be appear as an instant and impressive improvement over high bitrate, non-upscaled 480p even at 10 feet.

Sitting six feet away from a 37" 1080p TV set to 720p in Windows (otherwise I can't even read the small text), I can watch a 480p video without feeling like I'm losing anything.

Please find an ophthalmologist before it's too late. That goes for everyone who modded this up, too.

Re:The linux / ESXI sever market is to big to cut

[Anonymous Coward]

So everyone needs to buy the $10K server that ESX would run on?

Re:The linux / ESXI sever market is to big to cut

[Anonymous Coward]

When no one can run Linux on their laptops anymore, no one will develop web apps using Linux, and no one will put Linux on servers. Then people will just assume that free software was just a phase the industry went through before professionals came in and got rid of the piracy, some of the viruses, started monitoring terrorists, and giving people ads that they are personally interested in.

The truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is evil

Report it as a bug

[tepples]

Have you reported inability to adjust the game's font size and failure to respect system font size as defects to the game's publisher? If so, what was the reply? If "too bad", what was the publisher so we can avoid buying its games?

Solution Open Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution: use open free counterparts.

Switch UEFI/BIOS for CoreBoot:
http://www.coreboot.org/
coreboot: fast and flexible Open Source firmware.
coreboot is an extended firmware platform that delivers a lightning fast and secure boot experience on modern computers and embedded systems.
As an Open Source project it provides auditability and maximum control over technology.
http://blogs.coreboot.org/about/

OpenRISC on open cores dot org:
http://opencores.org/or1k/Main_Page
http://opencores.org/or1k/Architecture_Specification
OpenRISC on github:
https://openrisc.github.io/

Getting Started with OpenRISC
From FPGA to Linux Shell
https://kevinmehall.net/openrisc/guide/

New upcoming project: RISC-V and LowRISC:

RISC-V:
http://riscv.org/
The RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture
RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is a new instruction set architecture (ISA) that was originally designed to support computer architecture research and education, which we now hope will become a standard open architecture for industry implementations.

LowRISC:
http://www.lowrisc.org/
lowRISC is a not-for profit project aiming to produce a completely open-source SoC (System-on-Chip). Our designs are based on the 64-bit RISC-V instruction set architecture.
lowRISC is producing fully open hardware systems. From the processor core to the development board, our goal is to create a completely open computing eco-system.
Recent announcement of first lowRISC preview release
http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2015/04/lowrisc-tagged-memory-preview-release/

Microsoft ® Hardware DRM ..

[DougPaulson]

Does the music/games/film industry not realize that with such protections, they will be handing over total control of their customer base to a mediocre software vendor out of Redmond WA, run by an ethically challenged vulgarian.