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'First Pirated Ultra HD Blu-Ray Disk' Appears Online (torrentfreak.com)

Has AACS 2.0 encryption used to protect UHD Blu-ray discs been cracked? While the details are scarce, a cracked copy of a UHD Blu-ray disc surfaced on the HD-focused BitTorrent tracker UltraHDclub. TorrentFreak reports: The torrent in question is a copy of the Smurfs 2 film and is tagged "The Smurfs 2 (2013) 2160p UHD Blu-ray HEVC Atmos 7.1-THRONE." This suggests that AACS 2.0 may have been "cracked" although there are no further technical details provided at this point. UltraHDclub is proud of the release, though, and boasts of having the "First Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc in the NET!" Those who want to get their hands on a copy of the file have to be patient though. Provided that they have access to the private tracker, it will take a while to download the entire 53.30 GB disk. TorrentFreak reached out to both the uploader of the torrent and an admin at the site hoping to find out more, but thus far we have yet to hear back. From the details provided, the copy appears to be the real deal although not everyone agrees.

260 comments

  1. Physical distribution media? by quenda · · Score: 3, Funny

    How quaint.

    1. Re:Physical distribution media? by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Informative

      That "quaint" method is still the only method to actually receive high-quality copies of movies and TV shows. Video streaming bitrates are a joke, comparatively speaking. Everyone tries to stuff into 10-20Mbps what takes 50+. The result is banding, blocky artifacts (especially in dark scenes), and blocking with rapid action. A properly mastered Blu-Ray or UHD disc on the other hand will have none of those problems, as the overall bitrate and the peak bitrate are high enough to properly capture a scene no matter how detailed it is.

      The DRM is a pain in the rear, but for the quality I'm quite happy with my "quaint" optical media.

    2. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This article shows that torrents are another method you stupid idiot.

    3. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Why do you need such high quality? At that point it seems like it is all in the mind so you could just repeat positives in your mind to achieve same goal unless you are running a cinema or something?

    4. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, people wanting to run a cinema in their home is like totally unheard of.

    5. Re:Physical distribution media? by quenda · · Score: 4, Funny

      Your movie has plot holes the size of the grand canyon, and you are worried about minuscule defects in the presentation?

    6. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, if such high quality isn't needed then why bother with 4k at all?
      UltraHD raison d'etre is that there's people that care about quality... and the quality of a streamed 4k is a far cry from the real deal. No need for cinema sized screens, just a 55" screen and reasonably good eyesight.

    7. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This article shows that torrents are another method you stupid idiot.

      The article showcases a media format that is usually illegal you fucking moron. Stop assuming everyone who supports "quaint" media is a pirate. Some of us still support business and don't feel like being randomly selected for a legal battle.

    8. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think he may have been talking about legal means, you cheapskate pirate.

    9. Re:Physical distribution media? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Well, you gotta draw the line somewhere...

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    10. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Well, if such high quality isn't needed then why bother with 4k at all?"

      Look, if you're going to ask questions like that, I don't think we're going to be able to argue.

      So back off, jerk! ;-)

    11. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Until you run into your ISP's data CAP, five of these in a month will cap you out on Comcast and many other ISP's in the US.

    12. Re:Physical distribution media? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 2

      Why do you need such high quality? At that point it seems like it is all in the mind

      All vision is ultimately in the mind and 4K is well within the bounds of human vision but more important than the resolution is the improvement in color gamut with this generation. Blu-Ray, for instance, cannot encode all the information captured by a RED camera or a scan of a good 70mm film.

      Every time a new format comes out people always ask why the old one wasn't good enough. This will last until people can't tell the difference between a format's video and their natural vision. We have many more cycles of this to endure, it appears.

      --
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    13. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're not all in countries with third-world conditions. But hey, let's make America a great third-world country!

    14. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not always minuscule. The live-action Speed Racer movie, for instance, turns into ANSI art while streaming race scenes. Since you aren't watching it for the plot, it destroys the entire point of the movie.

    15. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Torrenting is perfectly legal. If I shoot a video with my phone and then distribute it via torrent, that is legal.

      Boy you're a real fucking moron, you know that?

      I think it's reasonable that given the context of the article, none of us were talking about sharing our own copyright..

      Statement that questions your sexual preference!!

    16. Re:Physical distribution media? by gwolf · · Score: 1

      If you "just" need a 55" screen, you have focused on a very very very very very narrow proportion of people. If you add to it the need to have a good sight, you have halved-or-worse the number. I would not expect more than 1% of the public qualifies.
      So, yes, why bother?

    17. Re: Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, sci-fi and action movies have always been more about the technology than the content.

    18. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of the info I've read on 4k televisions says you have to sit closer than most people are comfortable with to see a difference between 1080p. Other articles have said most people start to have trouble differentiating between real life and an electronic display at 8k.

    19. Re:Physical distribution media? by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      While I seriously doubt I could tell the difference between a 4K and 720P movie from my couch to where my current 50" TV is, I don't think 55" TVs are as rare as you think they are. Somewhere between 50 and 55" seems to be the median TV size when I enter Best Buy or Walmart these days. I would imagine people buying 4K TVs skew towards buying the larger models, so they're even more likely to end up with a TV substantially larger than 55" than most.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    20. Re:Physical distribution media? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      It's Smurfs 2. What else could you possibly want?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    21. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure - now show me how to pirate a higher monthly download cap you stupid idiot.

    22. Re:Physical distribution media? by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      Yeah, people wanting to run a cinema in their home is like totally unheard of.

      Hmm, if only there were a display method that could scale up without losing quality, Maybe something to project a smaller image onto a larger surface. We could even call it a projector.

      --
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    23. Re:Physical distribution media? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      While I seriously doubt I could tell the difference between a 4K and 720P movie from my couch to where my current 50" TV is, I don't think 55" TVs are as rare as you think they are. Somewhere between 50 and 55" seems to be the median TV size when I enter Best Buy or Walmart these days.

      it's hard to cheaply find good statistics on this sort of thing but it looks like the median size is somewhere from 40-55 inches, but definitely skewed towards the 40s. I for one bought a 52" positively ages ago, and it's still humming along. Literally, I think it's power supply noise.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    24. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      55" 1080P sets are now down under $450.
      More people spend more than that on their phones -annually.
      I think more than 1% have that.
      (I think your confusing 90" for the 1%)

    25. Re:Physical distribution media? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hell 4k can't even encode all of the data in good 35mm film. I speak as someone, a dedicated amateur photographer, who owns a nice film scanner and took the time to master it as well as the camera and lenses I own so take that at what it is worth.

      Using good quality 35mm film with good high quality lenses with multiple scans of a frame one can approach the claimed resolution of the scanner (10,000DPI) which after some cropping of the image stack produces an image of around 130 megapixels at 16 bits per channel of color depth of which there is about 80 mega pixels of data there. While I do upscale the images I always down scale them back as the scanner is diffraction limited below its output resolution so I use super resolution to work around that and get as much actual information there as I can.

      In theory if I had a scanner that had better resolution (very difficult to find) and really took the time to setup a shot in a perfect environment (no movement, perfect focus) and had lenses that were perfectly sharp at wide open aperture of f/1.4 (I don't) I could get close to 400 megapixels but likely only out of B&W film but this is just theory. Going up to 120 or 70mm film and you are now looking at single frames that have 400-500 megapixels of actual data in normal circumstances.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    26. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Found the retard under 25. Just wait until you sit down on your couch, ready to watch your favorite movie, open your streaming provider's library and WHAT THE FUCK!?!?! It's not there anymore. You head to Google and find out that Super Shitty Pictures, Inc. is engaged in a licensing battle with Lame Streaming, Inc. and they've pulled the licensing for all of their titles. Now you can't watch shit because you're too fucking lazy to insert a disk into a player. Enjoy your cloud-based media.While you were doing all that I was watching my Blu-ray movie.

    27. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and it certainly matters when you're playing it at home, right?
      Unless someone out there has a thing for seeing bad makeup on Chris Pratt or catching which are the real and which are the digital after-effects in the next StarWars installment I can't see why anyone would actually care.
      Of course, if you care so much about the quality of the picture then you must not give a rip about the quality of the actual movie -- so you're set.

    28. Re:Physical distribution media? by quenda · · Score: 1

      engaged in a licensing battle with Lame Streaming, Inc. and they've pulled the licensing for all of their titles.

      Ha! Almost as annoying as when my grandkids scratch the DVDs.
      You know they can deauthorise they key for you BD player? Or your TV.
          There *are* alternatives, you know. Its not just live streaming or coasters.

      While you were doing all that I was watching my Blu-ray movie.

      While you were watching unskippable adverts and studio propaganda, I was watching my movie. And if Netflix or my ISP goes down, I have a couple of terrabytes library in the home server.

    29. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you think that torrent came to be? Fucking magic?

    30. Re:Physical distribution media? by thewolfkin · · Score: 1

      This article shows that torrents are another method you stupid idiot.

      That doesn't count when no big media uses it. Mailing reels to your home projector is also another method but no one does that either.

      --
      Just another second banana
    31. Re: Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While you were watching the unskippable trailers, I was watching a movie while my computer was ripping another dvd I own to mkv for me to watch next.

    32. Re:Physical distribution media? by rsmith-mac · · Score: 1

      Today's bad movie is tomorrow's MST3K riff. But encoding artifacts are forever.=P

      Also, artifacts can be legitimately distracting no matter the movie, especially the bad ones.

    33. Re:Physical distribution media? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      'good eyesight' in this context also includes anyone wearing corrective lenses, as there is no reason not to if you have them, they are properly fitted, and not broken. It's not like we're talking about useless stereoscopic "3D" here where anyone that wears glasses is instantly annoyed.

      I guess some people just like to argue though.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    34. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah, people wanting to run a cinema in their home is like totally unheard of.

      Hmm, if only there were a display method that could scale up without losing quality, Maybe something to project a smaller image onto a larger surface. We could even call it a projector.

      At minimum, using a projector is going to reduce your contrast - the difference between the brightest white and the darkest black. It's also going to reduce color saturation. Both happen because your projector's lamp/LED/whatever can only produce so much light which then has to cover a much larger area. That's why people using projected images tend to dim the lights - they're compensating for this effect, and not with 100% success either.

      Then there's the reality that each frame is a raster image. That means it's made of pixels. Pixels have a certain physical size - this determines your resolution. Every commonly used video format works this way. So does every commonly used display device, meaning that even if you used a video format based on something like SVG (scalable vector graphics), your display device still has a raster image with a fixed physical pixel size.

      Scale up an image with a projector (or anything else really) and you enlarge the pixels. Do this too much (which isn't much at all) and you reduce quality by causing artifacts that are called, well, pixelation. Various interpolation techniques can help a bit, but no amount of postprocessing can possibly create more information than what was in the original source video - that would require magic.

      The standard solution to this problem is to start with source material that has a higher resolution. If you have more pixels to begin with, paired with a display device that can handle them, then you don't have to scale up so much in the first place. That increases quality, both measurable and perceived.

      Hence, the desire for Ultra HD among high-end users who are willing to pay the price of equipment for which this matters. Sorry, but your projector can't defy physics.

    35. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not if you live in the land of the "free" where internet companies can do whatever they want? Oh, using your internet with companies that aren't comcasts partners? we'll slow you down.... What? You found a way around that? Well, shit... have some data caps and overage charges.

    36. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The DRM is a pain in the rear, but for the quality I'm quite happy with my "quaint" optical media.

      The DRM is still a bit of a pain, but there are rippers than can rip the bluray into an uncompressed .mkv file. Can't play it in a bluray player, but you can certainly put it on a network share and play it with a Kodi installation on a small computer (ie: Raspberry Pi).

      I personally transcode the resultant file with handbrake into something a bit more compressed (but with minimal artifacts) before I put it on the network share. Still a lot better (both visual and audio) than anything you could watch at home 20 years ago.

    37. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty much all the 4k you will see around is compressed heavily, so '4k' is kind of meaningless. In the end it comes down to how good the product is, 4k, film, be damned. Who cares how many jigapixels you can get something. It's nice but in the end, bah.

    38. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where do the torrents get the media from? Idiot.

    39. Re: Physical distribution media? by quenda · · Score: 1

      What trailers?

    40. Re: Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Duh, so we have the best possible source to make a compressed copy.

    41. Re:Physical distribution media? by zlives · · Score: 1

      a designed theater for HD can render the image without additional scaling that may add pixelation. both the projectors available NOW and the screens can render a image well enough that the added benefit of larger screen makes a tremendous difference in the experience.

      Personally i ended up with a 9k lumen 4k projector (says infinite contrast... whatever) because kids don't like sitting in the dark and eating and feeding them with lights on. side by side with my samsung led, the blue ray video (split by my receiver) is better on the projector screen.
      its costly yes... but i never go to movie theaters and netflix and amazon 4k is much more enjoyable.

    42. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The DRM is a pain in the rear, but for the quality I'm quite happy with my "quaint" optical media.

      The DRM is a pain in the rear for streamed media too, but the bitrate is worse.

    43. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same AC here.

      Personally i ended up with a 9k lumen 4k projector (says infinite contrast... whatever)

      Yes, so you started with equipment designed to handle higher resolutions. That's what I termed the standard solution. Not surprisingly, you like the results. You'd be much less satisfied if you kept everything else the same, but used a projector with DVD-quality resolution.

      The user stealth_finger strongly implied that his/her projector could scale up without a loss of quality, rendering higher resolutions superfluous. That just isn't physically possible.

      There's no way your projector (or any other) actually has infinite contrast. Infinite contrast would mean a perfectly black "black" that cannot reflect even a single photon of light, combined with a white light of unlimited power. A perfect black doesn't exist. If your projector could somehow draw and handle all the electric power production capacity of the entire planet, that still wouldn't yield a white light of unlimited power, and such intense light would burn down the building around it long before you could utilize it.

      What they likely mean is just a marketing term. They could be claiming that it's effectively "infinite" because it's good enough that any further improvement would be imperceptible to a human being. But there's simply no way that it's actually infinite. That's also not physically possible.

      On an unrelated note, I had to switch servers on my VPN to be able to post this. I ran aground of Slashdot's silly posting limits. I'm not trolling, I'm not making GNAA posts, and I'm not crapflooding. So I disagree. At the moment I appear to be from Chicago but I have many options all over the world. What a useless waste of Slashdot code and resources.

    44. Re:Physical distribution media? by RubberDogBone · · Score: 1

      It's Smurfs 2. What else could you possibly want?

      What could I WANT?

      Gargamel to finally eradicate all of those damn Smurfs! Is that a bit much to ask? Perhaps so.

      --
      Sig for hire.
    45. Re:Physical distribution media? by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      Only if you consider control over your purchase 'quaint'

    46. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you originally distribute your 4K UHD phone video via Torrents? No? Then get bent.

      The topic is, obviously, about copyrighted movies distributed by media conglomerates. Stop being obtuse.

    47. Re:Physical distribution media? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Even if you had a perfect black, even ignoring black body radiation, it wouldn't be an infinite contrast ratio. It would be undefined. Division by zero is undefined.

    48. Re:Physical distribution media? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      it's hard to cheaply find good statistics on this sort of thing but it looks like the median size is somewhere from 40-55 inches, but definitely skewed towards the 40s.

      walk into your club warehouse, and you'll think the median size is between 65 and 70" these days with the largest moving to 80+.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    49. Re:Physical distribution media? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      There's more to this than being able to see static detail. I never realized until dealing with some colleagues back during the CRT days that most people have lower quality eyesight than I realized. While I could see scan lines below 76Hz on a 1024x768 screen (yes, that's dateable) they were perfectly fine looking at their screens at 60Hz and could not see any difference when I had to increase the scan rate while helping them out. It's likely the same reason I am distracted by ghosting and blocking effects on LCD based televisions while many seem perfectly content with those sets. Where they might see a steady gray block, I see a flashing block between darker and lighter shades and motion artifacts they just never notice.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    50. Re:Physical distribution media? by BitterOak · · Score: 1

      (Score: +5, Insightful)

      To each his own, but I don't tend to mod up posts which end with "you stupid idiot" in response to a perfectly reasonable post.

      --
      If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
    51. Re:Physical distribution media? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Pretty much all the 4k you will see around is compressed heavily, so '4k' is kind of meaningless.

      And that's why 4K UHD disks are what are of interest here. 4K streaming is a joke.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    52. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But what if poster doesn't realize they are a stupid idiot? That might be insightful.

    53. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you originally distribute your 4K UHD phone video via Torrents?

      Well they sure as shit don't fit on a USB flash. And I'm not going to host the files on my website. So torrent it is, you fucking tool.

    54. Re:Physical distribution media? by MarkRose · · Score: 1

      You're not alone. I've had the same experience. Anything flashing below 70 Hz or so makes me nauseous. When I bought my current monitor, I specifically found a flicker-free screen, which was a challenge five years ago. Apparently someone figured out if they synchronized PWM brightness to the frame rate it made the images appear sharper â" but it just gives me eye strain. Most TVs are still constructed this way, and I actively avoid entering stores that sell TVs.

      --
      Be relentless!
    55. Re:Physical distribution media? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      Just out of curiosity, do you happen to watch Blu-Ray on a PC? When I play new discs using an Asus drive and Cyberlink PowerDVD I still get a bunch of little digital artifacts like it's having problems decoding or something. It's even worse on VLC, VLC will just straight up crash on certain episodes. The artifacts aren't random either, if I watch the same scene multiple times it shows exactly the same way. The Asus drive doesn't seem to have any updated software either.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    56. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And no DRM!

    57. Re:Physical distribution media? by tezbobobo · · Score: 1

      > That "quaint" method is still the only method to actually receive high-quality copies of movies and TV shows.

      Not anymore.

    58. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That "quaint" method is still the only method to actually receive high-quality copies of movies and TV shows. Video streaming bitrates are a joke, comparatively speaking. Everyone tries to stuff into 10-20Mbps what takes 50+. The result is banding, blocky artifacts (especially in dark scenes), and blocking with rapid action. A properly mastered Blu-Ray or UHD disc on the other hand will have none of those problems, as the overall bitrate and the peak bitrate are high enough to properly capture a scene no matter how detailed it is.

      Except that, for most people, they are "good enough". Just as most modern computers are "good enough" for most people's daily use.

      There are edge cases where someone might care, but they are edge cases.

    59. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're thinking of Informative.

    60. Re:Physical distribution media? by quenda · · Score: 1

      Only if you consider control over your purchase 'quaint'

      Control? You'll have some control when AACS2 is broken, but it is DRM'ed up the wazoo.
      If I want control, I download a DRM-free version. I currently have no other way of transferring movies from my old blu-ray collection to my new media players.

    61. Re:Physical distribution media? by knorthern+knight · · Score: 1

      > Well they sure as shit don't fit on a USB flash.

      Ahemmm. $45 pesos^H^H^H^H Canadian dollars gets you a 64 gigabyte USB flash drive http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/pr...? That's somewhere around US$ $30 or $35. It'll easily hold a 53.3 gigabyte file. Just don't use FAT32 format, with its 4 gigabyte file-size limit.

      --

      I'm not repeating myself
      I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
    62. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course Big Media doesn't use it. They don't have to. The pirate scene looks after that side of things. And millions of people do use that method.

    63. Re:Physical distribution media? by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Legally?

      Please name a streaming service that lets you permanently archive what you're watching, you stupid idiot.

    64. Re:Physical distribution media? by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      If you "just" need a 55" screen, you have focused on a very very very very very narrow proportion of people.

      Really? Best Buy has a 55" LED on sale this week for $349. I bought a 55" three years ago for $850. Are they really that rare?

    65. Re:Physical distribution media? by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      Just curious... Do you still shoot film or just scan old stuff? Are you scanning slides, negatives, or prints? If you still shoot film, are the remaining labs any good at processing/printing or do you do it yourself?

    66. Re: Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It shows no such thing. Learn to read.

    67. Re: Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Move to a real country.

    68. Re:Physical distribution media? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      You should calibrate your TV. Look up your model number and maker for calibration settings, usually something close will be available from CNET or one of the AV forums. It certainly reduced the sharpness (or soap opera effect) significantly and improved motion blur effects. The blocking effect is still there, but somewhat muted, because the artificially bright panel is somewhat dimmed, but rather a slightly dimmer picture that's watchable vs a super bright cartoon like picture with all the things that bother us physically. My LED panel is watchable, but my plasma just blows it away. The new 4K sets, especially the OLEDs, are certainly interesting, but likely won't replace my plasma for a few years yet.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    69. Re:Physical distribution media? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 2

      I still shoot film mostly because I like film and to replace what I have with digital of comparable quality would require spending well over $10,000 which pays for a lot of film and film processing. That is the problem with having an old entirely manual camera where I would have to replace not only the chassis but also all of the lenses, and most of the accessories. I am scanning in all of my old stuff, which is a lot, and I had forgotten that I have taken some really nice photos, as well as a good amount of crap, so that is fun.

      When I scan in things it is always the negatives as most prints now are actually printed at like 300dpi so there is a lot of info on the negative to be had that is lost on a print. Also the film has a larger dynamic range than is represented on most prints so on some images it is worth while to do 3 scans where you are properly exposed, over by 3 stops, and under by 3 stops and then combine them in software as if you were doing a HDR picture.

      I do not develop my own film but am lucky enough to have a quality camera store nearby that does the processing at their larger store and they do a good job. The turn around time is about a week and in most cases that is fine for what I do, although there have been times when I have needed things sooner. In those cases I will use my wife's digital point and shoot, 20.1 megapixel diffraction limited, take a bunch of photos and post process them to get a better quality image with dramatically lower noise and better sharpness. Doing this I can get some entry level professional camera level quality, I end up with the same 20 megapixels, out of a cheap consumer camera without the expense.

      When it comes to photography remember the best camera is the one you have, and one can create great images with low quality camera if you understand that camera. So one can have a really good picture (good composition, focus, and lighting) that is a low quality image (low resolution, poor depth of focus, diffraction limited, lens and/or chroma artifacts). For most people a cellphone is good enough, you can get reasonable 5"x7" prints off of it and post to facebook and the like without having to worry about the technical aspects. However you would end up with a really shitty 2'x3' poster or art print using that same image because the overall image quality isn't there.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    70. Re:Physical distribution media? by peawormsworth · · Score: 1

      Your numbers are off. I see 64 GB media for average of $30 CAD (I see one for $27). That's about $22.50 USD. Stop going to Best Buy for accessories and their push for you to buy bull crap insurance on everything. That is where they collect their margins.

      Your price estimate is 50% higher than what I see in reality.

    71. Re:Physical distribution media? by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      Thanks for taking to time to respond. I haven't used film since 2003 when I bought my first digital. I now have a $300 point and shoot with a decent lens that does very well for snapshots. Most of the time I just use my phone which does amazingly well in all but the lowest light and the best part is that I always have it with me. I'm currently looking for a low end DSLR to improve my technique. I'm certainly not any kind of expert, but I like to play around with manual settings. I've been trying to decide whether to go Canon (T-6/T-6i) or Nikon (D3400) or wimp out and get a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ2300K long zoom point and shoot.

    72. Re:Physical distribution media? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't fit on a 64GB drive. Too bad. You fail.

    73. Re:Physical distribution media? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      If you already have a reasonable point and shoot (not the compact point and shoot) you would likely be better served by getting a DSLR with an APS-C sized sensor instead of getting a full frame sensor. I wouldn't recommend getting a DSLR with a smaller sensor than that as you will lose any benefit of having a better lens. When getting a DSLR buy the chassis separate from the lens instead of getting a kit. The lens that they sell bundled with most lower end DSLRs is a junk lens. Good lenses will do wonders for image quality but when you have good ones you will not want replace them each time you change chassis as you will spend substantially more on lenses than the chassis. I dread the day my film camera gives up the ghost and I have to get a new one. For example for me to go digital a good high end DSLR chassis is $1500-$2500 and then I will end up spending at least another $10,000 to get lenses for it just to replace what I currently have.

      Learning on digital is a lot easier and a lot cheaper than on film. Also to become good you need to take a lot of pictures, take notes, and study the results to see where things went wrong.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    74. Re:Physical distribution media? by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      It's Smurfs 2. What else could you possibly want?

      What could I WANT?

      Gargamel to finally eradicate all of those damn Smurfs! Is that a bit much to ask? Perhaps so.

      Wasn't that Avatar?
      I guess we just had to wait awhile.

  2. First post^Hcrack by bothorsen · · Score: 0

    Of all the things they could choose to crack, the chose Smurfs 2. That's hilarious.

    1. Re:First post^Hcrack by Pikoro · · Score: 1

      I think you mean, "That's smurfing hilarious."

      --
      "Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
    2. Re:First post^Hcrack by ravenshrike · · Score: 1

      Clearly he meant "Of all the smurfs they could smurf to smurf, they smurfed Smurfs 2. That's smurf."

  3. The Smurfs 2? by Kid+CUDA · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, these guys are some of the smartest hackers / rippers on the planet. They're the first to break a widely sought-after protection scheme.

    And their first accomplishment is to release The Smurfs 2?

    1. Re:The Smurfs 2? by stealth_finger · · Score: 1, Troll

      So, these guys are some of the smartest hackers / rippers on the planet. They're the first to break a widely sought-after protection scheme. And their first accomplishment is to release The Smurfs 2?

      Who trolls the trollers?

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    2. Re:The Smurfs 2? by loonycyborg · · Score: 1

      What's so hard about it? Such a disk is basically "a locked box with key supplied along with it". Otherwise nobody would be able to play those disks. To torrent it is basically a matter of deploying a tap somewhere in playback chain. It's utterly impossible to prevent this without making the disk unplayable. Though cracking of the scheme is a distinct possibility too. It's basically an overcomplicated layer of obfuscation, and the more complex the scheme is the more likely it would contain some mishap that would compromise entire scheme.

    3. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The decryption key isn't included in the disk, it must be downloaded from Internet. Yes, you need Internet connectivity to play those disks.

    4. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd be willing to bet that AACS 2.0 wasn't cracked and rather it was stolen during the great Sony data breech. Smurfs 2 was in 2013. The data hack was in 2014.

      The other possibility is that they found a bug in the firmware of a Blueray drive to raw-read the disc, or maybe probed the ram of a BD player/drive to get the key out of it.

      Like you have to be naive to not expect a few discs to be cracked. But it's fairly obvious that unless the pirates crack a NEW title, we won't know for sure.

    5. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't give them ideas.
      Although to be honest, I'm suprised they haven't required it yet.

    6. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you need Internet connectivity to play those disks.

      Exec1: How do we stop people from getting a streaming box that automatically downloads movies from the internet?
      Exec2: How about we require them to get an internet connection in the living room, right next to the TV?

    7. Re:The Smurfs 2? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      HDMI offers end to end encryption (HDCP) of the playback chain, or attempts to. Theoretically a player could refuse to play certain discs if the chain isn't encrypted, but in practice it's a clunky mechanism that confuses and infuriates consumers with unpredictable failures and weird error messages. And there are ways to strip HDCP from HDMI. But if they manage to properly enforce encryption and convince every manufacturer to fully comply, then you'll be hard pressed to tap into the chain. You might be able to grab signals going to the TVs panel and turn them back into a video stream, but it's not easy.

      Of course the thing about torrents and the pointlessness of any DRM is that this only has to happen once.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    8. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, these guys are some of the smartest hackers / rippers on the planet. They're the first to break a widely sought-after protection scheme.

      And their first accomplishment is to release The Smurfs 2?

      Yeah this makes me suspect that they "found" a copy of the unencrypted data, as opposed to breaking the encryption.

    9. Re:The Smurfs 2? by loonycyborg · · Score: 1

      One could simply modify a HDCP TV to extract deobfuscated image. From what I can tell that spec treats playback devices as black boxes expecting device manufacturers to implement such details with mere contractual obligations compelling them so. And newer tvs have full featured OSes on them that could be attacked with exploits and controlled. Not to mention it's always possible to modify the hardware if you have physical access.. Also HDCP was repeatedly broken in different ways. It's possible to even make an HDMI adapter that strips HDCP obfuscation.

    10. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The decryption key isn't included in the disk, it must be downloaded from Internet.

      So, now only someone with an internet connection will be able to rip and upload the movie... Yeah, that will stop them.

    11. Re:The Smurfs 2? by cheater512 · · Score: 1

      Yep because by downloading the key over the internet, it means it will never be left unencrypted and exposed in system ram at any stage.

      *facepalm*

    12. Re: The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was hoping for cats and dogs

    13. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you need Internet connectivity to play those disks.

      No, you don't.

    14. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      One could simply modify a HDCP TV to extract deobfuscated image.

      You don't even need to do that. There are already MiTM devices that will do it for you, you can even buy them on monoprice.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    15. Re: The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Somebody really wants people to watch the Smurfs 2! I still don't think enough people even want to pirate that movie.. I mean I need to use that 50GB for the weekly MMORPG update...

    16. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you know what the fuck you're doing. Why didn't you crack it a long time ago?

    17. Re:The Smurfs 2? by dwywit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Here's something to think about:

      Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) work like this - you own a cinema, you have 1+n screens, meaning 1+n projectors. To screen most releases (very few are released unencrypted), you have to have a DCI-compliant system. Simply put, this means a server with a serial number, and projectors each with a serial number. Each projector has a decryption board inside (no software decryption here, it's all proprietary hardware, look up "enigma board"), with a serial number. Each film is delivered encrypted (either on HDD or downloaded), and a decryption key is delivered via email. The decryption key authorises *that* server to show *that* film via *that* projector from *this* date to *that* date.

      The film (data stream) is encrypted until it hits the decryption board inside the projector. So serial numbers and decryption data have to match up all the way through the delivery system until it becomes glowing light. If you take an inspection cover off the projector, it won't do squat until a tech arrives with another key to re-authorise that machine to show films. Of course it's possible to drill and cut a hole in the metal to bypass the "cover open" switch, but that's also trivial to overcome - light-sensitive switch, perhaps, requiring a dark room to defeat. But I digress.

      What part of this makes home viewing of films unworkable? IOW it won't be long before your BD player serial number is tied to your monitor/TV serial number, and you get a one-time key when you purchase a movie on disc or download that ties it forever to *that* BD player connected to *that* monitor. So you'll be back to "pointing a camera at the screen" levels of copying.

      The system of selling discs to consumers that will only play if a BD player has an authorised matching key (that is common across brands, and is easily accessed in RAM) is not going to last much longer. The system of encryption in DCPs is orders of magnitude more difficult and complex to defeat, but I can see it coming if the copyright lobby gets its way.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    18. Re: The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder as intels mangement tech has been in the news lately and supposedly can read, maybe even write any memory, can that be used to attack PC based software players.

      The trusted platform state is affected if you load any unsigned drivers etc on windows but what about when the intel management tech is enabled does that flip the trusted state to false, if not can't it be used to search memory for the cipher keys?

    19. Re:The Smurfs 2? by gwolf · · Score: 1

      IOW it won't be long before your BD player serial number is tied to your monitor/TV serial number, and you get a one-time key when you purchase a movie on disc or download that ties it forever to *that* BD player connected to *that* monitor. So you'll be back to "pointing a camera at the screen" levels of copying.

      ...Add to this a QR-like fragment appearing on a piece of the screen (probably away from action, so it's least noticeable by us slow humans) for a frame every hundred, instructing compliant digital cameras to consider that content as illegitimate and not allow clips to be over n seconds long...

    20. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 1

      In their defense they thought it was a blue movie

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

    21. Re:The Smurfs 2? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That sounds like a decent scheme for cinemas, but for home viewing it's not going to work. Unless it is deemed acceptable that my entire bluray collection is bricked when I replace my TV, or that I have to go and obtain new keys for everything in my collection. Sounds like a lot of hassle... and here I'll repeat an age old bit of wisdom regarding cumbersome DRM: many people pirate stuff not because they don't want to pay, but because pirates offer a better product: Free of DRM and ads, often in a choice of formats and bitrates suitable for playback on a variety of devices (including offline playing), available for immediate download. With DRM you are not protecting your content effectively, but you are punishing your legitimate paying customers. Hell of a way to run a business.

      Though I agree that the idea of some form of tamper proof DRM scheme for home viewing still appears to be the industry's wet dream. They really ought to take a cue from the music industry who have embraced the idea of convenience first, and in a lot of cases have agreed to do away with DRM

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    22. Re:The Smurfs 2? by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      I never understood why you couldn't just capture the encrypted key and feed it that and let it do it's thing. Surely it's going to decrypt to the same thing. The whole thing seems like an exercise in futility anyway when you can intercept the bit stream at some point or failing that point another camera at the screen.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    23. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Am I the only one that only buys DVDs? I don't buy Blue Ray rays. If we get to that point, I won't buy movies, I'll go back to downloading stuff again. I currently have ~900 DVDs (I'm currently building shelves for them right now so I had to get a total count). You choice MPAA, lock it down so I can do what I want with my own purchased content, I won't purchase it anymore.

    24. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Kagato · · Score: 1

      My guess is because it doesn't have the latest generation of analog copy protection embedded in the Audio tracks. Copy protection is layered beyond what protects the disc. And for most people with 4K AV setups you're using top tier manufacturers for you playback chain. When pirated material is detected playback will stop. Even Roku honors these schemes. The extra layers of copy protection is cost money. Some content providers skip it if they think something has limited appeal.

    25. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A better question is why would anybody buy Smurfs 2 in UHD?

    26. Re:The Smurfs 2? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      Sounds broken by design. Guess I'll be skipping that one - I have no need to buy physical media that they can turn the lights out on when they get tired of supporting the format 6 years from now.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    27. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The other problem with DRM is that you only need one person to successfully break the DRM. After that it goes on a torrent site and is fair game.

      The bigger problem is that you have developed a competition among different ripping groups to break the DRM first and get 'street cred' for releasing Smurfs 2 (of all things!) first in Ultra HD.

    28. Re:The Smurfs 2? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      You know that DVD is encrypted too, right?

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    29. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like a lot of hassle... and here I'll repeat an age old bit of wisdom regarding cumbersome DRM: many people pirate stuff not because they don't want to pay, but because pirates offer a better product: Free of DRM and ads, often in a choice of formats and bitrates suitable for playback on a variety of devices (including offline playing), available for immediate download. With DRM you are not protecting your content effectively, but you are punishing your legitimate paying customers. Hell of a way to run a business.

      The only reason this industry can even consider doing this is because copyright is a government-enforced monopoly. If you want to legitimately purchase this movie, you have precisely one legitimate source (whatever reseller you actually purchase it from): the holder of that copyright.

      No company would ever think of applying DRM to things like power drills, leaf-blowers, etc., because you can legitimately purchase the same thing from a competitor. Sure, your leaf-blower *could* require a wi-fi connection and a product key, to verify that you didn't steal it. We could easily do that, from a technical standpoint. But being treated like a potential thief, and the inevitable failures and false positives, would cause customers to flock to competitors. That's because leaf-blower manufacturers don't enjoy a practically perpetual government-backed monopoly.

    30. Re:The Smurfs 2? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      The movie may have been from 2013, but the UHD BluRay format was released in 2016. The age of the content on the disc has very little to do with the format and encryption standards used by the disc.

      Example: would a UHD BluRay release of Casablanca be encryption free, because the movie was released in 1942? Could they even do it, knowing that the content predates digital technology of any form? How does it already exist on DVD and BluRay?!!

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    31. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless it is deemed acceptable that my entire bluray collection is bricked when I replace my TV

      In the movie theater example, the film was only allowed to play within a time range. People pay for DVDs because they expect to keep them forever, put them in a library, pass them on to descendent, etc., stuff DRM is always bad at. This kind of regime makes it worse. I dunno if people will go for it or not.

      The family I grew up in rented and copied VHS movies at home, and lent the copies out to the extended family. We were very fertile, and with so many grandkids, this both saved money and bound the family together. I want to continue something like that, but with hard drives. Personally, I dropped out at DVD -> BluRay, for exactly this reason: if I can't decrypt it, it's not really part of a collection.

      I guess it's possible to decrypt older BluRay, but I haven't figured it out. Even DVD was brutal for me because of rpc2 and "copy-protected" disks like Underworld that force me to run an Windows DVD ripper under wine, but the studios seem to have mostly stopped fucking with it.

    32. Re:The Smurfs 2? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      "From what I can tell that spec treats playback devices as black boxes expecting device manufacturers to implement such details with mere contractual obligations compelling them so."

      Not quite. There is a revocation mechanism in HDCP: If a manufacturer doesn't properly abide by the contractual requirements regarding anti-tamper measures or the prohibition on unencrypted digital output, the consortium behind HDCP can revoke their key - which means all those already-sold TVs suddenly become useless. It's the nuclear option: A penalty so severe, it will hopefully never have to be used. It doesn't matter though because, as you point out, HDCP has been throughly broken now.

    33. Re:The Smurfs 2? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't use QR.

      We I in charge, I'd use a very simple and undetectable watermark: Pick 64 points in the film, by frame number. Either duplicate the next or the previous frame on top of it. That's a 64-bit unique identifier embedded, which - as we are talking about a streaming service - can be per-customer. Then just go on the Bay a week later, download, decode, identify customer, and kick them off. Optionally set the lawyers on them.

    34. Re:The Smurfs 2? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      DVD's are 'encrypted.' CSS is basically a lesson in how not do do crypto. It's so throughly cracked, you can buy novelty tshirts with the (very short) decryption algorithm on.

    35. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Danathar · · Score: 1

      It will not be a camera that they use, somebody will custom make a large capture device that fits neatly over a particular screen, blocks out all outside light and capture the movie in it's entirety. The Screen output will be good, the capture device will be good. As long as the content has to travel as light from an emitting source, somebody will find a way to capture it at high quality.

    36. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So these discs should be cheaper than DVDs, since you're renting them for a finite time.

    37. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then just go on the Bay a week later, download, decode, identify customer, and kick them off.

      You're advising copyright holders to torrent their own films? That's a legal copy for everyone in the swarm!

    38. Re:The Smurfs 2? by sky_khan72 · · Score: 1

      Hey! Troll the trolls and multiply the joy by itself. And you know it! Btw, I think I'll get my first troll rating too because of you but I couldnt resist. Hats off to you.

    39. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Wulf2k · · Score: 1

      How do you know he didn't?

    40. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you're not the only one that buys DVD's and Blu-Ray's. I have a fair amount of them, and usually get them for my birthday and Christmas since there isn't really anything else I need.

    41. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As much as I'd like to believe that the utter customer hostility of the scheme would kill something where individual TVs became "licensed" to display individual movies for a limited time based on some crazy scheme, I have yet to see any depth they wouldn't sink to.

    42. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      That sounds like a decent scheme for cinemas, but for home viewing it's not going to work. Unless it is deemed acceptable that my entire bluray collection is bricked when I replace my TV, or that I have to go and obtain new keys for everything in my collection.

      That strategy worked (and to some degree still does) for music and games. Ever buy a new PC and have to purchase a new copy of Windows to attach to that specific motherboard serial number?

    43. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless it is deemed acceptable that my entire bluray collection is bricked when I replace my TV, or that I have to go and obtain new keys for everything in my collection.

      Which is what Microsoft has been pulling for years now with its OS if you buy a machine without windows installed. Easy enough to bypass if you call up support and say hey, new mobo etc please activate my copy to this ID. But you get the point.

    44. Re:The Smurfs 2? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Back in tbe days of Windows 7 I was changing PC components regularly. My understanding is that Windows got the serial nr or at least mark and model of a couple of components, and would lock out if too many components were different (after which a support guy could sort things out). I have swapped graphics cards, motherboards and hard disks several times in one machine (sometimes doing a reinstall as well) but I have never had my Windows code refused (and it wasn't a corporate code either). Maybe we in Europe were on a different scheme.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    45. Re:The Smurfs 2? by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      No company would ever think of applying DRM to things like power drills, leaf-blowers, etc., because you can legitimately purchase the same thing from a competitor.

      Or printers. Or farm tractors. Or cars. etc...

    46. Re:The Smurfs 2? by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      I didn't say it was good encryption. It's the modern equivalent of ROT-13. However, the post I was replying to was acting as if it's just an MPEG-2 file on a disc, which is not the case.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    47. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very resistant to a collusion attack, that is not.

    48. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup, HDCP is completely broken at the moment, so it's trivial to rip a perfect copy of any content whatsoever at that point in the chain... and again, this only has to happen once on the planet somewhere. Given how prevalent HDMI is on consumer equipment today this loophole isn't going away any time soon!

      Even this weren't the case, the de-obfuscated signal ALWAYS exists at some point in the electronics chain prior to being a voltage on an individual liquid crystal or DLP mirror (e.g. likely some proprietary LVDS interface). Hook up an FPGA at that point, write some software, hit the play button, and you'll have an almost perfect copy of the original content. Sure it's complicated, but again, only one person on the planet has to actually figure this out on one of dozens of consumer devices authorized to play the content before the cat's out of the bag.

      The *only* hope you have at curtailing this kind of attack is ubiquitous fingerprinting (i.e. everything you buy is watermarked with your ID). But even that strategy is flawed given the prevalence of identity theft and the almost insurmountable distribution problems you would face with universal watermarking in most third-world markets.

    49. Re:The Smurfs 2? by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Theoretically a player could refuse to play certain discs if the chain isn't encrypted

      And certain player hardware, such as the Macbook Pro and the Roku Premiere, refuse to output any video signal at any time if it detects that something doesn't support HDCP.

  4. Alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    Of course the alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked is that someone accessed the video pre-encryption. This could have been an inside job at the studio/production companies, or they could have been hacked.

    1. Re:Alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked by Aereus · · Score: 1

      That was my first thought, given the movie title in question. Had they actually (fully?) cracked AACS 2.0, surely they would have made their first release a more appealing movie?

    2. Re:Alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      No, because that would of been pre UHD Blu-ray.
      But I am confused with why getting a movie off of UHD Blu-ray would be so hard. A protection scheme can make copying the files off it is hard, but if you can play the disk you can rip the content.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    3. Re:Alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      The question here is quality - yes, you can point a camera at the screen, or strip HDCP, or any number of other schemes and then recompress it, but you will be introducing quality loss.

      In theory, this is the original stream from the disc, in the original HEVC encoding, without the encryption, and without additional loss. If that's the case, it points squarely at defeating the encryption.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
    4. Re:Alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      Yes, but what I meant was that if you had your graphics card simply re-encode the video as it played it the loses would not only be minimal, but I believe the naming scheme would allow you to simply call that UHD Blu-ray. Their is no special designation for an elegant dvd rip vs a brute force disc>streaming video>re-encode rip.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    5. Re:Alternative to AACS 2.0 being cracked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can also take apart a player, extract the decryption ROM and use it for modded circuits which intercepts the raw BT.1129 (or whatever it's called) video bitstream, and then re-encode or send it over something like SDI to an encoding device. You could do that with Blu-ray players too and requires no crypto knowledge. It's about electronics engineering.

  5. To solve this by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Have all new movies streamed on a network to a secure consumer box that can be updated as needed.
    No more disk issues. No internet, no movie. Order the movie overnight for next day playback on slow networks.
    Recall the disks and release the disk released movies on streaming services only.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:To solve this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does that stop someone from just capturing the video output from the device? Is this box also a one-size-fits-all TV?

    2. Re:To solve this by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Ever heard of HDCP?

      Of course - that can also be cracked.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re: To solve this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. And to he clearz when you say hdcp "can be" cracked...it already has been. There are already devices which report being compliant and then just spit out the unprotected video.

      Hence the question you responded to....yes weve heard of hdcp, but how does this stop anything?

  6. AACS 2.0 doesn't need to be cracked post either.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using the decoders as intended and either getting an HDMI splitter/converter that can bypass the re-encrypting/authorization step, or a device which can be hacked to allow memory dumps as it runs and the whole DRM technique falls down, entirely independent of actually finding a way to crack the AACS 2.0 encryption scheme.

    Doing the latter would be much more useful however, since vlc has libbluray to support bluray playback. *HOWEVER* it uses a database of previously 'cracked' session keys to allow decoding the Bluray discs, meaning if a disc has not already had the key extracted on a 'compromised' device, libbluray can't actually convince the bluray player to extract the key and decode the disc for it.

  7. Glad I'm not interested in the movie by Catharz · · Score: 1

    It'd take a week to download that here in Australia.

    --
    To know that you know what you know, and that you do not know what you do not know, that is true wisdom. --Scooby Doo
    1. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by loufoque · · Score: 1

      Surely you're joking?
      It takes 15 hours on a typical connection.

    2. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember when the Aus pollies said "no-one needs anything higher than 25Mbps"? Most of us get 8Mbps if we are lucky, even less after taking into account VPN overhead to stop the metadata dragnet (the metadata has already been accessed illegally by the police looking into a journalist..)

    3. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      That assumes you dedicate 100% of your bandwidth to that for 100% of the time. It also assumes everyone stays at work and the internet doesn't go to shit in the afternoon which is what typically happens. It's quite sad that through government squabbling Australia has spent billions on a national broadband network that moved it from the 30th fastest internet in the world to around the 60th.

    4. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by donaldm · · Score: 1

      It'd take a week to download that here in Australia.

      I have an Optus broadband connection (Sydney Australia) and can get burst speeds of 4MB/sec but can get sustained speeds of about 1.5MB/sec to 2MB/sec and yes the "MB" means megabytes. So assuming a sustained speed of 1.5MB/sec the total time to download a 50GB file would be nine hours and fifteen minutes.

      Of course, that also begs the question of "Why would I download a 50GB file to watch a 105-minute length movie cartoon show?"

      --
      There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
    5. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by wisnoskij · · Score: 1

      Rural Canada checking is.
      It would take me a month and a few days because we only get 50 GB a month, and that is because I pay to double the normal plan.

      --
      Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
    6. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by dwywit · · Score: 1

      Lucky I'm still on ADSL2+, then.

      6.6 Mbps and proud of it.

      Not.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    7. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Surely you're joking?
      It takes 15 hours on a typical connection.

      15 hours seems like a week in Australia.

      Some places that's good. Some places that's bad.

    8. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Given that 60 is twice as many as 30, you must be twice as happy as before!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    9. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I left for a country that isn't run by incompetent children. I'm far happier. I now have a 500/50 connection completely unlimited and I am paying $20/month less for it.

    10. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      A 500/50 connection for cheaper? I know it's not Canada.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    11. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by stealth_finger · · Score: 1

      I left for a country that isn't run by incompetent children.

      LIAR! No such place exists. They might have better internet in some places but they're all run by incompetent children...and that's if you're lucky.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    12. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by fibonacci8 · · Score: 1

      How is South Korea treating you?

      --
      Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
    13. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I left for a country that isn't run by incompetent children.

      LIAR! No such place exists. They might have better internet in some places but they're all run by incompetent children...and that's if you're lucky.

      Actually some of the smaller European socialist states are very nice. It works for them because they are relatively small, they share a single culture that isn't afraid to consider itself dominant, and overwhelmingly have a single ethnicity. That last part shouldn't matter, but it does, because of the way human beings are - they'll squabble over anything no matter how insignificant. So yes, it turns out of you remove the problems of scale and you remove a major source of political drama, you actually tend to get more reasonable governments.

      Socialism tends to fail horribly at very large scales though. Or at least, no one has yet figured out how to make it work reliably. The political power that comes from large masses of people who depend on you for essential things is just too tempting for the sociopaths. Check the standard American welfare system for an example - once you're on it, it's hard to get back off it. If you do find work and start making a little money, you no longer qualify, but this happens long before you're really back on your feet again. This is by design.

    14. Re:Glad I'm not interested in the movie by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Close but only a few points farther down the list in speed, and many points farther down in temperature ;-)

  8. Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slashdot is broken in multiple ways.

    The mobile site doesn't display at all in Firefox. The page source shows that content was served, but it's broken enough to not display anything at all. There are features of the desktop interface, like the sliders to change comment thresholds, that simply aren't usable for mobile users.

    On the desktop interface, links to older stories or to show all the stories on a previous day do not work at all. Instead, the front page is served up with the most recent stories.

    All of these have been broken for several hours, and there are comments about it two stories ago. If there are issues with the server, the right thing is usually to notify users that there's a problem and it's being addressed. Nothing of the sort has been posted. I can't think of any good reason to test out changes on a production site.

    If you're reading this, whipslash, this is a really bad experience for your users. Of course, you've made space to cram in more ads on comment pages, so all is well, right? Perhaps you should focus on building real value to this site instead of cramming in more ads to increase revenue in the short term. If you piss off enough users, that revenue will dry up in the longer term.

    1. Re:Slashdot is broken by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even on the desktop, it's a horrible experience now. There's a floating user box on the right that takes up a large chunk of width (hey, idiots: I made my browser window this wide because I want to see text this wide, not because I want a quarter to be a pointless empty side bar) and on the front page you can't actually get to that box (you know, the one with messages in it) unless you scroll right to be bottom, because some idiot made it move with the page, rather than scrolling sensibly.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Slashdot is broken by coofercat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Turn off your ad-blocker, then you'll see the true horror that is the New Slashdot. Honestly, sans-ad-blocker, it's so terrible it qualifies as "one of those sites that you occasionally hit on google results but you never actually read because the next result in the list doesn't have all the crap on it so is preferable".

      If I hadn't been reading slashdot for years, I probably wouldn't start now :-(

    3. Re:Slashdot is broken by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      If you think that's bad:
      - I need to zoom once because the default text size is too small.
      - I don't have a widescreen monitor

      Result: I have 780 pixels for the comments and 430 pixels of useless blank space on the right.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    4. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a subtle filer to only catch tech-savvy ad blocking users. Slashdot wants quality conributers, not quantity!

    5. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When looking at comments there is a gear looking thing to the right side (settings). Click that and set "Classic discussion system (D1)". That cleans things up a lot. It's still not as good as the original 90's era Slashdot but it's better than the default shit.

    6. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 still seems to work fine.
      adblockers for the win.

      Don't use mobile though might need to preface that with m. or something.

    7. Re:Slashdot is broken by stealth_finger · · Score: 5, Funny

      The worst part is if you try to scoll past the ads at the top too fast. They're like WTF and chase you down the page so you have to scroll past all slow and sneaky like so they think you looked at them.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    8. Re:Slashdot is broken by Nidi62 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My favorite was the one banner ad that would actually move your cursor out of the comment box while you typed, making it impossible to type more than a character or 2 at a time. Oh, yeah, and that damn tikka masala that took up half the page, scrolled, and you couldn't make go away. And every now and then on my work laptop, when using a mouse, Slashdot won't scroll when using the scroll wheel. Any other website works, just slashdot. They have ads that literally break their website and they don't care.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    9. Re:Slashdot is broken by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      I can't tell if you're trolling, or if that actually does work for you. When I click on it, the radio button stays pressed for a few seconds then jumps back to the D2 option.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    10. Re:Slashdot is broken by sims+2 · · Score: 1

      I have to run the site scriptless on mobile.
      Both because the banner ad takes up half the screen and because it crashes the browser otherwise.

      I also only use "Classic Discussion System (D1)" because the new one doesn't work on mobile and D1 also happens to work without javascript.

      On desktop uBlock Origin handles it well.

      Though I also have to run google scriptless as otherwise it hides the option to view cached pages on mobile.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    11. Re:Slashdot is broken by swell · · Score: 1

      "I made my browser window this wide because I want to see text this wide"

      Absolutely, and to make it worse- if you try to make the text bigger, the column of text shrinks; now you have even more useless white space.

      I know two solutions. One is the add-on HacktheWeb. Works on Firefox, YMMV. A couple clicks does it: Select the column you want to 'I'solate, press the letter I, and it fills the window. Optionally, you can select individual items and 'R'emove them.

      The other solution is to avoid the site and use alterslash.org for a clean view of the day's gossip.

      A third solution exists, works great except on /. Turn one of your monitors sideways for use with documents and web pages which tend to be taller than they are wide. Your Mac will reorient the screen content, otherwise YMMV.

      --
      ...omphaloskepsis often...
    12. Re:Slashdot is broken by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Similar problem for me, I try to set my comments threshold at score:-1 and it just defaults back to score:0.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    13. Re:Slashdot is broken by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Speaking of ad-blocking, try the following uBlock rule (may also work in AdBlock Plus, not tested):

      slashdot.org###stackcommerce-adwrap

      That gets rid of the stuff below the summary. Can't seem to fix the page width though.

      Whipslash, please fix subscriptions, I'm happy to pay for this just not with crappy UI destroying and annoying ads.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    14. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have to delete the aside block (in my developer tools).

      The box flickers and makes it impossible to scroll. I don't reclaim the space, but I can scroll.

      The desktop view on mobile works pretty well though. Still have to preview and then edit to get a working edit box, but otherwise it's good

    15. Re:Slashdot is broken by skoskav · · Score: 3, Informative

      The CSS can be overridden to get rid of the empty space. I use an extension called Stylish with these rules for Slashdot:

      div#comments.a2commentwrap {
      margin-left: 0;
      margin-right: 0;
      }

      #comments {
      padding-right: 0;
      }

    16. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://openuserjs.org/scripts/F-i-f/Slashdot_Adblock_Fixes

    17. Re:Slashdot is broken by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      If you're reading this, whipslash, this is a really bad experience for your users.

      Whipslash hasn't posted anything substantive since at least August of last year. (At least that's how far back I was willing to scroll through his mostly trollish (or maybe drunk posting) posts.) Given that pretty much no improvements have been made to /. in the year-and-some he came onboard, one can safely presume that they were nothing but hot air.

    18. Re:Slashdot is broken by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      Not talking about Slashdot, here, but a new plague appearing on the Internet is webpages that intentionally disable the scroll bar. Sometimes you can still use the scroll wheel, but the page is designed so you have to click on buttons or use PgUp/PgDn to "scroll". Apparently, the scroll bar is taking up too much space that could be better used for ads. What is the world coming to?

    19. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am glad I run a blocker. Fuck ads, and fuck slashdot for force feeding it to us all. I've been here long enough to NOT want to waste the ad revenue stream on me, because I don't fucking want to buy anything from dodgy adbait does NOT mean my input is not conducive to the efforts of this site to "stay the fuck alive".

      A great site would offer transparency to this with a button/slide switch to gracefully opt-out of ads in the top right like the trend it is becoming, see blocking everything presents more of a problem to trackers than ad revenue streams. The companies buying spots for ads should not be wasting money on people like me to display ads. It's fucking stupid.

    20. Re:Slashdot is broken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      stylish is broken

    21. Re:Slashdot is broken by skoskav · · Score: 1

      Thank you for the heads-up. A quick search indicates that Stylish now bundles some garbage analytics. One seemingly good-hearted Stylish fork for Chrome I found is Stylus.

  9. I can hear the movie execs shouting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "mothersmurfer!"

  10. PowerDVD 17 hack? by CanEHdian · · Score: 1

    From the past, we've seen plenty of linkages between 'software players' being hacked (i.e. encryption keys being grabbed from RAM) and encryption hacks. Perhaps it has to do with the recent release of the first software player being able to play UHD BD on PCs?

    --
    When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
    1. Re:PowerDVD 17 hack? by swb · · Score: 2

      I would think the hardware players would be almost easier to attack these days than approved desktop players.

  11. What you wanna bet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    that it was uploaded from an IP tied to an employee or officer of the MPAA?

  12. And when you download it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... it's a blocky 320 x 200 animated gif converted to "UHD".

  13. Broken encryption model... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1. Give users hundreds of millions of decryption devices.
    2. Distribute hundreds of millions of copies of multiple different encrypted messages where the plaintext unencrypted message is known.

    Encryption is properly used to send a private message where someone who isn't the intended recipient of the message can't see the plaintext unencrypted message.

    Actually publishing encrypted data with a known plaintext unencrypted counterpart? Then distributing hundreds of millions of decryption devices?

    Yeah, not gonna work.

    1. Re:Broken encryption model... by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm afraid you don't understand encryption at all.

      And this *isn't* encryption of data, so much as (attempted) encryption of transit.

      Any encryption method, you can openly publish the decryption method and hardware. If you can't, it's no good.

      What you *CAN'T* publish are the decryption keys. If you publish these, you are an idiot. CSS, AACS, etc. and pretty much all DRM schemes mis-use transport encryption by giving you the keys too, in some convoluted fashion. They are able to revoke keys, they are able to issue keys to manufacturers, but they are giving decryption keys to you. That's the problem, not the decryption device or decryption method.

      Any encryption that cannot survive a known-plaintext attack is useless in the modern era. It's as simple as that. That's not how encryption has worked since the days of the Caesar cipher - even Enigma wasn't really that vulnerable to that because working out the key-settings for a known plaintext was computationally infeasible for the time. Don't believe every line in The Imitation Game ("Heil Hitler! Turns out that's the only German you need to know to break the code!").

      So, no, what the problem is is not the encryption. It's the intended use. You give EVERY DEVICE MANUFACTURER a decryption key. Which you can revoke. But which millions of people share.

      The reason for this is that otherwise you have to give every viewer a unique decryption key and give them unique copies of their disc, and encrypt data on-the-fly to them (because you can't store 6 billion differently-encrypted copies of the movie). And that just means that one guy has one key, and if he doesn't care about that key being later revoked, he can decrypt his own personal copy and problem solved.

      AACS was a little bit more complicated, with all kinds of virtual machines checking state, and things like keys that were generically derivable if you have enough device keys (which means that nobody can trace who actually broke it or blacklist them).

      But those are security-by-obscurity and inherent flaws of using encryption as DRM instead of its intended use.

      But if you have an encryption scheme where you cannot publish the algorithm, or encrypted known plain-texts, you are very much back in the 60's (e.g. "Modern ciphers such as Advanced Encryption Standard are not currently known to be susceptible to known-plaintext attacks.")

    2. Re:Broken encryption model... by swillden · · Score: 5, Informative

      So, no, what the problem is is not the encryption. It's the intended use. You give EVERY DEVICE MANUFACTURER a decryption key.

      Yeah, I'm sure that what's happened here is that someone extracted a device key and used it to decrypt the movie. I'm shocked that this is the first time it's been done. Actually, I doubt that it is.

      Which you can revoke. But which millions of people share.

      Actually, no. AACS provides a unique set of decryption keys to every individual device. Not model, but individual piece of hardware. Through a complicated (and rather cool, actually) sequence of derivations, every device can derive the keys needed for each disk, but if a player's keys are found to be compromised they can be revoked, and that player will be unable to decrypt any disks made in the future.

      AACS was a little bit more complicated, with all kinds of virtual machines checking state, and things like keys that were generically derivable if you have enough device keys (which means that nobody can trace who actually broke it or blacklist them).

      Again, no. AACS includes a traitor tracing scheme. I don't know if it's actually in use (but if we start seeing lots of UHD torrents, you can bet they'll start using it), but it allows the identification of the specific device that decrypted a movie, from the decrypted video stream. The way this works is that they encrypt some portions of the video twice, with keys chosen so that any given device can only decrypt one of the two copies. Then they apply different digital watermarks to each of the duplicate blocks. With n duplicated blocks they examine the decrypted output and identify which of 2^n devices decrypted.

      But those are security-by-obscurity and inherent flaws of using encryption as DRM instead of its intended use.

      True, but AACS gets about as close as you can get, I think, to a secure DRM solution that doesn't include a real-time, two-way negotiation.

      Where it breaks down is that because "revocation" only affects future movies, an attacker who extracts the keys from a device on May 4, 2017 can use those keys to decrypt every Blu-Ray Disk pressed before that date (actually, probably before that date plus a few months). In addition, Blu-Ray players are dirt cheap. At the low end, they cost about the same as a disk. Given a cheap way to extract the key from one, it would be perfectly feasible to buy a new player for each movie you want to decrypt. But you don't even have to do that. Buy one per month and you can decrypt all the movies that come out -- at least until the AACS LA realizes that one model of player can be cheaply broken and pushes the manufacturer to tighten security to make it harder. They can make you work hard to keep up with changes in their security-by-obscurity.

      Except they can't win that way, either. The trick is to break a set of devices and get all of their keys. Then identify the traitor tracing blocks in a movie and decrypt them with multiple players' keys, so you end up with both copies of many of the blocks. Then, when you construct the output to publish, choose among the traitor tracing blocks so that your output is different from any of the individual devices that you've broken. Examination of the published stream may finger some device in the world, but it will definitely not finger any of the ones you broke. You may cause some random individual's player to stop working (on future movies), but your keys will stay good.

      At the end of the day, DRM is always breakable, because you have to distribute the keys. But it can be made pretty hard, and AACS is an incredibly good scheme, given the context in which it has to operate.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Broken encryption model... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm afraid you don't understand encryption at all.

      You misunderstand.

      Watch.

      And this *isn't* encryption of data, so much as (attempted) encryption of transit.

      Any encryption method, you can openly publish the decryption method and hardware. If you can't, it's no good.

      What you *CAN'T* publish are the decryption keys. If you publish these, you are an idiot. CSS, AACS, etc. and pretty much all DRM schemes mis-use transport encryption by giving you the keys too, in some convoluted fashion. They are able to revoke keys, they are able to issue keys to manufacturers, but they are giving decryption keys to you. That's the problem, not the decryption device or decryption method.

      ..

      Hey, Einstein, the decryption device has the decryption keys in it. DRM as implemented here involves distributing hundreds of millions of decryption devices - and they all have decryption keys in them.

      Hence, the decryption keys are de facto published.

      Not only that, the DRM model here involves trying to keep the plaintext from the person who paid to watch - and gets to watch - the plaintext.

      So the decryption keys, the encrypted data, and the plaintext data are all published.

      Like I said - it's a broken encryption model.

      And YOU go around telling people they don't understand encryption as well as you do?!!? Ooooh-kay. If you say so.

      But I see you've already been bitch-slapped...

    4. Re:Broken encryption model... by ledow · · Score: 1

      "So the decryption keys, the encrypted data, and the plaintext data are all published."

      AND ONLY THE DECRYPTION KEY MATTERS. Read the OP, rather than try to backtrack.

      Encrypted data? Doesn't matter.
      Plain-text data corresponding to it? Doesn't matter.
      Decryption algorithm? Doesn't matter.

      Decryption KEY - matters. It's in every device, yes. But not necessarily accessible (e.g. similar to TPM devices - you'd have to decap the chip to discover the key and we have trouble enough doing that to 1990's arcade cabinets with pure ROM chips that are secured by basic techniques, let alone a 2010's TPM chip designed for nothing more than securely encrypting using a key that's programmed once and never revealed - nobody's broken any TPM chips yet, but they're in almost every PC on the planet even if they're not enabled).

      But everything else you could publish the source code on github and put a thousand examples of encrypted and plaintexts on the Internet on anonymous FTP. And it *still* doesn't help you.

      Not saying that DRM can ever be fully secured.

      But the details of the encryption algorithm / known-plain-text stuff helping you out when the opponent is using a modern encryption scheme is absolute bollocks.

  14. And please tell me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...how to get a high quality torrent without the disk in the first place? Definitely not from the low quality stream.

    1. Re:And please tell me... by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Or from the movie studio's hacked servers, or perhaps master files from the blu-ray factor, etc. Of course it is very reasonable for us to assume they ripped it from physical media and not those other routes.

      Rhetorical question: why do they keep trying to sell me physical media when I really don't want a physical copy?

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  15. Seedbox? by guyniraxn · · Score: 1

    Those who want to get their hands on a copy of the file have to be patient though. Provided that they have access to the private tracker, it will take a while to download the entire 53.30 GB disk.

    I haven't been to this particular tracker but can guarantee most regulars will have seedboxes. The original seeder included. Any member of the site will probably be able to have it on their home computer within a couple of hours. Gone are the days of spending up to a week just to download a 700mb avi.

  16. That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "...it will take a while to download the entire 53.30 GB disk"

    It'll sure be a bitch to split it and burn it onto 78 CD-RW discs but less of a bitch for 7 DVD-RW discs.

    1. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      53.30GB?! How many 1.44MB floppies is that?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by bigdady92 · · Score: 1

      That's like Terraquads of GigaRAM for sure!

      --
      Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
    3. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      37903 assuming minimal add-on to link all those RAR files....

    4. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "...it will take a while to download the entire 53.30 GB disk"

      It'll sure be a bitch to split it and burn it onto 78 CD-RW discs but less of a bitch for 7 DVD-RW discs.

      Why would you want to do that?. Spitting up a movie which is 53GB to fit onto smaller sized media is a PITA coupled with the fact that CD's and DVD's are easily scratched especially when handled by kids.

      In fact, I would go further than asking why would you want to download a 53GB file (ie. movie) when all you would do is spend 105 minutes watching it then effectively delete it? OK, you could save it but a 53GB file is pretty big and would take up a significant portion of your storage or you could use encoder software (converting to H265 codec will reduce it by over 60%) which can reduce the file size significantly. There are also plenty of tools that will allow you to strip out any languages that are not required.

      Here is a thought. Just go out and rent the movie or borrow it from a friend. Oh wait, its UHD, well that's different, I hope you have a UHD display.

    5. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I estimate about 10 Football Library Fields of Congress

    6. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      1h45m = 105 minutes = 6300 seconds / 37903 = 0.16621375616706 second per floppy.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    7. Re:That's a lot of CD-RW discs!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, someone is seriously humor-impaired.

  17. One of these days companies will realize... by Zurkeyon3733 · · Score: 1

    DRM and Copy Protection are useless against the greatest hacking minds of the internet. Its pointless to spend money on these technologies. There are other ways to protect content and insulate profits. Ways that are far more effective. The Steam approach of LightDRM has worked better than most others, and even Kid-Gloving Infringers has had moderate success. Bugging the game, or gimping the difficulties or weapons has also been very effective for some studios. DRM is intrusive to the people who BUY the game, and typically does NOT interfere with the hacker community at large, who will just strip off the DRM and play the game with a much more streamlined experience than most DRM providers can typically offer. DRM, or at least the current DRM approach, is dead. New methods should be investigated and tested. We all know that these people deserve to be paid for their work. DRM just makes everything cost more. A lose Lose for Devs and Gamers!

    1. Re:One of these days companies will realize... by Zurkeyon3733 · · Score: 1

      Its basically the same for movies and Other Content.

    2. Re:One of these days companies will realize... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So why bother locking the doors to my car and the house when it's trivial to pick the locks?

      It's pointless. I'm defeated. I shouldn't even try resisting the thieves. They're going to steal my car and break into my house whether I lock the doors or not. We're doomed. :-(

    3. Re:One of these days companies will realize... by Zurkeyon3733 · · Score: 1

      You missed the part where I said that other methods should be used. DRM is a poor "Lock" and always has been. That is what happens when you only read one sentence in and start trolling...

  18. This is the disc -- NOT a compressed .mkv or .mp4 by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 2

    This torrent appears to be the actual disc itself -- .m2ts files and BDMV\STREAM directory etc. It looks like the full 72.5 Mb/s source movie at the identical quality as the retail UHD disc, minus the DRM -- you could burn this puppy back to a UHD disc and play it on your player (assuming the player will play these UHD discs without DRM), or, more likely, use your favorite software player. Or, you could use Handbrake and compress it to the bitrate and container of your choice. But it looks like the real deal.

  19. 53.30GB?! How many 1.44MB floppies is that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really???? This is too much.
    https://www.totalresumes.com.au/

  20. What's the encryption code? by Gornkleschnitzer · · Score: 1

    09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is my guess.

    1. Re:What's the encryption code? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, that's the combination for my luggage!

  21. Re:This is the disc -- NOT a compressed .mkv or .m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UHD Blu Ray uses HEVC, so it technically is highly compressed video. Judging by the typical HEVC encoding, I'd say uncompressed would be ~600GB or more.

  22. Stop being cheap and just purchase a copy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For the mere price of $8.49 you can purchase a legit copy from Amazon. While the technical feat is impressive, I think we would all be better off if people stopped being cheap and just purchased media.

    1. Re:Stop being cheap and just purchase a copy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      agreed.

  23. Bulletproof anti-piracy method by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just make shitty movies that arent worth pirating. Brilliant!

    1. Re:Bulletproof anti-piracy method by green1 · · Score: 1

      As proven by this case, that doesn't work. They pirated Smurfs 2 of all things!

  24. Blu-Rays or by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Blu-Smurfs?

  25. Met an audiophile? It'll last longer than that by raymorris · · Score: 2

    > This will last until people can't tell the difference between a format's video and their natural vision.

    I predict it'll last much longer than that. Consider the audiophile scene. People spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on simple cables for digital, when it can be easily proven that any non-cable will deliver bit-for-bit identical data. They insist on clearly reproducing frequencies four times as high as they can hear.

    1. Re:Met an audiophile? It'll last longer than that by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      In both the case of audio and video, often the limitation is the listening/viewing environment. The extra colour and dynamic range with 4k, and even more so with 8k is really nice, but to get much out of it you need a dimly lit room and a TV capable of reproducing it.

      Similarly with audio you need a dedicated room and to then sit in the sweet spot while listening. A nice compromise is a good set of headphones. I've got some really expensive ones, complete with high end amp, DAC and the rest, but actually more often just listen via Bluetooth now. AptX of course, normal Bluetooth really is crap, but aptX is good enough and the freedom of movement usually outweighs the better equipment.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Met an audiophile? It'll last longer than that by MachineShedFred · · Score: 1

      That's mostly a consequence of applying old information to new technologies. In an analog world, the quality of the interconnect matters. With digital, it's just a matter of having an interconnect that gets a good enough margin on the signal-to-noise ratio, and you let the DAC do the rest.

      The "audiophile scene" is made up of a distribution of people that includes about 3 to 5 percent that actually know what they are talking about and doing, usually from a background of being an audio or electrical engineer and absolutely knowing how these things work, and >95% of people talking out of ignorance and being taken by reprehensible companies that see an opportunity to defraud ignorant people with money to spare.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  26. Why the pirate even bother about this? by Eloking · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ok, let's be clear on something. No matters how perfect your protection is, if it's on my screen, I can record it. I can output the signal and the audio on a HD recorder and there's no protection that will protect you from that.

    Now, to my point, why the pirate even bother to pirate this encoding? I mean, why would I pirate the BlueRay image full of ads and pointless menu when I can download a perfectly fine and cleaned .AVI with all the Subtitles/Audio integrated?

    Or am I missing something?

    --
    Elok
    1. Re:Why the pirate even bother about this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where are you going to get your AVI? You need a source at some point. This is that source. I'm sure most of the trackers will have a remux release up within hours to do just what you described.

    2. Re:Why the pirate even bother about this? by Danathar · · Score: 1

      .AVI??? I haven't seen an .avi in YEARS

  27. 50GB by HalAtWork · · Score: 1

    I really wonder why they mandated new drives for the UHD BD spec, when HVEC is much smaller than H264 anyway it could easily fit on dual layer BDs...

    Systems like PS4 Pro (or even PS4 since it can do 4k at 30/24Hz) could easily play them if it weren't for the drive requirement

  28. Slashdot is irrevelant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bring back kernel releases and stories about SCO!!!!

  29. Re:This is the disc -- NOT a compressed .mkv or .m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    mkv and mp4 are containers, not video formats.

  30. Re:This is the disc -- NOT a compressed .mkv or .m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UHD Blu Ray uses HEVC, so it technically is highly compressed video. Judging by the typical HEVC encoding, I'd say uncompressed would be ~600GB or more.

    At least this is one application where HEVC really makes sense.

    I really hate when I download a torrent of Blu-Ray or even DVD quality and it's encoded in HEVC. I have older devices that handle mpeg4/x264 like a champ but they really choke on HEVC because they don't have hardware decoding support for HEVC/x265. I mean, x264 is the *native format* of Blu-Ray, why re-encode it like that? At DVD, 720p, and 1080p resolutions the file size difference is negligible. If there were a big file size difference I could at least understand it.

    I mean this is the torrent scene so I'm not exactly going to demand a refund, but the observation that some people go very much out of their way to do things that make no damned sense, it just blows my mind.

  31. Thanks! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Having had a kid's DVD become unreadable the other day, not having been able to take a backup of it because of the "let's break the DVD in subtle ways so it can't be ripped, but can be played" scheme, I welcome anyone who cracks down on these stupid schemes.

    If there was a Kickstarter or similar funding scheme, I'd donate to it (well, perhaps checking the local laws first).

    For now, I've resorted to never again buying a DVD from that publisher again.

    Yes, I could buy a streaming solution, but, and this surprises me, a couple of similar incidents over the past years, have made me realize that for things I do care about, and I probably care about these kid's movies for the next 5-10 years, it's better if I own the media myself.

    I do have a Magnatune subscription, because I feel I can trust those people, but I'd never trust someone in the cahoots with the big media corporations.

  32. Video is inherently copy-able by davidwr · · Score: 1

    If all you care about is extracting the audio and video from a disc, it's not hard, provided you have the right equipment.

    You can go the analog way and use expensive equipment to sample every pixel that appears on your screen as it plays.

    You can go the digital way and disassemble your TV and monitor the signals that go to each LED in the display as the disk plays.

    Audio capture is trivial by comparison.

    Sure, it's expensive, but I'm sure there are several commericial-scale pirates that either have equipment like this or they could get it or make it themselves if they wanted to.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  33. no need to decrypt it by Frederic54 · · Score: 1

    It is displayed on a screen? so just framegrab this. Your BD player is plugged via HDMI to your TV, all the DHCP stuff is handled there and it's ok, there in the TV the signal is converted to LVDS and there is a big flat ribbon that goes to the LCD matrix. Just here, insert a smal PCB that have a t-con in (and t-con out if you want to see what you will grab), on the PCB there is an FPGA and enough RAM to have 2 frames in memory (~16MB for 1080p), every clock time export the last frame to a PC via a pci-express card, while the new frame is being filled in memory (double buffering). On the PC feed the frame to an encoder like ffmpeg and you have your video.

    --
    "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
    1. Re:no need to decrypt it by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      Its bad to assume that most TVs in fact use LVDS internally.

  34. the "cinephile" equivalent of audiophiles. by DrYak · · Score: 2

    The extra colour and dynamic range with 4k, and even more so with 8k is really nice, but to get much out of it you need a dimly lit room and a TV capable of reproducing it.
    Similarly with audio you need a dedicated room and to then sit in the sweet spot while listening.

    Huh... nope. 8k and 10bits colour isn't the equivalent to 200$ monster digital cables and 192kHz sample rate.

    - Ears have some physiological limits due to how physics work (your ears can hear very approx in the 20-20'000Hz range. your body can also feel vibrations in the 1-100Hz. There's no receptor in a human body capable of reacting to 90kHz).
    - Physics of digital signals, and a whole bunch of signal processing science (e.g.: error correction) means that in the digital world, sometime a bit is just a bit, no matter the concentration of gold and diamond powder (sic!) in the cabling it goes through.

    No matter the dedicated audio room you're sitting in, you'll never be able to hear ultrasounds (directly. though ultrasounds can cause distorsions in the audible range on some equiement), and monster cables will change nothing to the SPDIF link.

    The "cinephile" equivalent of an audiophile insisting on 200$ monster cables and 192kHz rates,
    would be a guy who insist on movie formats that not only record Red, Green and Blue primary colours, but also infra-red and ultra violet (i.e.: insist on frequencies/wavelenghts for which the human eyes doesn't have any receptors) and on buying a $10'000 silver screen to project projecting onto which, that should also perfectly reflect x-rays, gamma rays and microwaves (completely irrelevant given what is transmitted by the light of the beamer).

    No matter if the movie room is dimly lit or not, insisting on wave-lenght outside the human range (like ultra-violets) is useless, as is insisting on a screen optimized for something completely irrelevant.

    The same way, no matter the dedicated listening room and it's sweet spot, a human ear lacks receptors for 96kHz sounds.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:the "cinephile" equivalent of audiophiles. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually the human retina *can* perceive ultraviolet. UV is just blocked because the cornea is UV-opaque. People who have had i.e. cataract surgery that involved removing/replacing the cornea actually can perceive ultraviolet. But of course I agree that the vast, vast majority of viewers won't be able to see it. I just thought it was interesting that this is not universally true.

    2. Re:the "cinephile" equivalent of audiophiles. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I didn't mean to imply that monster cables work or HD audio is worth it, merely that to get the best from even a modest set up you need the right environment.

      FWIW I find 8k a noticeable upgrade. I wouldn't bother with a 22" 8k set for the bedroom though, or anything but a basic HDMI cable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  35. AACS 1 and Bluray and DeAACS by DrYak · · Score: 1

    I never understood why you couldn't just capture the encrypted key and feed it that and let it do it's thing.

    And that's exactly how it was done with the very few generations of movies.
    Some BlueRay player (i think WinDVD ?) stored they decryption key in an insecure memory location, and hackers used to tap there to find which key is used to decrypt a specific BlueRay.

    Movie industry noticed and revoked the keys for that player (meaning newer disc produced after that where encrypted with a selection of keys for which the player had no corresponding keys).
    Cue-in cat and mouse game, until hackers managed to find the master key that sits at the top of the whole encryption pyramid.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  36. Not exactly by DrYak · · Score: 1

    if it's on my screen, I can record it.

    Yes, as in "record it with a camera".

    I can output the signal and the audio on a HD recorder and there's no protection that will protect you from that.

    Not exactly.
    Nowadays, the output signal is *digital* (HDMI mostly with standalone players, and HDMI mostly with computers).
    There's an encryption standard HDCP which is supposed to protect this data during its transit to the screen.

    In theory, you should NOT be able to directly hook-up the output to a recorder, that recorder will only see an ecrypted stream that only the screen can decrypt.
    You can only use a *cam* to record the actual screen as suggested above, not the stream itself.

    In practice, HDCP is done poorly. Its current form is cracked and can be bypassed, so the only actual real-world is not stopping pirate, but only failing in weird ways for legitimate users.

    And in actual practice : nobody gives a damn about the latest cookie-cutter soulless movie. Chances are high that I'll be too busy doing some interesting outdoor sport (or some indoor one) rather than trying to see how I could pirate a copy of Smurfs 2 (what, they even made a *second* one ?)

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Not exactly by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      In theory, you should NOT be able to directly hook-up the output to a recorder, that recorder will only see an e[n]crypted stream that only the screen can decrypt.
      You can only use a *cam* to record the actual screen as suggested above, not the stream itself.

      Wouldn't it be possible to take apart a screen, remove the display unit, and connect the wiring that normally goes to the display to some kind of recording device? At that point the data is unencrypted, as it's set to drive all the individual pixels of your display. All the recorder has to do is collect the values of those pixels and store it again for later playback.

      The ultimate analog hole.

    2. Re:Not exactly by Eloking · · Score: 1

      if it's on my screen, I can record it.

      Yes, as in "record it with a camera".

      I can output the signal and the audio on a HD recorder and there's no protection that will protect you from that.

      Not exactly.
      Nowadays, the output signal is *digital* (HDMI mostly with standalone players, and HDMI mostly with computers).
      There's an encryption standard HDCP which is supposed to protect this data during its transit to the screen.

      In theory, you should NOT be able to directly hook-up the output to a recorder, that recorder will only see an ecrypted stream that only the screen can decrypt.
      You can only use a *cam* to record the actual screen as suggested above, not the stream itself.

      In practice, HDCP is done poorly. Its current form is cracked and can be bypassed, so the only actual real-world is not stopping pirate, but only failing in weird ways for legitimate users.

      And in actual practice : nobody gives a damn about the latest cookie-cutter soulless movie. Chances are high that I'll be too busy doing some interesting outdoor sport (or some indoor one) rather than trying to see how I could pirate a copy of Smurfs 2 (what, they even made a *second* one ?)

      While I'm nnot so surprised to learn about this encryption method, I understant that an output of a TV would still be encrypted, but the case in my mind was my computer.

      There's dozen "On Screen" recorder software. So if I can read BlueRay on my computer, what kept me from recording the screen?

      --
      Elok
    3. Re:Not exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if it's on my screen, I can record it.

      Yes, as in "record it with a camera".

      FRAPS, Jing, or any other of the multitudes of purpose-built screen recorders.

  37. When are they going to learn? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DRM is an endless game of Whack-A-Mole; you can spend millions of dollars creating what you think is the perfect copy-protection scheme, and some kid in East Asia will crack it in a week or two and tell the rest of the world how to do it.

    JUST GIVE UP. Bytes want to be FREE, stop preventing them.
    You can't stop the signal, Mal. One way or another people will find a way to share files and NOTHING you do can stop it.

    Stop wasting time and money on DRM and just accept that there will be some pilfering of bytes. You'll sleep better at night. Oh and by the way if no one wants to pay for your 'content' then it obviously wasn't very good to start with; try harder next time instead of putting a gun to people's heads and forcing them to hand over their wallets. YOU are the thieves, MPAA/RIAA, not the people.

  38. Fitting *53GB* by DrYak · · Score: 1

    when HVEC is much smaller than H264 anyway

    Yeah but not by that *much* (though it depends on the quality of both encoders - x264 is incredibly better visually than nearly everything else).
    At least, not given the quality/bitrate that the industry has decided to use for Ultra HD (where it makes sense or if it's mostly a placebo is an entirely different can of worm).

    Also HEVC is patent minefield (and thus hardware HEVC/H265 decoding isn't as widespread as AVC/H264), so perhaps they also want to keep a door open for content producers that can only afford the MPEG patent pool for H264/AVC and would prefer to keep that codec.

    Of course, next-next generations codecs like AOMedia's AV-1 are right around the corner, with even better performance, less patent encumbremenent (xiph and google are onboard), and lots of industry supprot (youtube and netflix - ie. a huge chunk of all watched content - are behind it. As are most current hardware constructors), so perhaps will end up soon with actually smaller files (and thus smaller discs or - more likely - even smaller file to torrent)

    it could easily fit on dual layer BDs...

    And this movie is a nice example : it's 53GB, it DOES NOT fit on 50 GB dual layer BlueRays. You would need more layers, that would drive the price of pressing discs up (i.e.: less obscene margins for the industry).
    Instead UHD discs have slightly higher densities: the dual layer goes up to 66GB (so you can fit this 54GB movie on 2 layers only).

    Systems like PS4 Pro (or even PS4 since it can do 4k at 30/24Hz)

    Thus it would depend it the movie is 24-30 fps or 48-60 fps, and/or if there's (alterning frame) 3D.
    But yeah...

    could easily play them if it weren't for the drive requirement

    Now the big question :
    are there really that many differences between vanilla and UHD blueray disks ? or is it only a slightly higher surface density ?

    I would suspect that it's only a slight difference of density, and that it should be in theory possible to reflash the drive itself with an upgraded firmware that change the behaviour of the servos of the head and the focus assembly.
    (The same way it was possible to obtain a little bit higher density with floppy drivers. Except that these where directly controlled so the controlling software actually ran on the PC's main CPU, no flashing required, just a device driver).

    Not that any manufacturer is actually going to release such an upgrade (it's much more lucrative to have the users re-buy a new more expensive device which is actually the same device as before (no R&D costs !) but with slightly different constants in the firmware and a different model number written on the box).

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Fitting *53GB* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Support for 24/30Hz covers 99% of movies showing up on the format, trimming 3 GB might just mean losing a few minutes of a special feature, anyway was just an idea

  39. And only 4,000Hz for a 45 year old man by raymorris · · Score: 1

    - Ears have some physiological limits due to how physics work (your ears can hear very approx in the 20-20'000Hz range.

    And that's optimistic, for a young person. At the age when people have money for this stuff, a 45 year old man can generally hear up to about 4,000 Hz or so. Maybe barely hear 8,000 if they are lucky. So this 45,000Hz stuff is just plain stupid.

    1. Re:And only 4,000Hz for a 45 year old man by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      And that's optimistic, for a young person. At the age when people have money for this stuff, a 45 year old man can generally hear up to about 4,000 Hz or so. Maybe barely hear 8,000 if they are lucky.

      What damage did you do to your ears? 10K is an easy limit for most according to the charts I saw. Yes, it dips here and there, and hearing damage will affect you. If your hearing is limited to 4K, you're way out of normal bounds.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    2. Re:And only 4,000Hz for a 45 year old man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am getting on for 41 and I can hear all the way up to 12Khz perfectly fine, I don't see that dropping to 4 kHz in the next 4 years.
      14Khz is just completely silent however, not even a oh there is something there... sigh :(

  40. This isn't going to save Blu-Ray by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even if the tech to build Blu-Ray players is finally out, it's still illegal to sell them, and still illegal to play the movies. People who don't have time for such hassles are going to keep pirating, until the publishers totally get rid of the DRM so that there's nothing to crack. Who has time for this nonsense?

    This demo doesn't impress me, no matter how good Sony wants it to sound.

  41. was all excited until by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I saw the movie title.
    If you're gonna do an experiment, why go for something that unpopular?
    Any recent Marvel offerings in 4K would be a better initial target.

  42. WOW! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Breaking the encryption on Smurfs 2 is like counterfeiting a 1 lira note.

  43. Modern LCD by DrYak · · Score: 1

    At that point the data is unencrypted, as it's set to drive all the individual pixels of your display. All the recorder has to do is collect the values of those pixels and store it again for later playback.

    (NOTE: that you'll not find trace that drive all the individual pixels, but only lines and columns of a matrix, and the display is scanned.
    Also, in *active matrix*, the display doesn't directly drive the pixels, but drives active component (transistors+capacitors) in the cell which are then in charge of keeping their corresponding pixel in its desired state between scans)

    On an OLED display : yes, basically it makes 3 different type of protein fluorescent in an electric field, one for each R, G, B. You get one signal for each.

    On a modern LCD display : not exactly, what you see is an LCD grid (pixels going on or off) overlaid over an RGB LED light source (That's how the obtain good constrast ratio : in the darker region of the image, the LEDs of the backlight are turned down or off).
    So for each pixel, you get and R, G, B signal giving what fraction of the backlight should be allowed through, and for each region a LED signal (usually multiplexed: most modern RGB LEDs have a driver directly in the package) telling how much backlight that region of the image should emit.

    So you either need to integrate those signal together (determine the composition of light at a given position, given the nearby LEDs in that region ; and then filter by the state of pixels in the LCD grid).
    Or you go and disassemble an OLED instead.
    Or you simply record it with a cam and let the integration be done for you by the screen.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Modern LCD by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      I guessed already I was simplifying a bit too much but the point is the data is there, unencrypted, it's a matter of tapping the signal, and pretending you're the display. Probably not easy but for sure it can be done, without dismantling a display: just have a word with the manufacturer to obtain some part. As they're all in China I'm sure you will be able to find one that can sell you the parts.

      It will be quite the project but it takes just one determined hacker to get it done.

  44. Modern hardware by DrYak · · Score: 1

    There's dozen "On Screen" recorder software. So if I can read BlueRay on my computer, what kept me from recording the screen?

    Probably depends on how the display is composited by the desktop on your screen. And how the real-time video compression hardware used by the recorder is playing along with the video decompression hardware used by the media player.
    You might end up with a grey rectangle instead.
    (see the problems of taking a screen shot of a video player that appeared 15 years ago when the first video acceleration overlay started to appear in Super VGA cards. Only much more complicated due to increased complexity of modern hardware and modern compositing desktops)

    (Or if you go with the software solution :
    depends if the OS allows the recorder software to access the screen buffer of the software player, and the player still accepts to play in such an OS.
    Be ready to have to fumble around with an OS that implements DRM "secure computing", requiring a gpu device driver that implements "secure path" (i.e.: video-buffer memory protection) and a player that requires ton of signed code.
    You might end with a "content cannot be player currently on your computer" pop-up.)

    At that point, it's easier to get a second machine, a box that scrubs HDCP away (e.g.: a vew HD splitter), and a HDMI to USB3 lossless grabber (magewell).

    Or go for the whole "disassembly" approach mentioned above by another poster.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  45. Check age charts by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > 10K is an easy limit for most according to the charts I saw.

    I can only guess the charts you saw didn't account for age, and maybe you're counting the range that we can only barely hear if it's really loud. For the same detection rate you get for 1 watt at 2K, you might need 1000 watts at 10K.

    1. Re:Check age charts by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      > 10K is an easy limit for most according to the charts I saw.

      I can only guess the charts you saw didn't account for age, and maybe you're counting the range that we can only barely hear if it's really loud. For the same detection rate you get for 1 watt at 2K, you might need 1000 watts at 10K.

      I didn't do much research, I admit that freely. Here's one link with a graph, and here's another to tests.

      The 10K test run on my system through crappy monitor speakers set at about 30% volume was easily heard rooms away in a quiet house. The 12K test could be heard, and the 14K+ annoyed my dogs. I guess that those monitor speakers aren't as crappy as I thought. :) So for me, at least, my drop off is somewhere around 12K. Then again, I've practiced hearing safety protection for years, even while mowing the yard, trying to compensate for a span of rather bad habits early on. Maybe it's working.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    2. Re:Check age charts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > 10K is an easy limit for most according to the charts I saw.

      I can only guess the charts you saw didn't account for age, and maybe you're counting the range that we can only barely hear if it's really loud. For the same detection rate you get for 1 watt at 2K, you might need 1000 watts at 10K.

      I didn't do much research, I admit that freely. Here's one link with a graph, and here's another to tests.

      The 10K test run on my system through crappy monitor speakers set at about 30% volume was easily heard rooms away in a quiet house. The 12K test could be heard, and the 14K+ annoyed my dogs. I guess that those monitor speakers aren't as crappy as I thought. :) So for me, at least, my drop off is somewhere around 12K. Then again, I've practiced hearing safety protection for years, even while mowing the yard, trying to compensate for a span of rather bad habits early on. Maybe it's working.

      It's much easier and cheaper to make a good tweeter than to make a good woofer (or a good subwoofer). Try playing some deep bass or even some mid-bass and you will quickly determine whether you have crappy speakers. Just listen for the distortion.

  46. Re:This is the disc -- NOT a compressed .mkv or .m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    easy fix for that, don't download stuff.

  47. Yawn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One sneaky idiot with an HD webcam can copy the entire film, and post it to a Russian website. Encryption scheme defeated.

    Not to worry, this is not coming to your TV or computer. For $7.00 per month, we can already watch just about any damned thing that we want, legally, at any time on any device. Netflix and Amazon can worry about the DRM. Live TV also shows up on the major network sites for free soon after it airs. The big studio films just become another tile that I may click on or ignore. They are becoming irrelevant.

  48. HDFury strips HDCP 2.2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No need to defeat AACS, just strip HDCP 2.2 and capture the 4K output in its digital form. People have been torrenting Netflix and Amazon 4K content for quite a while. I bet it sure beats that cam torrent of Star Wars Rogue One I watched where the person sitting in front of the camera got up twice during the movie to go to the bathroom.

    Makes me wish someone would continue development of Requiem for removing DRM from iTunes content.

  49. Integration by DrYak · · Score: 1

    but the point is the data is there, unencrypted, it's a matter of tapping the signal, and pretending you're the display.

    The problem is that, in practice, in the name of making this as dead-cheap as possible, component tends to be highly integrated.
    So you have a single chip being fed the encrypted HDCP signal in, and directly spitting the desired signal out.
    (Much cheaper to make a device than having different chips for each stage of the signal processing talking to each other)
    So the unencrypted data you refer is actually between 2 cores inside a highly integrated chip.

    That's also why you won't find screens with the exact unusuall feature set that you would like as a geek.
    Because these features aren't done by mixing-and-matching chips with discrete functions,
    but because the screen will basically use a single integrated chip for everything, and chip maker make chips with the most commonly needed features in.

    (I'm oversimplifying. You'll still find some signal converters. e.g.: the chip only accept 3 HDMI inputs, so you need to add 1 DP-to-HDMI converter, 1 VGA-to-HDMI ADC (yup analog-digital-analog wrecks the quality, but that's the cheapest they managed to make it), but basically manufacturer are going to keep the chip count as low as possible. It's very likely that the decryption-core will be integrated tightly with the display core).

    just have a word with the manufacturer to obtain some part. As they're all in China I'm sure you will be able to find one that can sell you the parts

    Yup, given that there are genuine reasons to have a separate discrete HDCP stage (mostly to split signal between displays), you're sure to be able to find parts in china as you wish.
    Again, in the name of as-chepa-as-possible-integration you'll also find a bunch of output that you don't need (the additionnal outputs of the splitter), but hey, it works all the same.
    (e.g.: a ViewHD splitter)

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  50. Where do you live? by gwolf · · Score: 1

    When you write $350, I have to read MX$6500. When you write $850, I translate to roughly MX$16,000. I have a net income of roughly MX$25,000 a month (little bit over US$1000), and I am well trained and paid in the range of the upper 10% of Mexico's population.
    So, while this week's sale in Best Buy seems like a good deal, it's not something I'd rush out to buy. And, the price you paid three years ago? No, not by a long shot.
    I do own a projector and screen combo (that would make something more or less that size) and often use it to watch movies, but the reasons for buying it was not purely entertainment.

  51. Could be. Also harmonics by raymorris · · Score: 1

    You may have excellent hearing, and using hearing protection certainly seems like a good idea. The values I mentioned may also have been a tad low. You said you could hear 12K - that's of choose quite a bit less than 20K or 22K.

    > I guess that those monitor speakers aren't as crappy as I thought. :)

    Maybe, but actually maybe they are throwing off your test. Less expensive equipment has more harmonics, often called THD (total harmonic distortion). This is an effect where when you ask for 8Khz, your amp and speakers actually deliver 8Khz, 16Khz, 4Khz, and 2Khz.

    1. Re:Could be. Also harmonics by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      You may have excellent hearing, and using hearing protection certainly seems like a good idea. The values I mentioned may also have been a tad low. You said you could hear 12K - that's of choose quite a bit less than 20K or 22K.

      > I guess that those monitor speakers aren't as crappy as I thought. :)

      Maybe, but actually maybe they are throwing off your test. Less expensive equipment has more harmonics, often called THD (total harmonic distortion). This is an effect where when you ask for 8Khz, your amp and speakers actually deliver 8Khz, 16Khz, 4Khz, and 2Khz.

      Yep, but doubtful, as the pitch was definitely up the scale. Not something I'd call musical, which the lower frequencies definitely are closer too. As for 20K+, I never claimed those were within hearing range for me, nor do I have what I would consider excellent hearing. I used to be able to hear 16K+ a long time ago as verified in a hearing test. Painful screeching noise really. But hearing loss is progressive, and you never know when the cliff will arrive.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  52. The real horror is 58GB of smurfs. by rpresser · · Score: 1

    It is time to nuke the planet. Nothing more that is good can ever exist.