I don't know if I'm a special case or anything, but I never see these things in stores anymore, so I'm keeping it for as long as I can.
You can find 'em. I have a couple. They moved them over to toys. That's kind of appropriate, I think.
My set-top DVD player plays DVD-R with MP3s. Far more content than I would ever need. I don't think it's been turned on this year though. We stream from the server now.
That's cute. Their system employs double blind methods for getting your money from your account to their account, and they have infinite scale. Billions of phony accounts would not slow them down and would not impede their activity in the slightest.
There are strategies that could be employed, but neither candidate is clueful enough to find someone who knows what they are. The government is not going to descend from on high and make the Internet a nice technocolor paradise. It's rough out here. Fend for yourself.
Man, will I be glad when silly season is over and people quit trying to insert politics into every issue.
Actually, it's correct. With rootkits, the rootkit inserts itself into the processes of the operating system as it loads. If the AV attempts to read the boot block, it feeds the AV the boot block that it saved when it installs itself. It excludes itself from the process listing. It prevents access to memory where its functions are stored. It really is bulletproof.
With a bug like this one you usually have to boot to some other media (usually read-only) and run a scan against the disk without using the compromised operating system. In short, they're a pain in the butt.
I earnestly believe we'll see copyright protections scaled back to something more reasonable, like five years, before we see a DRM system that works long enough to protect a work until the end of its copyright protection.
There's a lot of truth in what you say. My mom had HD for half a year before I went over to her house and noticed she was watching HD through component video cables, and so she was seeing SD even though her TV, video player and cable box were all HD capable. They complained the aspect ratio looked funny (not how they put it, but I knew). I went out the next day and got her an HDMI cable and installed it.
Mom & Dad stared at it for a moment and then went "oh" together.
A lot of people don't know - and I can include in that many of the people who fill your role. The cluelessness at most HD video vendors is endemic.
But the fact remains that all the available HD video can fit on your home server, and you would probably agree that all of it that's worth watching is a fraction of that. A lot of people do care, and many of them know.
That I can watch content on any platform I want does matter. That the vendor can't take my money and then revoke the keys does matter. I have transcoded a video to my phone. More and more people want to do this for their iPod Touch and their PSP.
DRM doesn't work, and that's irrelevant because content providers don't have the security in place to prevent the dissemination of content before it's in theaters or published to encrypted media. DRM is an unnecessary nuisance that degrades the value of the package below what the vast majority of the market is willing to pay. So uptake is low, not because we don't want hi-def, but because we don't want to steal and we won't accept crap. The people I'm talking about are the people that don't come while you're standing around waiting for something to happen. Guess what. They're not coming. Ever. The great HD revolution is on hold indefinitely. You'll get the curious, the early adopters, the rich and the proud. But you won't get Ethel and Earl. Joe sixpack isn't coming. They have common sense, and it's not time yet for HD media content. Cable? Yes. Displays? Yes. Players and content, decidedly no.
As usual, I do have some guidance for Sony on how to turn this around, but I'm not giving it for free. They could figure this out if they read this topic and did some analysis, but they haven't got the wits God gave a possum and they don't want to hear the right answer anyway.
For one thing, copying DVD's has been and continues to be incredibly trivial for anyone to do.
And so is downloading HD content from the Internet. And still far more people just drag their external HDD over to a friend's and sneaker net it home. It's quicker and more convenient. One day soon the common man will discover the mysteries of the VPN.
Some people collect lint. Some others collect video and audio content -- far more than they would ever use -- not because they really intend to enjoy it, but oddly enough because they enjoy the practice of collecting and cataloging it. Some of these folks like to show off their collections, share them, and have the latest thing that's not yet generally available.
Last, you mention 4TB NAS devices as if every home on the block has one. I can assure you they do not.
They sure keep a lot of them in stock at Walmart, Frys, Office Max, and every department store I've been in lately. I would think they wouldn't do that for such rapidly depreciating merchandise unless it was moving quickly. Do you have figures? Citation please.
"So when the updates come in, Karl looks at them and if they look sticky he applies them to the VM and runs the unit tests. As we update applications from our upstream providers, we test them against the same VMs. Our in-house developers write to the same VMs, and when they implement new features or use new libraries, they have to include unit tests to test the interfaces to validate that they work in the required ways. Each night the system builder builds a new VM from the latest updates. All you need to do is check the unit tests reports and make sure Karl knows right away if something goes wrong - just put the error report in the trouble ticket. The trouble ticket system will also notify the advocate teams for the specific package that fails. Usually it doesn't and we push the patch a few minutes after it comes in."
I wanted be mindful of security: "But Jorge" I said, "what if a horrid exploit happens overnight?"
"We're partnered with five other trusted NOCs that give us 24 hour coverage. We share unit tests so that if a patch has to be included any hour of the day, it's morning somewhere. We don't even come in anymore.
We used to have to come in on weekends too, but this new system doesn't have exploits as often so it's been a couple years since that happened."
Thinking to show I was interested in the long term, I asked "What do you do when you get new hardware?"
"It's weird. Once upon a time, the virtual machines were there to simulate the physical machines. Now it works out that the new hardware is just physical hardware to implement the virtual machine. We get samples, build the image from the VM and run the unit tests on them. If we can't make our software pass the tests, or we can't get our required upstream packages validated, we don't buy the hardware. If the vendor won't sell us hardware that works, we get a new vendor. If somebody wants to advocate some special hardware, they're responsible for maintaining the software for it, maintaining the fixes, and of course pushing them back upstream so that everybody can have them. The desktops sync to the user accounts on the server continuously so if they remote into their desktop from the road or from a thin client, they get the whole deal with all their preferences, email, files, desktop items and shortcuts intact.
Once a quarter we get together and compare the pots and pans of new hardware. That gets pretty lively. Wait 'til I show you my USB device collection. Did you know they made oscilloscopes?
Anyway, You wouldn't believe the system we had before. It was horrid. Applications didn't even come with the source code."
"What was it?"
"At the end, the very worst one was called Vista. They probably didn't even mention that one in school, it came and went so fast. When it was clear that this was as good as that software vendor was ever going to get, we had no choice but to change. I fought it at first but now I'm glad. The new system is, well, rational. I don't know how we survived before.
Now let me show you the cafeteria. We have our own Starbucks..."
I can confirm that both of the 32GB SDHC cards I just looked at are benchmarked at more than 10MB/s. They should be fine, and they have enough storage space for the 30GB file referenced in TFA, even before transcoding. Unfortunately they start at $125. You know how that works, though - the price always comes down. Besides, it's not a storage format, it's a transport format.
From my example, you could 'chip' a movie to take it home from the store on your chip, and then load it on your server at home. You could do the same thing to take it on the road if you have 1080p in your car (don't we all wish... maybe next year?) It still takes 3 hours to stuff the chip so some sort of exchange system would have to be worked out for stores, like they do with propane.
And if somebody is reading this thinking they can patent this they had better think again. I've been shouting this from the rooftops for years. There will be prior art.
The data is 8MB/s. You'll want at least the 100x SDHC card - that's 10MB/s. There is no corresponding storage data rate because the current max is class 6: 6MB/s. SDHC is not for recording BD data rate movies but can be fine for playback. Your hardware has to support the data rate also, of course.
The purpose of DRM isn't to stop copying altogether - it's to increase the difficulty to the point where the amount of copying is trivial.
I replied to this before, but it was apparently lost. Your answer is here.
If copying has been made so difficult that the amount of copying is trivial, then why are 1TB SATA drives, 4TB NAS devices and such like moving so fast they don't even shelve them off the skids? Are people making more backups of their photos and email than ever before? Really?
Intelligent or not, either they will cave to market pressures, or the format will vaporize and another will take its place.
I think this has happened, and they just don't realize it. This external drive box supports up to five of these 1TB drives. Net that's $800 for 5TB of storage, today. 5TB of storage at BD's 6MB/s is about 200 hours of BD video. Come to think of it, that's about all of it. Another one could store 2000 hours of DVD video, which is more than anybody should want to have on hand. Just one 1TB drive can store more high fidelity music than you could listen to in a lifetime. 1.5TB drives are already out, and these prices are expected to drop given the season and the market.
What exactly are people doing with this stuff if they're not storing content? Backing up their email?
The drives are moving so fast they don't even shelve them off the skids in some stores. Internals, externals, NAS devices and PCs designes with 8 SATA ports and bays are getting fairly common. There's a good chance that by the time Sony "gets it" they'll be selling into a market where everbody already "has it" because they weren't willing to wait - even though they were willing to pay at the time they're not going to pay to download a movie their friend already brought over to watch on a portable drive.
Until you find out that it is also possible to skip the "buy the Disc" part.
You're going to find this hard to believe - certainly I did, once upon a time. Most people are decent folk. They don't cheat at solitaire. They give back the excess change the clerk gives them by mistake. Given a choice, they try to do the right thing.
When Slysoft did this in March. I've had those versions of AnyDVD and CloneDVD for several months. Why is this news? Seriously, not trolling here, but even the submitter mentions this and links to the original Slashdot article on it.
Because their software is open. Their developments are contributions to the pool of human knowledge. Slysoft's achievement is also deserving of praise, but they while they showed us it could be done (which most of us assumed), these developers showed us how.
no one I know seems to fall into your generalization of people not buying Blu-Ray discs or players because of DRM.
We shall see. Most people don't know really why they're not trusting of innovation in content technology. The advantages of open content though are immediately obvious and so when the content owners open up the content it starts flying out the door.
All in all, because Blu-Ray is 10x the bandwidth of any online "HD" movie source (and I use that term loosely for online offerings) and because online DRM is so much worse, I don't see it going away. Instead I see it likely to win over DVD-- DRM or not-- but not until manufacturing costs ramp down due to better technologies and economies of scale.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes." Technology has passed this one by, but the truth of it remains. Content providers would do well to sell the right to the content separately, and let people figure out how to get the content on their own. If they must, they can offer content at kiosks you take your external hard drive to. The tree huggers should like the idea of transport-media free content distribution at the very least - that's less mylar disc in the landfill.
Consider this. Is a DRM-free H.264/AAC mp4 file more convenient, or is a DRM-laden disc that you can play in your car, computer, PS3, portable system, or friend's house by carrying around a 16 gram disc?
For the car and portable system a downrezzed movie that fits on an 8GB SDHC card are sufficent, and that form factor is considerably more convenient than a disc that doesn't even fit in your pocket - and is too fragile to carry that way anyway. People do this on their EEE all the time. A 360GB external 2.5" USB drive is bigger and heavier but smaller than a BD with case so it still fits in your pocket, is less susceptible to scratching, fits multiple movies on one disk, and has many other advantages.
Open content means you can make backups. You can convert to your target platform. You can move your content to where you want it and any technology that can play it will continue to play it for all time. DRM content does not have any of these advantages. Most importantly that last one.
Some pedant like me is going to bring this up so it might as well be me. The abstract machines such as the "Turing Machine" defined this before Donald Knuth was even born, but the revered doctor has contributed much to practice with theory and example.
A lot of people are just not buying content - even though they would like to buy content - because they know that money spent that way is wasted and they don't want to throw their money away again. Of these I believe that many are just avoiding the content rather than downloading it through any of the myriad options for that, and that's demand destruction. Once the content is available unprotected, a huge market of people is opened up who would prefer to pay for what they get if they can pay for it in a way that's not stupid. See the MP3 sales of Amazon and iTunes and even Walmart.com.
Making content available DRM-free is actually a huge win for the content industry, even if it makes it harder to prove unauthorized distribution. Hopefully soon they'll see this.
OTOH, brick and mortar content sales outlets are pretty much toast. They sell a digital product in a digital age with an analog method. And, they close. The Internet doesn't close.
Skip the BD player deal, buy the Disc at retail and then download their platform shifted unencrypted movie backup through P2P*. The full BD+ library should be available within a few days, if it wasn't already.
* Even though it's inherently fair, this method may not be legal in your jurisdiction. Consult your attorney before using.
The content must contain sufficient information for the content to be decoded. Anything one software can do, another software can do (see Knuth, et seq). Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content. Removing the encryption using open software eliminates the protections against copying provided by the closed software and the game is over.
Thus DRM is a fool's errand. It always has been.
The illusion of protectability is however easy to sell for vast sums of cash to content owners who desperately want it to be possible.
Sony isn't having a ton of luck building an installed base of users of BD, even after buying their competition into submission. If they obsolete their installed base they have to start over again with thet negative examples of HD-DVD and the additional strike of cyclic obsolescence against them. It would be too obvious that the purchase of their content is actually a short term lease. That would be the death of BluRay before it's even well started, and it wouldn't even buy them an additional year before it was cracked again.
It's more likely that we're nearing the end of this DRM nonsense forever. Finally!
Or am I too optimistic of their intelligence? History does weigh heavily against my hopefulness here.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt anyone who wants the service has balked at that.
Tech support: Hi, may I help you?
Customer: I'm having trouble with the install instructions. It says I have to plug in some telephone cable thingie.
Tech support: Yes, you plug the telephone cable into the unit. The spot is clearly marked in blue.
Customer: Yeah, like I tried, but I have two cables for the phone. One goes to the wall and the other goes to the PC. Neither one fits.
Tech support: Two cables?
Customer: Yeah, they're for charging. Oh! I have another one for the car... no, the car one doesn't fit in the hole either.
Tech support: Are you using a cellular phone?
Customer: Yeah. That's my home phone.
Tech support: You need to use your land line.
Customer: I don't have a LAN line here. When I get online I plug the PC into the phone.
Tech support: I'm going to have to escalate this to my supervisor. Please hold...
I don't know if I'm a special case or anything, but I never see these things in stores anymore, so I'm keeping it for as long as I can.
You can find 'em. I have a couple. They moved them over to toys. That's kind of appropriate, I think.
My set-top DVD player plays DVD-R with MP3s. Far more content than I would ever need. I don't think it's been turned on this year though. We stream from the server now.
That's cute. Their system employs double blind methods for getting your money from your account to their account, and they have infinite scale. Billions of phony accounts would not slow them down and would not impede their activity in the slightest.
There are strategies that could be employed, but neither candidate is clueful enough to find someone who knows what they are. The government is not going to descend from on high and make the Internet a nice technocolor paradise. It's rough out here. Fend for yourself.
Man, will I be glad when silly season is over and people quit trying to insert politics into every issue.
Actually, it's correct. With rootkits, the rootkit inserts itself into the processes of the operating system as it loads. If the AV attempts to read the boot block, it feeds the AV the boot block that it saved when it installs itself. It excludes itself from the process listing. It prevents access to memory where its functions are stored. It really is bulletproof.
With a bug like this one you usually have to boot to some other media (usually read-only) and run a scan against the disk without using the compromised operating system. In short, they're a pain in the butt.
The Internet is only the core of the distribution network. The last mile is external USB HDD.
I earnestly believe we'll see copyright protections scaled back to something more reasonable, like five years, before we see a DRM system that works long enough to protect a work until the end of its copyright protection.
No point in commenting on this since the previous story is still on the main page.
Sorry, the uses you cite don't account for 5% of the volumes I'm seeing. And my reading skills are fine, thanks.
There's a lot of truth in what you say. My mom had HD for half a year before I went over to her house and noticed she was watching HD through component video cables, and so she was seeing SD even though her TV, video player and cable box were all HD capable. They complained the aspect ratio looked funny (not how they put it, but I knew). I went out the next day and got her an HDMI cable and installed it.
Mom & Dad stared at it for a moment and then went "oh" together.
A lot of people don't know - and I can include in that many of the people who fill your role. The cluelessness at most HD video vendors is endemic.
But the fact remains that all the available HD video can fit on your home server, and you would probably agree that all of it that's worth watching is a fraction of that. A lot of people do care, and many of them know.
That I can watch content on any platform I want does matter. That the vendor can't take my money and then revoke the keys does matter. I have transcoded a video to my phone. More and more people want to do this for their iPod Touch and their PSP.
DRM doesn't work, and that's irrelevant because content providers don't have the security in place to prevent the dissemination of content before it's in theaters or published to encrypted media. DRM is an unnecessary nuisance that degrades the value of the package below what the vast majority of the market is willing to pay. So uptake is low, not because we don't want hi-def, but because we don't want to steal and we won't accept crap. The people I'm talking about are the people that don't come while you're standing around waiting for something to happen. Guess what. They're not coming. Ever. The great HD revolution is on hold indefinitely. You'll get the curious, the early adopters, the rich and the proud. But you won't get Ethel and Earl. Joe sixpack isn't coming. They have common sense, and it's not time yet for HD media content. Cable? Yes. Displays? Yes. Players and content, decidedly no.
As usual, I do have some guidance for Sony on how to turn this around, but I'm not giving it for free. They could figure this out if they read this topic and did some analysis, but they haven't got the wits God gave a possum and they don't want to hear the right answer anyway.
For one thing, copying DVD's has been and continues to be incredibly trivial for anyone to do.
And so is downloading HD content from the Internet. And still far more people just drag their external HDD over to a friend's and sneaker net it home. It's quicker and more convenient. One day soon the common man will discover the mysteries of the VPN.
Some people collect lint. Some others collect video and audio content -- far more than they would ever use -- not because they really intend to enjoy it, but oddly enough because they enjoy the practice of collecting and cataloging it. Some of these folks like to show off their collections, share them, and have the latest thing that's not yet generally available.
Last, you mention 4TB NAS devices as if every home on the block has one. I can assure you they do not.
They sure keep a lot of them in stock at Walmart, Frys, Office Max, and every department store I've been in lately. I would think they wouldn't do that for such rapidly depreciating merchandise unless it was moving quickly. Do you have figures? Citation please.
Jorge was explaining how to handle my new role ...
"So when the updates come in, Karl looks at them and if they look sticky he applies them to the VM and runs the unit tests. As we update applications from our upstream providers, we test them against the same VMs. Our in-house developers write to the same VMs, and when they implement new features or use new libraries, they have to include unit tests to test the interfaces to validate that they work in the required ways. Each night the system builder builds a new VM from the latest updates. All you need to do is check the unit tests reports and make sure Karl knows right away if something goes wrong - just put the error report in the trouble ticket. The trouble ticket system will also notify the advocate teams for the specific package that fails. Usually it doesn't and we push the patch a few minutes after it comes in."
I wanted be mindful of security: "But Jorge" I said, "what if a horrid exploit happens overnight?"
"We're partnered with five other trusted NOCs that give us 24 hour coverage. We share unit tests so that if a patch has to be included any hour of the day, it's morning somewhere. We don't even come in anymore.
We used to have to come in on weekends too, but this new system doesn't have exploits as often so it's been a couple years since that happened."
Thinking to show I was interested in the long term, I asked "What do you do when you get new hardware?"
"It's weird. Once upon a time, the virtual machines were there to simulate the physical machines. Now it works out that the new hardware is just physical hardware to implement the virtual machine. We get samples, build the image from the VM and run the unit tests on them. If we can't make our software pass the tests, or we can't get our required upstream packages validated, we don't buy the hardware. If the vendor won't sell us hardware that works, we get a new vendor. If somebody wants to advocate some special hardware, they're responsible for maintaining the software for it, maintaining the fixes, and of course pushing them back upstream so that everybody can have them. The desktops sync to the user accounts on the server continuously so if they remote into their desktop from the road or from a thin client, they get the whole deal with all their preferences, email, files, desktop items and shortcuts intact.
Once a quarter we get together and compare the pots and pans of new hardware. That gets pretty lively. Wait 'til I show you my USB device collection. Did you know they made oscilloscopes?
Anyway, You wouldn't believe the system we had before. It was horrid. Applications didn't even come with the source code."
"What was it?"
"At the end, the very worst one was called Vista. They probably didn't even mention that one in school, it came and went so fast. When it was clear that this was as good as that software vendor was ever going to get, we had no choice but to change. I fought it at first but now I'm glad. The new system is, well, rational. I don't know how we survived before.
Now let me show you the cafeteria. We have our own Starbucks..."
I can confirm that both of the 32GB SDHC cards I just looked at are benchmarked at more than 10MB/s. They should be fine, and they have enough storage space for the 30GB file referenced in TFA, even before transcoding. Unfortunately they start at $125. You know how that works, though - the price always comes down. Besides, it's not a storage format, it's a transport format.
From my example, you could 'chip' a movie to take it home from the store on your chip, and then load it on your server at home. You could do the same thing to take it on the road if you have 1080p in your car (don't we all wish... maybe next year?) It still takes 3 hours to stuff the chip so some sort of exchange system would have to be worked out for stores, like they do with propane.
And if somebody is reading this thinking they can patent this they had better think again. I've been shouting this from the rooftops for years. There will be prior art.
The data is 8MB/s. You'll want at least the 100x SDHC card - that's 10MB/s. There is no corresponding storage data rate because the current max is class 6: 6MB/s. SDHC is not for recording BD data rate movies but can be fine for playback. Your hardware has to support the data rate also, of course.
Requote:
The purpose of DRM isn't to stop copying altogether - it's to increase the difficulty to the point where the amount of copying is trivial.
I replied to this before, but it was apparently lost. Your answer is here.
If copying has been made so difficult that the amount of copying is trivial, then why are 1TB SATA drives, 4TB NAS devices and such like moving so fast they don't even shelve them off the skids? Are people making more backups of their photos and email than ever before? Really?
Intelligent or not, either they will cave to market pressures, or the format will vaporize and another will take its place.
I think this has happened, and they just don't realize it. This external drive box supports up to five of these 1TB drives. Net that's $800 for 5TB of storage, today. 5TB of storage at BD's 6MB/s is about 200 hours of BD video. Come to think of it, that's about all of it. Another one could store 2000 hours of DVD video, which is more than anybody should want to have on hand. Just one 1TB drive can store more high fidelity music than you could listen to in a lifetime. 1.5TB drives are already out, and these prices are expected to drop given the season and the market.
What exactly are people doing with this stuff if they're not storing content? Backing up their email?
The drives are moving so fast they don't even shelve them off the skids in some stores. Internals, externals, NAS devices and PCs designes with 8 SATA ports and bays are getting fairly common. There's a good chance that by the time Sony "gets it" they'll be selling into a market where everbody already "has it" because they weren't willing to wait - even though they were willing to pay at the time they're not going to pay to download a movie their friend already brought over to watch on a portable drive.
Until you find out that it is also possible to skip the "buy the Disc" part.
You're going to find this hard to believe - certainly I did, once upon a time. Most people are decent folk. They don't cheat at solitaire. They give back the excess change the clerk gives them by mistake. Given a choice, they try to do the right thing.
The purpose of DRM isn't to stop copying altogether - it's to increase the difficulty to the point where the amount of copying is trivial.
... and you're going to claim success for DRM after this insightful observation?
Somebody will be along shortly to mod you funny.
When Slysoft did this in March. I've had those versions of AnyDVD and CloneDVD for several months. Why is this news? Seriously, not trolling here, but even the submitter mentions this and links to the original Slashdot article on it.
Because their software is open. Their developments are contributions to the pool of human knowledge. Slysoft's achievement is also deserving of praise, but they while they showed us it could be done (which most of us assumed), these developers showed us how.
no one I know seems to fall into your generalization of people not buying Blu-Ray discs or players because of DRM.
We shall see. Most people don't know really why they're not trusting of innovation in content technology. The advantages of open content though are immediately obvious and so when the content owners open up the content it starts flying out the door.
All in all, because Blu-Ray is 10x the bandwidth of any online "HD" movie source (and I use that term loosely for online offerings) and because online DRM is so much worse, I don't see it going away. Instead I see it likely to win over DVD-- DRM or not-- but not until manufacturing costs ramp down due to better technologies and economies of scale.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes." Technology has passed this one by, but the truth of it remains. Content providers would do well to sell the right to the content separately, and let people figure out how to get the content on their own. If they must, they can offer content at kiosks you take your external hard drive to. The tree huggers should like the idea of transport-media free content distribution at the very least - that's less mylar disc in the landfill.
Consider this. Is a DRM-free H.264/AAC mp4 file more convenient, or is a DRM-laden disc that you can play in your car, computer, PS3, portable system, or friend's house by carrying around a 16 gram disc?
For the car and portable system a downrezzed movie that fits on an 8GB SDHC card are sufficent, and that form factor is considerably more convenient than a disc that doesn't even fit in your pocket - and is too fragile to carry that way anyway. People do this on their EEE all the time. A 360GB external 2.5" USB drive is bigger and heavier but smaller than a BD with case so it still fits in your pocket, is less susceptible to scratching, fits multiple movies on one disk, and has many other advantages.
Open content means you can make backups. You can convert to your target platform. You can move your content to where you want it and any technology that can play it will continue to play it for all time. DRM content does not have any of these advantages. Most importantly that last one.
Some pedant like me is going to bring this up so it might as well be me. The abstract machines such as the "Turing Machine" defined this before Donald Knuth was even born, but the revered doctor has contributed much to practice with theory and example.
A lot of people are just not buying content - even though they would like to buy content - because they know that money spent that way is wasted and they don't want to throw their money away again. Of these I believe that many are just avoiding the content rather than downloading it through any of the myriad options for that, and that's demand destruction. Once the content is available unprotected, a huge market of people is opened up who would prefer to pay for what they get if they can pay for it in a way that's not stupid. See the MP3 sales of Amazon and iTunes and even Walmart.com.
Making content available DRM-free is actually a huge win for the content industry, even if it makes it harder to prove unauthorized distribution. Hopefully soon they'll see this.
OTOH, brick and mortar content sales outlets are pretty much toast. They sell a digital product in a digital age with an analog method. And, they close. The Internet doesn't close.
Skip the BD player deal, buy the Disc at retail and then download their platform shifted unencrypted movie backup through P2P*. The full BD+ library should be available within a few days, if it wasn't already.
* Even though it's inherently fair, this method may not be legal in your jurisdiction. Consult your attorney before using.
The content must contain sufficient information for the content to be decoded. Anything one software can do, another software can do (see Knuth, et seq). Therefore if there's an available software that can decode the encrypted content it must be possible for open software to decode the encrypted content. Removing the encryption using open software eliminates the protections against copying provided by the closed software and the game is over.
Thus DRM is a fool's errand. It always has been.
The illusion of protectability is however easy to sell for vast sums of cash to content owners who desperately want it to be possible.
Sony isn't having a ton of luck building an installed base of users of BD, even after buying their competition into submission. If they obsolete their installed base they have to start over again with thet negative examples of HD-DVD and the additional strike of cyclic obsolescence against them. It would be too obvious that the purchase of their content is actually a short term lease. That would be the death of BluRay before it's even well started, and it wouldn't even buy them an additional year before it was cracked again.
It's more likely that we're nearing the end of this DRM nonsense forever. Finally!
Or am I too optimistic of their intelligence? History does weigh heavily against my hopefulness here.
A hearty congratulations to the brilliant programmers of Doom9, including Oopho2ei - who claims not to be a "professional programmer".