http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/0...game-consoles/

The Nuon was so much more than a chip—it was a complete multimedia platform with an operating system and a Web browser. It would turn any DVD player in the world into a game console. And at a time when DVD looked like it would soon be everywhere, the Nuon could be right there with it.

I remember the hype this received before release and then it died a swift death when the Sony PS2 came out. I think it was always nuts to think a manufacturer without software could somehow get people to game on their DVD players. This was right before the Internet dotcom bubble burst, so I guess people got swept up in empty marketing promises.

I certainly remember it- the "Bedazzled" DVD has something on it that uses Nuon. Also remember a "Tempest" game on DVD you could buy for it, don't know how that worked. I'd seen it at Tower, and always hoped I could've snagged a copy of it cheap after Nuon died just to see how it behaved in a regular player.

Interesting article, will have to look at it more in-depth this weekend.

When I recently watched the 2-disc DVD of the Tim Burton "Planet of the Apes", it had the Nuon option and was completely baffled by what it was...

Reading the article makes me wonder how anything decent comes from the Japanese electronics manufacturers. A lot of the same mistakes would be repeated with the HD DVD-Blu-ray war.

Interesting article. I was not aware of the Nuon back in the day.

This passage is very very interesting.

This kind of mentality is probably what doomed dvd to be forever cracked. If the firmware is not meant to be upgraded, then there was nothing that could be done once the dvd CSS encryption was broken. Especially after dvd was already widespread, it would have been pointless to do a mass recall of dvd players. So pretty much all of the additional tweaks to CSS (ie. RCE, etc ...) and the dvd standards (ie. deliberate bad sectors, etc ...), were not much more than "speed bumps" that were easily circumvented.

It wouldn't be surprising if this crack of dvd CSS leading to the Japanese manufacturers not being able to do anything about it, is what changed their attitude about the firmware.

Essentially the main reason why bluray is not forever cracked yet (like dvd), is that the bluray firmware can be easily upgraded to accommodate revoked player specific keys.

Until the day new bluray discs are no longer being released, it will be a repetitive cat and mouse game between the hackers and the aacsla.

DVD CSS did have a provision for leaked keys. Later DVDs could block players with leaked keys, similar to Blu-rays:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conten...#Cryptanalysis

What they didn't count on was that brute-forcing CSS would be so easy, due to low encryption (40-bit) and flaws in the implementation reducing the total number of possible keys. Revoking player keys doesn't matter when you can calculate the DVD disc's encryption key in a few seconds.

AACS in Blu-ray hasn't been fully cracked, you can't brute-force it. AnyDVD HD has been able to roughly keep pace with Media Key Block (MKB) updates, but they have to update the software each time a new MKB version is released:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc...tem#Encryption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securi...Content_System
https://forum.slysoft.com/showthread...330#post410330

If AACS was fully cracked, I don't think a firmware update would help, as there's nothing in the Blu-ray spec to allow for an update to a different DRM. BD+ was supposed to allow for an additional layer of copy protection, but AnyDVD HD has been able to keep on top of cracking BD+ versions as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD%2B#...mplementations

Blu-ray UHD will likely include an updated version of AACS in it.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...bridge-sharing

Good point. Wonder why they didn't use this provision, back in the day.

In regard to encryption, in hindsight it would have been smarter to use something like DES or triple-DES instead of the weak css encryption. (Like what DIVX used). Though I don't know whether they were allowed to back then.

(IIRC back in the 1990's, encryption algorithms with more than 40-bits keys could not be easily exported).

You might be right about the export restriction, which was restricted to 40-bit encrpytion up until at least 1998:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export..._States#PC_era


It's unclear if DIVX's Triple DES was significantly more secure though: it died as a format before much serious effort was put into cracking it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_DES

Refreshing my memory from that time period (via googling), IIRC somebody figured out how to independently generate many of the possible keys specific to individual players, without a lot of extensive reverse engineering. I don't know offhand if such schemes were able to generate ALL of the possible player specific keys.

(Won't bother with any links).

If this scheme indeed generated most or all of the possible player keys (whether in principle or in practice), then it may very well be pointless in revoking individual player keys.

IIRC at that time (circa the late-1990's), there were no easy practical ways to crack DES and triple-DES. (At least not publicly known).

The EFF created their own custom machine which could crack DES within a few days or so, by brute force.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFF_DES_cracker

From the wikipedia article I linked:

Since DIVX died, in practice it probably would have been easier to just buy the dvd (or later bluray) versions of various movies first released on DIVX, than trying to crack triple-DES.

I haven't checked lately, but offhand I don't know how many DIVX titles are left which are still unreleased on dvd (or bluray).

I found this list from a few years ago (2009?):
http://www.the-doa.com/Pages/DoaExcl.html
Pure Luck has since been released on Universal "Vault" DVD-R
http://www.amazon.com/Pure-Luck-Mart.../dp/B0033PSHBI

All the others are still lacking a Region 1 DVD release, although most have streaming options, and some have a DVD release in another region.

This is one of the big perils of using a "security through obscurity" model with a "in-house" developed encryption algorithm.

Back in the mid-late 1990's when I first heard about dvd, I initially thought they would be using something like DES as the underlying encryption algorithm. Even a minimally educated college engineering major at that time, would probably have been aware of DES and how widely used it was.

When I first read some articles about the technical details of CSS in the early-2000's, I was somewhat surprised it was a weak "homebrew" algorithm.

Also by the time all of the major american and european patents on movie dvd discs+playback expire in 2018, in principle anybody can design and manufacture a dvd drive which doesn't conform to the strict css drm guidelines. (ie. Accessing a particular dvd disc's encryption keys right away without any authentication or cracking).

(In practice, this can already be done via disassembling and hacking the firmware of a computer dvd drive).

Until congress extends the expiration time.