BD+ and Its Effect on Current Players
 

I've been hearing both good and bad things about the new level of copy protection BD+, which is being employed by Fox for its upcoming releases due to begin hitting stores this fall. The good: enhanced copy protection that offers multiple levels of encryption. The bad: it might not be compatible with current player software. Is there any truth to this? Do we basically have to wait until titles are released in order to find out whether or not these discs will play?

We'll know fairly soon when 'The Day After Tomorrow' arrives by Fox. We could have a betting pool to see how long it takes for BD+ to be cracked. I say...17 days from the release date of said movie, October 2nd.

No kidding... I'm hoping that Fox will finally give in and realize that no matter what measures any studio takes, there will always be someone out there who can find a way around them. Not that I condone this in any way; I'm just hoping we can make it through Nov. 20th, when "Live Free or Die Hard" gets released. I would hate to think I would be stuck watching it in standard definition.

I'm sure there are certain entities within the industry itself which would love to see BD+ fail so badly they would try and do it themselves ....

My guess is that it will take around a year or so. Not much is really known about the full specifications of what BD+ entails so I think a learning curve will slow things down. You never know though.

I disagree. The harder something is to crack, the more crackers out there will see it as a challenge and give it a shot.

I think it'll be cracked inside of a month.

I thought that the advantage of BD+ was that it was adaptable, so that even if one disc was compromised the cracking wouldn't apply to future discs. If hackers have to come up with the machine codes, that might be a more difficult challenge. I guess we shall see...

Well, adaptable could mean a few things. It could mean:

A) Every single Blu-ray has a different type of protection. That would be the most secure way of doing it, but would cost a hell of a lot more money.

B) Every Blu-ray released has the same copy protection until that protection is hacked. The studios can then use a new protection until that is cracked, and so on. This wouldn't be as secure, because a single hack would work on a whole wave of discs, but it would cost a lot less money.

There are probably a few more options, but I can't think of what they might be at the moment.

I certainly agree with what you are saying, however, we have to see exactly how it works first. There was a lot of talk in 2006 about BD+ offering security measures that we know nothing about yet, which is why so many insiders were quiet about it.

I'd say it will be hacked, it's just a question of time.

First off, there is no "good" for any of us in BD+ or any other form of DRM - its all about restricting your actions. At best it can be neutral. The only ones who can benefit are the publishers and even then, they may just *think* they are benefiting when the actual downsides just aren't immediately obvious.

No, it really wouldn't be "more secure" - strong cryptography is hard to do right. It's really, really easy to screw it up. So if every title had a new crypto-system, chances are that each one would be really easy to crack because there just aren't enough people in the world to vet a new system every week or so.

Might be better, but even at a rate of a new crypto-system once a year, chances are pretty high that they would screw it up.

For what it's worth, the current crypto system - AACS - has not been cracked. It has been circumvented only because the current discs do not make use of all its features. For example, all of the discs released for each format use the same set of keys at one particular step of the decryption process. The AACS design includes provision for each pressing to use different keys, but so far all publishers are using the same keys for all titles, not just all pressings of each title, but for all titles period. All the studios need to do is start using new keys and the hackers will have to start over from square 1 (or maybe square 1.5).

In my opinion, BD+ is just a red herring. The kind of thing that stuffed suits love to focus on and use as buzzwords in board meetings without a hint of what it really can and can't do at the nuts and bolts level. The level that the hackers work at, that is.

FWIW, "The Day After Tomorrow" in HD format from the D-Theater tape has already been cracked and is widely available on 'the darknet' as are a few others from that list of up-coming BD+ releases from Fox. I would not be surprised if the blu-ray editions use the same video encoding as the d-theater tapes, just because the studios are lazy enough to try and save a buck. Although I expect the audio tracks will be an improvement.

Ah so this is why Fox's Blu-rays cost so much money. If there's one reason to support HD-DVD over Blu-ray it's because of the ridiculous pricing. I truly doubt if Fox released their titles on HD-DVD they would cost as much.

I agree. I don't see how Fox can think they're going to do much business in the Blu-Ray market, considering that every single one of their releases has been priced at 39.99, special features or not. At least Amazon.com marks them down a little here and there.

From what I have seen is that HD is priced higher than Blu-Ray about 90% of the time.

:rolleyes:

Yes, we know you hate HD DVD.

Goto Bestbuy.com. Look at the prices. They are the same if not a bit higher for Blu-ray due to all the recent $40 MSRP titles from Fox. What you are claiming is that if you picked up a random HD DVD and Blu-ray title from the shelf 9/10 times the HD DVD would be priced higher. I would love to should you all the Universal and WB titles that are MSRP of $24.99.

I don't "hate" Hd-dvd at all. I just don't see why HD discs are generally more expensive when they say that they are "cheaper" to produce. The video quality is pretty much on par between the two formats. The real advantage that Blu can provide is the lossless audio.

Again, they are NOT. Please, show me examples on a grand scale that HD DVD is more expensive then Blu-ray. Last I checked ALL Fox MSRPs (new release or catalog) are $34.99 - $39.99. Most Universal catalog titles are $24.99. WB Catalogs are $24.99 MSRP.

Just because HD DVD is cheaper to produce does not mean they should be $10 each. How much does a blank DVD cost, 3 cents? How much is that new release movie, $18?

Right now, at Amazon.com, the average HD DVD costs $32.00. The average Blu-ray is $35.30. This is coming directly from http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/ (the option for the graph below #9 and above #10).

Thats just the average price of the top 10, not of all the movies on amazon.

It does not mention that at all. Even if it is, that just goes to show that HD DVD, on average, has a lower price.

maybe you meant to say, "PCM lossless". HD DVD provides lossless audio with Dolby TrueHD.

You do realize that by you calling HD-DVD "HD" and then comparing it to BD, you are saying that BD is not HD....

If I were you, I would stick to calling HD-DVD, HD-DVD and not just HD as your statement above is stating HD and Blu-ray are 2 different things, but Blu-ray is HD....

Get it? :wacko:

-confused-

I know that. I just don't feel like typing in HD-DVD every time I want to talk about it. If it confuses someone else then they probably don't belong in this forum anyway.

what are you confused about? maybe i can clear it up...

Are there no BD titles with Dolby True HD ?

i'm confused. here's the chart from thedvdwars.com, with bd as blue and hd dvd as black -

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/3...ecent30mt3.jpg

according to their history it appears hd dvd hasn't been cheeper on average than bd for about 3 weeks.

Hero's on HD DVD killed the average for a few weeks.

there probably are. the statement i was replying to implied that Blu-ray was the only format with lossless audio and i was simply pointing out that HD DVD also provides lossless audio (though rarely, if ever, PCM tracks, like some Blu-ray releases).

TrueHD and PCM are the same frickin' thing. (unless you are in marketing) Get over yourselves.

it all depends on what you mean. they're the same in that they're both lossless audio and as such, a TrueHD track and a PCM track should sound identical. the difference between the two is merely in the technical details.

Fox is truly stupid if they think BD+ will do anything for them.

I sort of expect there to be some measure that ends up putting something on the player, much like Sony tried to do with music, and it will backfire the same way.

Being in both formats, it doesn't matter a lot, but if they do something that restricts people from playing it on more than one player, or adds soemthing to the player, or something similar, you will find it hurting BD.

No, there are a few titles that include TrueHD (the only one that comes to mind at the moment is "Ghost Rider").

I lean HD-DVD now that I am dual format, and a large part of that is the lesser copy protection - no BD+ B.S. AACS is basically cracked (yes, they can update keys, then they'll just crack it basically the same way again) and I like it that way. Just like DVDs are cracked and as believer in Fair Use I'm glad for that.

DRM is anti-consumer. At best it has nil effect - at worst, it further restricts your use of media and/or causes headaches for honest consumers.

The technical details of BD+ are of course hidden from most people, but from reading descriptions of BD+ online, I'd wager that any crack won't be key-based, it will involve actually replacing portions of the code (either in the disc image or the player itself) with stubs. Sony can't require players to "call home", and even if they did there are still ways around that. Especially with the number of eyes on the problem.

They'll get at it the normal way, by looking at the least secure implementation of the technology and extrapolating information from that to apply to every other implementation. I give it a month, maybe two, before it's permanently cracked.

The fact is that if it's possible to decode something, it's possible to crack it (unless there's a physical hardware incompatibility, and even then there are ways if you want it bad enough).