The everlasting (?) and ominous next generation war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD could be a nice intellectual game, but unfortunately the theatre of operations is... YOUR own home! Yet, in the midst of this battle of press releases and announcements, by industry players, of their preferences for one or the other technology, several declarations seem scary. Among them, this piece of art from 20th Century Fox Studio that was released by Reuters (technology pages).
Andy Setos, President of Engineering, said at the IFA that 20th Century Fox "had chosen Blu-ray after its backers improved security features that will prevent DVD piracy hurting the industry."
"We talked to both formats and asked them: 'What are you going to do about content protection?' We asked them to step up their content protection in a serious way, and the members of Blu-Ray association won" he said.
Will end users like that?
The industry has become litterally obsessed by DVD piracy, because "the initial DVD standard that was put together exactly 10 years ago had been rushed to market and lacked features to prevent unauthorized copying and playback."
"DVD is not good. It isn't secure, the capacity is too low, the bit rate is too low," even if, as Reuters rightly points, "the piracy underlines the success of DVD" and that "it has been the fastest-adopted technology in consumer electronics history and has generated billions of euros in royalties for the inventors, a broad base of Consumer Electronics companies including firms now divided over its successor. "
What follows is even more unsettling:
Reuters technology writes: "On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-Ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely."
"A hacked player is any player that is doing something it's not supposed to do," Setos added.
So one might add, in addition to an artificially created confusion for the next format, that users are at risk of discover that the industry will want to use PVP-OPM technology. PVP-OPM is short for "Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management", a process that makes sure that the PCs video outputs have the required protection or that they are turned off if such protection is not available. There are other ways to "protect", such as rejection of HDMI keys, and others that evoke "1984"...
The assertion that “A hacked player is any player that is doing something it’s not supposed to do” is remarkably open to any sort of interpretation, and you can bet that theirs will be outrageously limiting your right as an owner...
See Reuters website here