Not many people know about what's happening right now with the struggle between the two new media formats, HD DVD and Blu-Ray. I'll give you links to technical specs for Blu-Ray and HD DVD and you can read over those yourselves. The main points are that Blu Ray can store 25GB per layer and HD DVD can store 15GB per layer. Blu-Ray already has standard dual-layer discs for 50GB total. They're talking about quadruple layer discs in the future for 100. HD DVD already has standard triple-layer discs for 45GB. Not only do these formats offer increased storage, they offer higher standards of video and audio storaged. These will be able to play HD movies or tv shows off a disc (on an HD tv, of course). The problem is that the formats are incompatible. There's a storm brewing over the industry adopting a standard format with Microsoft and Intel (and many others) on the side of HD DVD and Sony, Dell, and HP on the side of Blu-Ray. This still wouldn't matter to you, but here's the part that does. Both sides are offering their disc to Hollywood (the movie industry) as the fatted calf by throwing in enhanced copy protection. Whoever gets the go ahead to put discs out with actual movies on them will be the winner of a share worth billions of dollars of our movie industry. And thanks to Hollywood hysterics about copy protection, these guys are basically giving away your right to the free use of your product. Check this article out too.
Now I'm not against content protection. I mean, unless you plan to make bunches of illegal copies and sell them to people, why would you be? But I don't want to have to connect any machine to a phone line or the internet just so I can watch a movie! I want to pop it in and have it play on any of my devices without worrying about the signal getting interrupted and stopping it in the middle. Nor, with this ACSS do I even want it to be possible for them to send a message to my playing device that will shut it down until I take it somewhere to get it reactivated. And if I want to copy my own movies to my own computer and hook that up to some other display, then I should be able to.
As we have learned with all past encryption/security schemes, basically they only inconvenience the good users, because as long as data is stored somewhere, someone will figure out how to copy it and bypass the protection enabling piracy to go on. I just don't see the need for stuff like this when 99% of us wouldn't do anything illegal with our media even if we could.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
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3 comments:
Good God...why so many security arrangements? When are they going to learn that there are no security arrangements that someone won't figure out how to crack? Seriously...the average person like you and I has no interest in ripping off movies; we just want to be able to buy them, or burn copies that we've purchased, without having to worry about our computers melting down. And the hackers are going to defeat this stuff ANYWAY. So...why??
Oh snap! That's a very good point, Whitey, and I'd also like to point out that there is no credible evidence anywhere that suggests that pirating has any noticeable impact on the industry in any way. If you ever wonder where these guys get their numbers from, they're basically making them up.
Interesting though that the HD DVD-Video version of the AACS spec does force content providers to allow for 1 copy to be made by the consumer for portable devices, PC's, and presumeably HD disc recorders.
However, this copy is not necesarily free. It may be free, but it doesn't have to be. I wonder how many studios will give it away....
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