OT: Decent article on next-gen DVD formats

riredale wrote on 6/16/2005, 10:00 AM

This article over at Tom's Hardware talks about the origins of DVD and the next-generation formats such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

I'm not holding my breath for either format. The article explains that Hollywood is freaked out about how CSS was cracked and the new formats have much more complex and even bizarre protection schemes. Did you know that the HD-DVD method requires that your player have an Internet connection, and that your player could be turned into a doorstop by Big Brother if they suspected copying attempts? At least that's the way I read the article. Hmmm... THAT should take the hackers about a month to circumvent.

Comments

B_JM wrote on 6/16/2005, 12:37 PM

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=13262

holographic versatile disk - to be released this year

B_JM wrote on 6/16/2005, 12:39 PM

and HD-DVD i bet you can kiss goodbye long term (just a hunch that sony going to win this one, since they own the majority of films and also the PS3 coming out)

p@mast3rs wrote on 6/16/2005, 12:58 PM

I cant remember where I have read it but I think HD-DVD/Blu Ray will be using AES 128bit encryption or Blowfish 448bit encryption which would definitely take a large amount of time and would require all of the computers in the world to work together for thousands of years before some of the keys could be broken.

I wonder why it has taken this long to use encryption that strong especially with how the MPAA has been "losing" their butts if you listen to them.

JackyBoy wrote on 6/17/2005, 7:33 AM

Unfortunately it's all really a waste of time. So long as you can get at the content, you can copy it. You don't have to break the encryption or discover the keys. If you copy the encrypted version, it's still a copy, and if the carrier of the information is 'dumb', e.g. a DVD, then the device reading it has no way to tell the difference between a real one and the copy.

I work for the banks in the area of smart cards, so I follow the developments in cryptography pretty closely. One of the world's experts is Bruce Schneier. I can recommend having a read of the issue of his newletter, Cryptogram, from May 2001:
http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0105.html
Read the article: "The Futility of Digital Copy Protection". It's not that technical and quite understandable to the layman.
As he puts it near the end:
"Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet."

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/17/2005, 7:55 AM

Jackyboy, thanks for that link. I've heard that quote re; water not wet, but didn't know who it was attributed to. Great article, and one that's easy to recommend.

I too think Blu-Ray will win out, mostly because of the content they/Sony own, but also because it's so much more a robust format. What may seem ridiculously large today, will appear small tomorrow. Remember when you got your first 1 gig hard drive and how big that seemed? 54 gig is teenie by today's comparisons, but that's what a dual layer Blu-Ray will hold.

B_JM wrote on 6/17/2005, 9:10 AM

JackyBoy - you are correct, to only a point ..

the way the encryption works on disks you should read, because the keys can not be copied - they are on a part of the disk which is not copied except only read by the machine.

There is more to it and it is quite interisting, but suffice to say, you can not make a exact disk to copy because not all the disk is physically able to be copied, by not only embeded firmware, but physically ..

That is part of one method and the second part is that the second set of keys stored on a player can be changed down the road at any time, rendering playback of certain movies = null.

Where the keys are stored - you can not write to this area physically either ...

JackyBoy wrote on 6/20/2005, 12:25 AM

Sorry, BJ_M, but you're making the same mistake that the Hollywood people make. Basically everything on a disc can be read. There is NO physical security there whatever.
It is true that the 'usual' reading device, i.e. DVD drive, together with its firmware and software (driver etc) doesn't allow the keys area of the disc to be simply read out and hence copied. However, this is only a minor convenience to a hacker or a determined organisation. You simply need a laser reading device that starts at the beginning of the track and reads all the way to the end. No disc can stop you doing that!

farss wrote on 6/20/2005, 1:48 AM

It can be done even simpler than that. At some point the data has to be decoded so we can hear it and see it. If we can hear it and see it so can microphones and cameras.
Now before you all fall over laughing about the quality hit please bear in mind that the first standads conversion systems worked exactly that way, a NTSC VCR played out to a NTSC monitor with a PAL camera aimed at it.
Cameras, monitors and microphones have become a lot cheaper since then and much better quality (can anyone say Z1, wonder if Sony thought of them being used as an aid to piracy?)

But the thing is, the vast majority of IP theft isn't done by someone cracking codes or exploiting some arcane backdoor, it's done like it's been done since we started to walk upright, physically stealing the thing. And in our never ending drive to cut costs we send off unencrypted masters to 3rd world countries where IP theft is pretty well a state run business.
Bob.