
BD+ rides again
Oh the cat and mouse game of DRM, how we love it -- as long as content owners make these unsuccessful attempts to protect their business models, we'll have this great game to watch. As you'd expect if you've been following this up until now, it is Fox that is once again doing whatever it can to prevent you from having your way with its content. The latest BD+ application has already successfully locked down 16 new Fox releases (not all in the US) and according to a SlySoft developer, it'll probably be February before the latest version is defeated. Of course by then Fox will probably have a new version and it will all just start over again. Really sheds some light on why SlySoft's new subscription model was a necessity.
[Via Slashdot]
[Via Slashdot]


















All this does is prevent my player manufactured before next week to stop playing new releases. Doesn't curb piracy at all...well maybe sends it toward the curb, but it never hits the curve and stays on the road.
its called a simple firmware update available through several means.....
not at all, you need to update your firmware.
anyway, this horrible software should go away, its illegal and wrong to support piracy.
AnyDVD isn't really about piracy. If it were, only one person would need to buy it, everyone else could make copies of the ripped disc. Note, I'm **not** suggesting nobody uses AnyDVD for piracy, but the numbers don't really add up if you assume that the majority of AnyDVD users are using it for that.
BD+ is an abomination that pretty much guarantees Blu-ray will never be a reliable technology. Removing it is one of the things I want to see changed about the standard before I consider getting a player.
That is easy enough, but sometime I don't want to wait 3 months to watch a new release I just bought (I.e. I still can't play some Bond movies on my BD player that I bought about 6 weeks ago).
Meanwhile in the big private torrent trackers we have all latest releases from at least 3-4 encoding groups to choose from.
Get over it Fox, you will never prevent us from watching HighDef!
That's more or less the point of BD+. Slysoft can crack one scheme and then Fox or whomever can just roll out brand new ones. In theory every single disc in every single region could implement a different scheme. Even individual batches within production could have different schemes.
BD+ isn't uncrackable. But it is resistant to attack and can heal after an attack which is what is happening right now. I imagine that AnyDVD is going to have significant problems keeping up if Fox starts being more aggressive about its protection. Users should count their blessings that no other major studio has used it yet.
Changing the BD+ scheme does not mean you have to put down new fw on your player to play the disc. All BD+ does is execute code on the disc, if your player manufacturer hasn't f'd up your BD+ VM implementation, it will play fine.
I have a panasonic and have not had a single issue playing several discs on that list of 16, and haven't done a fw upgrade in months.
I'll put my chips behind the outsourced talent at SlySoft over big studio employees any day of the week. When will Fox learn? BD+ is dead dead dead. This rehash is not even a challenge for SlySoft; as I'm sure they know BD+ better than the creators by now. I would not even call this a cat-and-mouse game anymore. As the "cat" in this scenario has already secured a definitive defeat with BD+ and the "mouse" is laughing all the way to the bank. Kinda reminds me of this:
http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/currentevents/mousetrapcat.htm
The writing is on the wall for Slysoft. I say that as an owner of their software. The simple fact is that Fox can make them play catchup by constantly changing their copy protection scheme. This is the ENTIRE POINT of BD+, to heal from cracks and always put the crackers on the back foot. No scheme is uncrackable, but studios can make it so it takes weeks or months before a crack appears. If Fox were agressive, and perhaps joined by a few more studios, there is NO WAY Slysoft would keep up. The only comfort for Slysoft is the number of studios who still don't use BD+. Perhaps the licencing is prohibitive. If the BD+ licensors dropped their cost to pennies, AnyDVD would become all but useless. It's notable that Slysoft have already changed their subscription model and the default behaviour of AnyDVD when BD+ cannot be cracked. They're already preparing for the time when this becomes the norm.
BD+ hurts one person. YOU! the consumer who PAID for the movie, it does nothing, I repeat, NOTHING to the pirate. BD+ is in deed, Garbage and should be ditched.
Gheez, I cannot think of one time where I have been hurt by BD+. I buy the disc, I put the disc in the player, the disc plays, I watch the movie. Nope, completely pain free.
Actually it is hurting FOX too!!
I only purchase movies I can copy to my homemedia server and stream to the different rooms in my apartment.
On this christmas wishlist there was a couple of titles from FOX and a couple from Disney. I read the warning on Slysofts homepage, so I only purchased the ones from Disney as a gift for the girlfriend and untill Slysoft breaks this new BD+ I wont purchase titles from FOX.
Too bad for them.. (actually I do not think I personally will miss Space Chimps that much), but perhaps FOX will miss my money.
All this does is help ensure Blu-ray is nowhere near as user friendly as DVD is and so it's just another step along the way to ensure Blu-ray never replaces DVD.
Way to make sure Blu-ray stays niche guys.
This will do nothing to stop the serious commercial 'pirates' and in fact will inconvenience sharers for a month or two but that's all.
Big deal.
It's just another example of the pointless 'security' gravy-train from the greedy funded by the gullible and ultimately paid for by consumers who are getting nothing positive from it whatsoever.
There's a simple solution that will break all attempts to crack it: put random numbers on the disks. No cracks ever. Of course they legal buyers won't be able to watch it either, but was that ever a concern?
Unlike most of you it seems, BD+ never killed my father and raped my mother.
I've never had some horrible thing happen to me watching a Blu-ray movie.
I guess I'm a minority here.
Here's the deal: HTPC owners get hosed by the studios when we try to play discs using 100% "legal" methods. I don't care if it is Cyberlink/ArcSoft or the studio's fault...I paid ~$400 (drive & software, circa 2006) to watch BR with a method they approved...it should play. 99% of the time it is due to new "protections" that the disc won't play. AnyDVD HD is a must and appreciated. BTW, I could rip every BR I rented if I wanted...two problems: 1. Who watches most movies more than once? 2. Even at ~$100 per Terabyte, BD's are too damn big to archive...I'm not going to run a NOC to store BD rips I'll never watch again.