How Crypto Won the DVD War (BD+)

[admin]

Sony's victory in the DVD format wars was largely due to its embrace and Toshiba's rejection of a sophisticated anti-copying scheme that promises to be relockable should it be cracked at some point in the future.

-- snip --

The BD+ system was cited by Lionsgate and Fox studios as the key reason they supported the format over HD DVD.

-- snip --

The BD+ system protects movies if pirates should develop mod chips for Blu-ray players or develop Blu-ray player software that allows movies to be copied.

BD+ can surreptitiously insert data about a player into a playback stream. If a movie is then pirated, studios can analyze the data and come up with a way to prevent that machine from doing the same to future releases.

Andrew Jaquith, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, says the BD+ scheme appeals to studios because it can be patched.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/how-crypto-won.html

[rago88]

Pretty interesting reading I do say..

But Don't you think for all the money that has been invested in trying to keep people from copying BluRay disc's,
that just the single fact that it's pretty much cost prohibitive now with the $$ of a player and blank Blu media
[assuming you could and wanted to copy the whole disc at 1:1 ratio] is enough of a deterent?
I mean if you don't have to be 1st on the block and wait a few minutes or search for a good price couple weeks after 1st release day?

[ed klein]

And at my age, I see very little video quality difference from a 40in HDTV thru HDMI connection:

1. An mpeg2 DVD-9 video with no compression, using an upscale DVD player where the HDTV states the picture is a 1080p

VS

2. A Blu-ray player and Blu-ray commercial disk to the same HDTV and the picture is a 1080p.

Both viewed at approximately 20-25 feet of distance.

[rago88]

Yep.
we have 42" Panasonic Plasma and I just don't see the HD looking hardly and sharper..
Using a Helios upscale thru component setup..

I do think it may come into play as you progress to much larger HD tv's..
55" and above..

[admin]

With my 50", the difference is mainly in the level of detail (you have to look really close, then you'll see things like writing on newspapers in the background and such), improved colours (much more vibrant), and much less compression artifacts (if any). In terms of just looking at the picture from distance and judging the sharpness, there's not a huge amount of difference between real HD and (properly) upscaled DVD. I find that some HD movies are rather poor in terms of quality, while some upscaled DVDs really does look like real HD (that is until the compression artifacts starts appearing).

And of course, there is the improvement in sound quality, although one will have to invest in either a 7.1 receiver with analogue input (and a player with analogue output), or one that can receives HDMI PCM 5.1/7.1 audio at the very least.

[admin]

Here's an interesting comparison that I just found between normal component output DVD (non upscaled), upscaled DVD playback (on the Toshiba EP10, Aus. equivalent of the US HD-A20), and HD DVD playback of the title "The Polar Express":

http://dvd.plmorgan.com/