Netflix to quadruple Blu-ray, it will cost you

[admin]

NetFlix CFO Barry McCarthy recently revealed, in an interview with Video Business, the company’s plan to quadruple their Blu-ray selection from 400 to 1,500 titles. As you might have guessed, he hinted that they might raise fees for monthly subscribers.

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2008/02/netflix-blu-ray/

[locoeng]

It sucks to pay a little extra if you aren't renting the Blu-ray titles, but such is business I guess.

[drfsupercenter]

They probably have a feature that you can do DVD-only, and then if you want Blu-Ray too you pay more.

Blockbuster has HD DVD, I've never tried it but I think you have to pay more than what my family is paying.

[soup]

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2008/02/netflix-blu-ray/

Well I for one am shocked that a company would take advantage of their consumers like that. What would they do if nobody rents, Hmmm.

[Chewy]

this is the only the beginning, remember when some vhs titles were 30-40$ and even as high as 90$, after they killed betamax

the game is "how much will the market bear?"

there's a sucker born every minute

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_a_sucker_born_every_minute

substitute second for minute

[admin]

At this moment, Blu-ray will be priced as a "premium product", much like "collector's edition" DVDs. Remember that studios invented Blu-ray in order to lift profits that have been in decline due to cheap DVDs. They blame cheap DVDs on piracy and lack of proper region enforcement, which is why studios prefer Blu-ray with BD+ that can enforce both copy protection and region modification.

The studios say they want to replace DVDs with Blu-ray, but they won't do it if it means dropping Blu-ray prices down to DVD levels, as otherwise, what's the point of having a new format? The Netflix price rise is just part of the plan, as if you can't afford to pay $24.95 for Blu-ray movies, then you would have to rent (at higher prices) in order to watch some HD movies on your new expensive Blu-ray player (which has probably already been superceded in terms of hardware specifications).

[drfsupercenter]

Studios are stupid if they think that BD+ will work... I remember when it was 'impossible' to break HD DVD encryption, now there's tons of ways to do it.

[admin]

Nobody said it was impossible to break HD DVD's AACS (which Blu-ray also uses), but it was easier than expected due to a software flaw. And it won't be impossible to break BD+ either, but it might be impractical as each Blu-ray release may have a different version of BD+ that will require a separate hacking method. I think it's even possible for each clip on the disc to have a different version of BD+, so possibly requiring numerous different hacks to be made per disc before all the content can be copied.

Previous copy protection methods, once changed too much, would require hardware firmware updates. The magic of BD+ is that, since the player is essentially a small virtual machine, it can run any code and the code can change without anything needing to be changed on the hardware side. The code can do anything from shutting down video/audio output, detecting if the player has been region modified or checking if the player's decryption key is present and unmodified. It can even protect it self from being hacked, hence it's less consumer "friendly" name of "Self-Protecting Digital Content" (SPDC).

So the best hope for hackers is that BD+ has some design flaw that can be manipulated. BD+ was invented by Cryptography Research Inc, the same company that makes cable encryption cards. I don't know what the situation is in the US, but here, these cards have stopped Pay TV piracy almost instantly, with no signs that it will stop working. In other words, Cryptography Research Inc knows what they're doing, unlike the people who bought us DVD CSS's weak 40-bit encryption which could be broken using the brute force method in a relatively short time (a 1998 super-computer can do it in 4 seconds!).