Managed Copy Will Be Mandatory in Blu-ray (but only in software)

[admin]

Managed Copy, until now an option in the Blu-ray disc format, will become a requirement next year.

http://www.hometheatermag.com/news/061709managed/

Managed Copy is not mandatory in hardware, so the PC is still the best bet if you want to legally copy Blu-ray movies (plus it has the needed connections like USB, and a DVD or Blu-ray burner, that makes copying possible).

[drfsupercenter]

What exactly does that mean, it will be mandatory in software?

Is that like Digital Copy? Or is it a new form of DRM for the Blu-Ray discs themselves?

[admin]

I think it means that Blu-ray playback software will have to have it, but hardware won't. It will end up being like Digital Copy, except there will be a standard and compatible hardware means you won't necessarily need a PC to make a copy (for example, a Blu-ray recorder with MC built in may allow you to make a copy straight to a Blu-ray recordable).

[drpepper]

Do we expect to see stand alone blu-ray dvd player/recorder anytime soon? More importlantly, at a reasonable price? Waited years before the dvd stand alone recorder & by then many had already went to a tivo or dvr.

[admin]

Panasonic has a nice one here in Australia, with twin HD tuners and 500 GB hard-disk recording and recording to almost every kind of disc format (BD-RE, BD-RE DL, BD-R, BD-R DL, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW, DVD +R, DVD +R DL, DVD+RW):

http://panasonic.com.au/products/details.cfm?productid=6720&contextID=3511

TiVo is way more popular in the US than compared to here though, so that's one reason why disc recorders haven't taken off over there.

[drfsupercenter]

Does that recorder actually write 1080p recorded videos to the BD-RE discs? Or if it's from a cable box, the native 720p/1080i?

(And can you put a CableCard in there so you can tune channels?) If so, I may need to check those out when they arrive here in the States.

[admin]

It records in 1080p, but we only have 1080i HD broadcasts here (it converts i to p). It has two built-in HD tuners for receiving free to air HD broadcasts. It doesn't have HDMI input (only output), so I don't think it will support recording from HDMI source (the copy protection takes care of that anyway). In fact, the only inputs are composite and S-Video, so it can only record in SD from external sources.

[drfsupercenter]

Well, as far as tuners go, you can't add a CableCard? I know the TiVos here have a CableCard slot or two, and then your cable company gives you a card that you can use.

I wanted a CableCard in our TV, but our TV doesn't have a slot for it... so we had to get an external box. Our cable box only does 1080i as well (AFAIK, there's no such thing as 1080p TV stations... the satellite companies lie and just deinterlace the 1080i LOL), so I have it hooked up using Component since there's no point of using HDMI for that.

I should pester Panasonic to release one of those recorders here in the States. Even with our cable, we get unencrypted local HD (This is one of the good things about the FCC - that rule!), so channels 200-206 would be the skip-free local channels... opposed to me hooking an antenna up to my computer, and hoping the reception is good enough.

[drpepper]

The price wow! over 2200 or ~ 1775 us.
I guess the comcast 2 tuner HD dvr at $9/mth with firewire to my dvhs for archive is the bargain for now.

[drfsupercenter]

The reason I don't like DVRs is they never let you directly copy the video to a computer (Unless you get actual TiVo brand and hack it... and even then, it's complicated)

So you can use the "copy to DVD" feature, but then you're DOUBLE compressing it (It gets compressed once to store it on the DVR, then another time by your DVD recorder)

Whereas using a standard recorder it's only compressed once - to put it in MPEG-2 DVD format, so it'll look a lot better.