This crap has got to end.. - Page 8

But that's for warranty work right? If I have a Honda (or any other car) and choose to, I can install aftermarket modifications at only the expense of my warranty.

There aren't technologies installed in the car that prevent me from installing a K&N air filter, high flow exhaust, supercharger, wheels etc.

Don't you think people would be irate if only the dealer could remove the wheels? If your truck shut down if you took it on an unmapped road?


And thank goodness they didn't, for if they were DRM'd we wouldn't have iPods, Sonos, Squeezebox, or any of the other multitude of innovative digital audio devices.


Why does everyone who stands up for DRM always think everyone who opposes it is a pirate? This is why we can't ever make any progress in this discussion there's a group of people who think any use the content industry didn't think of is piracy.

"Novel uses" for CDs include:
Storing all my CDs on my NAS so I can access them from my HTPC, my extenders, my Roku, my Squeezebox, and even from work.


But you can legally obtain that tool yourself.


But that's a choice we can make. If we want to, we can walk out of the showroom with a new car, and take thing into our own hands from then on and do whatever we want (within the law). There's no technology in the cars preventing us from doing that, there's no law preventing us from doing that. And because of that, there's an extensive aftermarket industry.


Well if that's truely the case, I'm glad I don't have a Nissan.


What benefits, name me one thing DRM brings that benefits me as a customer.


DRM is (right or wrong) most often used as a generic term for "content protection systems", HDCP is a content protection system, and AACS and BD+ rely on and require it for transmission.

It's all a symptom of the overall problem, that the insistence by the content industry that the customer never have access to the content they bought has brought about the most complex, fragile and problem prone system we've ever seen for viewing content.


Yet another example of "DRM" gone awry. How can S/PDIF output be a threat when people have direct access to the digital data off the DVD?


You're more optimistic than I then. I forsee a neverending progression of new, untestested content protection systems that continually produce more side effects than desired effects.


Neither has mine.


I say you're lucky, very lucky.


Lucky, I've never been able to play a Blu-ray on my 780G machine (with motherboard mfg provided "official" drivers) by itself.


It has everything to do with BD, AACS, and BD+, these systems are so complicated and the robustness requirements for these systems is so high, and the fees for airing in favor of playback (vs failure in favor of not playing like we get today) is so high that these companies have an almost impossible task of building software that has 10,000 places to break.

DVD was by comparison a breeze, one company could make a filter that worked well, and countless others could build players around it.

Again, stiffling innovation. The "content protection systems" on Blu-ray have created barriers to entry so high that some of the best HTPC programmers can't make players for BD, no TheaterTek, no Zoomplayer, no VMC support based on 3rd party decoders.


But with a standalone they've got one hardware/software configuration to deal with, while Cyberlink (et all) have literally countless hardware/software configurations to account for, and again, they have an $8 million noose around their neck if they fail to protect the content, and probably sales of similar magnitude if they succeed.


I'm upset that the content owners in their blind persuit of "content protection" have created a "house of cards" system where one small chink and the whole system comes tumbling down. That they've created a system that prohibits the types of (legal) innovation we've seen in the digital audio arena (streamers, portable players, servers, etc).

I'm upset that nobody seems to care that each successive generation of digital media is less functional, more restrictive, less robust, and nobody seems to care.

I'm upset that the crusade for "content protection" is stifling innovation.

I'm upset that if the content industry had their way (and so many seem willing to let them):

• We'd have no VCRs
• We'd have no DVRs, no Tivo
• No CD, DVD recorders
• No iPods, Zunes, PMPs
• No Sonos, Soundbridge, Squeezebox
• No Kaleidescape

As it stands, Kaleidescape will never support Blu-ray, there will be no Blu-ray servers, no Blu-ray streamers.



And on the autos I just got done (well technically still working on it) converting my 89 Mustang GT to 5 lugs bolt pattern and 94+ Cobra brakes, with FR500 wheels. Thank goodness there's no "Automotive Rights Management" on these things.

Apparrently you don't know. If we are doing warranty repairs on a car, we are paid the full price by the manufacturer. In fact, we often go out of our way in order to find extra things taht we can do so that we have more work to do that is paid.... by the manufacturer. The dealership doesn't pay for the repair. And it isn't like health care where it is a pre-discounted price.

If a person comes and needs up to fix their broken starter and it cost $500, that is the same amount that Honda and GM charges us.

The problem that dealerships run into is when the manufacturer, not the dealership, tries to turn down a claim.

As usual, stanger89's eloquence and word-precision have expressed my thoughts better than my attempts

...though I am *more* than upset. I am angry. No one should put money into newer DRM schemes moving forward- it's just feeding the monster, making it stronger.

Correct. Why people willingly buy products where the maker attempts to retain control over the product after purchase simply baffles me.

The span of control over a product by a manufacturer ends when you purchase it- title of the property passes to you. The span of control over that property ends at the point of sale for the manufacturer/retailer. They may have legal *responsibilities* like warranties and honoring return policies for defects, but *control* passes to the property title owner.

It is not clear to me whether people really do buy them in significant numbers. I think you could make a good case that DAT, SACD, DVD-A, and mini-disc have all failed due to copy protection issues.

- Tom

It is a choice. To me, the PQ and SQ are so improved that it makes it worth putting up with it. I don't like throwing money at Slysoft to pick up AnyDVD HD, but it was worth it to me.

I am sorry if you cannot figure how to work with or around the DRM. In all reality, DRM on BD will only affect a small percentage of the BD community. Most folks with HD HTPCs, not those refusing to upgrade, have found it worth it as well. So we are talking about a minority percentage of another small minority.

Acceptable casualties in my view. Sorry to be so harsh.

If you are this adament against DRM, I suggest sticking with DVD until a format comes out later that you can live with. You will be happier and that is what matter most.

If you are annoyed but willing to deal with the problems, stick with it. Things will get better. Either they will fix these issues or hackers will fix it for them. It is just a race to see which party fixes it first.

China apparrently agrees with you. Look at how they tried to rip off General Motors designs when they released their cars there. And just about everything else.

(Addressing everyone supporting BD and doing the workarounds necessary, no one in particular)

Now the question becomes, at what point would the camel's back "break" for you?

At what point does DRM become too privacy-invading, too restrictive, too function-reducing for you to tolerate?

Does it take one more program required in addition to AnyDVD, whether memory/systray resident or a standalone app required as a step in a process to rip all/portion of the BD disc before playback?

Does it take a serial number you need to enter prior to playback of the BD disc with required WGA-like/WMV-HD-like phone home license authentication/key activation?

Does it take a USB or SD card decryption dongle, similar to a DSS card that needs periodic replacement from the BD group to continue to play new releases?

Does it take a PCIe slot dedicated decryption card?

Does it take the requirement of TPM equipped hardware to use the media?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing

Does it take new laws that make use of TPM'd/DRM'd hardware mandatory, with felony penalties for non-use regardless of whether your use of the protected media is public or private and never distributed or duplicated?

If all it takes is one more step (or two) like these to finally make you "give up" and abstain from the format (or some future format or streaming media service), why not save one step and abstain now, helping all of us?

Agreed, it's a small percentage now. It will get much bigger. If BD start becoming the default in new PCs (they will eventually) more and more people are going to start to want to do with the BDs what they do with the DVDs today. I bought the movie, why can't I load it into my media library? Why can't I view it on my monitor (because it doesn't support HDCP)? Why can't I rip it and take it with me on the road?

Hackers have already "fixed it" for them. SlySoft is a perfect example of it being "fixed" by breaking the copy protection. The bigger issue (and a moral one, not a technological one) is WHY do I have to defeat the CP to enjoy my purchased media? The goal of CP is to prevent illegal use. In this respect, the CP on BD has been GROSSLY ineffective. Anyone with a computer (don't need a drive, media, or anything else) can download full quality BD rips from any number of illegal download sites. So, copy protection has been a total failure at preventing the "loss" that studios associate with piracy. All it has been effective in doing is preventing me (well, before AnyDVDHD) from watching movies I bought/rented on my computer. What's the point of that??

As stanger89 so articulately described, there are no *technological*, *functional* restrictions to replicating or modding a physical device like a car.

GM has the recourse of patent and trademark litigation to resolve issues like unauthorized foreign knockoffs sold at retail.

Copyright holders have litigation to stop illegal *distribution* of their copyrighted materials. Why are technological/functional methods needed?

Back has already been broken for me. No way I'm paying 20-40 bucks for something that gives me this kind of headache and has a "free" alternative by renting it and using AnyDVDHD to rip it HDD.

If AnyDVDHD stopped working, I would stop renting BD as well and go back to all DVD. Frankly, the small PQ improvement isn't worth the headache of going through the process to make the disk work correctly on my system.

I'd be fine with a sensible CP system. A dongle? That would be fine for me, as LONG as I had the ability to control my media. I have no problem buying a license to view the content, but that license must be encompassing.

Hey, I'm a pragmatist when it comes down to it. I buy a few BDs, and rent others, but I didn't buy a disc until there was a way to rip them, and I'll stop buying them if it ever becomes impossible to do so. In the mean time I make do.

But that doesn't mean I have to like it, and it doesn't mean I have to sit quietly by while the problem is ignored by so many.


It's not about "figuring out how to work with it", the whole issue is we shouldn't have to find workarounds just to play an industry backed format.

And make no mistake, the DRM affects everyone, not just those who have problems with it. It increases the cost of the discs, the players, the software, the hardware. It stifles innovation, eliminates products from coming to market.

And when it's so blatantly ineffective at it's intended task, how can anyone say those costs are justified.


As Rgb said, in that case what's unacceptable?


Well the hackers have always "fixed it", but that's no the point. Hackers shouldn't be required in the first place. Something is very wrong with the system if it takes hackers to make it work right. Frankly BD is a lost cause, it will always have AACS and BD+ on it, regardless of if they work or not, it's basically a repeat of DVD. Blu-ray isn't going anywhere and us PC users aren't going to have an effect on the outcome.

But, what we can do is learn from what we've seen with Blu-ray, we can learn about how problematic HDCP, AACS key revocation, and BD+ are. We can choose to support DRM free products in the future and shun DRM laden ones. That's really what this whole discussion is about, not boycotting BD (which would send the wrong message anyway) but to educate people about the problems DRM is causing in current products, and the negative side effects it has on the industry so that we can demand DRM free products in the future.

Even if you don't agree with me that BD is a "walking dead" format (because of the coming digital downloads), I think many more would agree that BD is likely the last format we will ever see for "sale" (as a physical thing) that holds movies. Children born 10 years from now will have no concept of a movie as anything other then a file on a computer somewhere. We are moving to digital media distribution as the primary (and eventually only) method for storing our media files in the future (some of us, with HTPCs, are already doing that today).

Can we really "shun away" DRM products that we don't like? I think that the answer is "No", the public is uninformed, and, somehow, has come to accept whatever the movie COs give them as gospel. All we can realistically expect to do is get laws that prevent us from copying our movies removed. Distributing them is a crime, I think we all agree. But copying movies we own for our personal use? If the big companies got involved in the ripping/storing/playback of movies, our lives would get much better. And, another stake in the ground would be placed, showing the movie companies, once again, that we want our movies as files, not as disks!

Last year I was getting rid of the last of my Laser Discs, and my nephew didn't know what they were, he's 16.

..and that videophile format had zero DRM, not even Macrovision! And the incredible artwork on those big beautiful sleeves. Plus, you had PCM 16/44.1 uncompressed audio encoded with matrix surround and then high bit rate DTS and DD, all free and clear.

Sometimes I think we'd be better off in the A/V hobby had we stayed with LaserDisk and S-VHS as the premium pre-recorded and recordable formats

And how will those DRM'd files be played in a car? In random portables?

Can you place shift Netflix streaming movies?

Here's my "look into the future" on where this will eventually wind up:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...8#post14583358

Can you currently placeshift NetFlix? I really don't know, I can only play them on one of my computers (because all the rest are connected to HDMI and that, somehow, makes NetFlix DRM fail left and right on me). I don't see why not, they certainly should be able to placeshift, the file is in the "Internet" anyway, it's not even on your PC.

Stop your bringing a tear to my eye, it was painful to get rid of them.

That's odd. FWIW it works fine over my HDMI link.

For all the people here who don't support BR because they're against DRM, does that mean you never supported (SD) DVD either? I'm really curious here. Is DVD somehow considered different because ripping one is such old hat nowadays?

It seem to be old hat for BD as well. You miss the point it's not about defeating DRM, it's about being able play your legally purchased content without having to resort to breaking the DRM, it should just work.

How do download caps fit into your future? As a result, movies and music will be controlled by one all-powerful gatekeeper service with quality, quantity and content being dictated by them. The concept of actually "owning" a movie or an album is lost, because you never have physical possession of the media it's stored on. A studio wants a movie to go on moratorium?...*poof* it's now inaccessible for "your" collection. Perfect for the studios and music companies, but not so perfect for consumers. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I don't see digital downloads or (a related concept) cloud computing being part of my future.

I can place shift Netflix movies just fine (in other computers in the house). As long as I am using an application that supports DRMed WMV files and have an internet connection. My HDMI connected PC plays them fine as well. Netflix movies are not streamed as most people believe. They are actually downloaded to a local drive on the machine and played from there. When you "seek" ahead, the Netflix player simply changes the byte range that it is requesting from the servers.

You think this stuff is bad now? Wait until everything IS digital downloads. Those files will be so encrypted, so DRM'd to all hell, that you won't be able to do anything with it other than load it and close the program that opens it.

You think Blu-Ray is constricting? Digital downloads might as well be straight jackets.

What he said.

That's exactly the kind of thing we DON'T need, the kind of thing that will just lead to more and more DRM, more restrictions...

"x264 alternatives" are NOT alternative.

All illegal downloads do is show the studios that there's untapped demand out there, and fuels their desire to lock their content down tighter and tighter.

I've been following this thread a while. There are a lot of good points. Nobody summed it up better than stranger89, but others have made great contributions here too.

Let me pull the most potent comments in the whole thread, and put a stake in the ground (emphasis added):

stranger89
"they've created a system that prohibits the types of (legal) innovation we've seen in the digital audio arena"

"I didn't buy a disc until there was a way to rip them, and I'll stop buying them if it ever becomes impossible to do so"

"the hackers have always "fixed it", but that's no the point. Hackers shouldn't be required in the first place. Something is very wrong with the system if it takes hackers to make it work right"

mjfink
"I'd be fine with a sensible CP system. A dongle? That would be fine for me, as LONG as I had the ability to control my media. I have no problem buying a license to view the content, but that license must be encompassing."

JoeD
"about defeating DRM, it's about being able play your legally purchased content without having to resort to breaking the DRM, it should just work"

so...

Dear Mr Content Provider,

Are you getting it? Are you hearing what your customers are saying? They are not trying to rob you! Quite the opposite in fact, they want to do legitimate business with you! Not just the couch potato end user, but also software developers, hardware developers, hardware resellers, hobbyists, and the list goes on. But you have to get your system fixed once and for all. And if you dont fix this problem, you WILL lose business. THAT is what you should fear.

Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sony and many others have bent over backwards to try and do the "right thing" to please you, yet not piss off the customer. But its turned into a disaster lately, largely in favor of You, not the Customer! I ask you, who are you without customers? Where would you stand? Your confused policies and stupid attempts of enforcement have fostered a massive scale digital train wreck. But now, please see the error, and allow us to enlighten you, show you the light, and positive path to success.

Case Study:
Remember Zune 1? Yeah, DRM infested device. How successful was that? Not only did I not buy the device, but I also did not buy any music for it. But lo! The clouds parted, and Zune 2 was born! And wow, its better than the iPod due to its wireless capabilities, and DRM was removed!! And I bought one. And wouldn't ya know it... the first thing that happened was I began to buy music for it.

Hello!!! Do you think this EXACT same pattern does not ring true for BD? HD video, etc? And for millions of other users in this same boat? I assure you, my content providing friends, it absolutely does ring true. Your money was only made when I, the customer, was free to actually use the product I bought!

Thank you for listening. We can discuss my consulting fee later.

Dear fellow AV enthusiasts:

Please realize, we absolutely MUST pitch this as a business proposal, showing loss of revenue due to DRM and inhibiting schemes, versus the positive results if they just play nicer (they stand to make MORE money, not less!). Not only must we pitch the financial angle, but also remind them that we, the people, are not out to "get them"! Maybe that sounds funny, but clearly they are deathly afraid that allowing control to be more in our hands will ruin them. It wont! but the opposite surely will!!!

Please help me paint that picture, and lets take this all the way to Hollywood and anywhere else it needs to go. I can't stand watching threads like this grow, opinions chucked in, but no action taken. Thats easy to do, and all too common. There are probably millions upon millions of complaints about DRM and CP out there... but who is taking action? I say, lets friggen do something.

Why do I keep visualizing Sam Watterson in front of the Supreme Court arguing these words during the soon to come landmark trial that finally rescinds the DMCA and DRM?

...did I hear "*promoting* the useful arts and sciences" vs. *stifling* them?

If we wanted to rob you, the whole conversation about DRM goes out the window; we will just do it. Why complain about DRM if your going to steal data; it's trivially easy to do, just rip it and forget the DRM was even there.

It's when we DON'T want to rob you that DRM becomes an issue for all of us. If I want to buy the disk, or just want to rent it and play it, the DRM often prevents me from working in a seamless, easy manner. Stolen/downloaded files? No problem there, easiest thing in the world. And, if I want to use AnyDVD, also, no problem anymore..

The whole concept of shipping this media around, and of going to the store to buy media is quickly becoming antiquated. I'm most annoyed because the stupid movie companies won't give me what I want, a massive NetFlix site where I can go and download to my hearts content. I'm more then willing to pay for it, I'd LOVE to have a service like that!! And not so I could distribute and/or give the files to all my friends (again, if I want to do that, I'll just get the disk, it's faster and easier!), I want to do it so I can enjoy more of your content in a way that benefits us all. Digital downloads are FREE to you. NetFlix already has a (somewhat working) model for this.

Stop being SO greedy. The DVD costs you 10 cents to produce; you want 20 bucks for it. How about instead, I pay you 20-30 bucks a month, and you just let me download to my hearts content? Now you effectively sell me 1 DVD a month (more then you do now) for the rest of time! Recurring revenue is the lifeforce of many business models. It's time to make it part of yours!

Downloading movies/music isn't "stealing", it is "copyright infringement". In fact, in many countries including Canada just to the north of us, torrents and downloading movies/music/tv shows are perfectly legal. IT'S NOT STEALING, GET OVER IT. Get off your moral high horse. It's not the same as going to Best Buy and walking out of the store with the box, and it is not defined as so.