An interesting and in-depth article on Cinavia.

The referenced article is very well done and probably right on!
One additional thought that wasn't really mentioned:
Movie studios always throw around numbers supposedly representing lost revenue as a result of piracy. Those numbers always seem to assume that if a person downloaded, accepted as a gift, or created a copy of a movie, that they would have run out to buy it at retail if they had not been able to acquire it in one of those other manners. That, of course, is total nonsense. It is more likely that even if every movie title could only be acquired by purchasing it in some "legitimate" retail form, the increase in revenues to the studios would not offset what they waste due to their paranoia over and obsession with copy prevention and drm.

Here is a brief audio/video presentation discussing the number facbrication used by the riaa and mpaa to justify their activities and lobbying:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/25193...cy_claims.html

The introduction of cinavia has actually stopped my expenditures for new blu-ray equipment and slowed down greatly my purchasing of titles, as I avoid cinavia infected titles as much as possible (rental only). The article seems to suggest I may not be the only one.

Titled: "Cinavia DRM: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blu-ray's Self-Destruction"

Thank you for the ref.

Interesting article in the sky is falling sense. As usual people who just want put the disc in the player and watch the movie have nothing to really worry about.

True and it's only on a few BD's from selected studios, it's also only on a handful of players since it's voluntary. I don't like more copy-protection but I don't make backups of my BD's so it doesn't effect me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia

Except the same unskippable previews and warnings as they probably already tolerated on DVD, but this time with really long load times and occasional lock ups and other strange behavior that needs to be fixed with a firmware update that many manufacturers don't even provide once a player reaches a certain age. Other than that, nothing at all.

Admittedly this article is over-the-top in how mainstream consumers are affected, but no need to minimize things just to provide contrast.

A week ago my Redbox rental of a blu-ray movie locked up my blu-ray player for more than 15 minutes while it played recent movie trailers.

These blu-ray people have forgotten who the real customer is.


The OP ref in this thread (from anandtech) is not "over-the-top"

Customers will do what they always do.

In my case I'll NEVER again rent a blu-ray disc from Redbox.

And in the future I'll make sure to ask on a public forum if a blu-ray movie plays OK on an older blu-ray player. If it won't I'll buy a used DVD copy of it.

It's "over-the-top" in the sense that it considers rip-and-play to be anything but a fringe activity. I know it's nice, convenient, fair use, hurts nobody, blah blah blah, but I think that marks the article over-the-top IMO.

Yes, these things all hurt consumers, yes, they don't hurt pirates at all, I get that. But consumers are being hurt by the Java/firmware-update Blu Ray nonsense at a rate that so dwarfs those inconvenienced by Cinavia that putting them on equal footing is hardly honest accounting. I mean, which one were you, personally, actually hurt by, and which one is just theoretically bad? Exactly! Same with everyone else!

Excellent read. I think the author states explicitly that Cinavia will only really affect a minority of users...hence the paragraph header "Cinavia: The Truly Inconvenienced Minority".

The problem is, I happen to be part of that minority as do many other AVS members. I purchase my Blu-rays and keep them in my basement since that is where I do the majority of my movie watching. However, I also have them ripped on my NAS so I can easily watch them on our family room TV or our bedroom TV via streaming. This "convenience" gives me instant access to my entire movie/tv library anywhere in my house. That's pretty darn sweet, imho...especially when you have kids.

Sounds like the author has an axe to grind on Blu-ray. The industry is correct. Few users back up their BDs. The only thing I have against Cinevia is that it can compromise the lossless audio track. For all this fear mongering about discs refusing to play.... In the six years since I went BD I have only had a handful of titles that didn't load initially and only one that outright didn't work. I have used the PS3 and standalone units from Panasonic and Sony. I put the discs in and press play. Sure my older Sony takes a little time to load, but it works.

Most of the people commenting on the article come across as casual pirate artists. We all know them... they are the ones that ripped everything they could from Netflix and Redbox rentals. I don't think BD prices are that out of line considering some catalog content can be purchased for under $7 new. My average purchase price for new content is around $17 for 2D and $20 for 3D.

Again the author has an axe to grind on the format.

I didn't read it that way.


Wow! I pay $4 to $10 for 2D movies. Granted most are DVD and not blu-ray.

Maybe an average of $12 for the few blu-ray movie discs (all new) that I've bought so far.


I rather doubt that the OP of this thread has "an axe to grind"

Perhaps you mean the author of the anandtech article has an axe to grind?

I've tried reading the specs for Cinavia, but haven't been able to answer this simple question:

If a publisher of audio-only Blu-ray disks (profile 3.0) for the audiophile market does *not* include watermarking, because it distorts the signal, will that disk play on the new players?

I assume the answer is sure, because older non-watermarked disks have to be able to play.

Yes, correct.

-Bill

Although the BD controlling organization has now mandated that all blu-ray players licensed from Feb. 2012 on MUST include cinavia processing in their player (and therefore pay a fee to verance - I assume you know who is really paying that fee - everyone who buys such a player), there is no requirement that movie studios must include the audio track modifications that cinavia requires. There have been a few titles including that audio track modification for cinavia from studios other than Sony - but Sony is the major backer of cinavia and the company who has embraced this across many of their titles. Of course Sony has always had the biggest fascination with copy prevention schemes over the years - which has gotten them in trouble more than once. Since the use of this modified audio track is optional on titles, there is obviously no requirement that players refuse to play unmodified/original/pristine audio tracks.

Thank you for the explanation. Sony does seem to have a weird fetish for this sort of thing.

Correct, OtherSongs, they are forgetting what a customer is.

And now it seems my PC is a casualty of some over-aggressive, intrusive DRM installation...

I had a brand new XPS One 27, which was working perfectly, even with AnyDVD HD installed - I installed TMTE3, not knowing about the implentation of Conavia, and my Bluray drive now hangs whenever I insert any disk with BD streams

I uninstalled TMT, then AnyDVD, and even reversed the registry back to a previous time - none of this has resolved the issue, indicating that TMT/Cinavia made a permanent change in the system software somewhere..

Would TMT have tried to modify my BD drive's firmware or driver software??

Has anyone else experienced any problems relating to this?

Anyone remember when HD-DVD vs BluRay use to be a hot topic?

Back then, HD-DVD promised managed copies - the ability to store a bit perfect copy of your movie on your NAS and play it back anywhere in your home that has a compatible player. To combat this, the BD group promised that they too would implement a similar feature (very very vague). Then HD-DVD died and BD has no competition in the optical disc space and so they don't have to keep any of their promises.

So not only do they not provide a means of managed copy, they are now actually preventing people from being able to use the copies they created themselves. Nice.