Gartner Picks BluRay - Page 2  

I sort of answered this here http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post5979600. In there, I start with a paragraph of what I see is "good" about BD. But see more below.

A few things. With BD-25, there is no layer switch. HD DVD-30 would need to buffer enough to avoid a layer switch glitch. In theory, BD can have any material for base layer. BD also has a better base layer navigation than HD DVD. HD DVD relies on existing menus for way out if someone doesn't want to use iHD. BD's movie mode is improved over now decade old DVD menus (fortunately, all HD DVD studios plan to use iHD). In the end though, the biggest advantage of the BD continues to be the companies behind it per above link.

A better question to ask is what is wrong with BOTH formats. That list is a hell of a lot longer. It starts with multiple solutions for the same thing (two advanced video codecs, three audio codecs, dual navigation) and ends with boatload of royalties. Then we have the need for all new hardware. Much stronger copy management system in the form of AACS. Way, way too many decisions made for political/IP reasons than consumer benefits. Worry that consumers may not come at the end of the day. Complexity in the form of interactivity. Etc. As you see, this list is much worse than the question at hand.

Just in case you are getting depressed over above, don't :). The picture and sound quality will take your breath away with both formats. We will be back to the display being the limit rather than the source.

Amir

Speaking of new hardware, without Palladium-style HW in a PC somewhere in the pipeline, I don't see how MS plans to make AACS secure via software only in Windows. Doing tamper resistance with HW is hard enough, but with software it is all but impossible.

The Naor-algorithm that AACS uses for revocation won't stop a generalized attack on a windows player (perhaps via a VM virtualizaton method to get around software tamper-resistance methods) which would allow users to rip discs. At best, if the user distributed that ripped disc and a watermark allowed AACS to finger the key of the windows player, future discs would be encoded to disable the key of that particular windows player. But that's a small consolation, because I'm sure they'll be tons of Russian gangs with enough copies of Windows to rip every next-gen DVD. Moreover, the longer it takes to crack the software players, the more DVDs that can be stolen before revocation. And all of this assumes watermarks won't be possible to remove.

Without hardware tamper resistance all of the mucking with the windows kernel and device model just delays the inevitable. (of course, there's also attacks on the video card framebuffer and HDMI/HDCP removal boxes too)

Well, as far as ‘snide’ goes, I would disagree to the extent that my comments did not exceed the ‘snide’ manner with which Amir greeted a new member, who mind you, did not state an opinion or commentary (although he was criticized for that, as well) that was anti-HD DVD, but rather a factual quote without any ‘window dressing’. Conversely, someone new shows up who says anything remotely positive about HD DVD, and he lavishly welcomes their presence and insight to the forum. I guess one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.

But I do thank you for offering Amir the opportunity to display his overall approach in all its glory, in his response.

First, let me clarify something. A few days back he responded to a post of mine which had been up for most of the day, through a third-party (Kreisman), just as I was getting ready to leave on business so I didn’t get the chance to respond. In it, in order to misdirect others from the content of my statement, he accused me of having an ‘old grudge’ against him (Note: It was subsequently edited out by the mods, along with some other things). Of course, this was utter nonsense as I have no ‘old’ or even ‘new’ grudge against Amir, as he is well aware. BUT, it served his purpose to create doubt (the ‘D’ in FUD) among others as to what the secret ‘real’ motivation behind my post. “Oh, so Palladin has an old grudge against Amir. Oh, so that’s what this is really all about.†:rolleyes:

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion with regards to the games Amir plays, and the price he seeks to exact in exchange for his info ‘droppingsâ€. I disagree with the notion that if he feeds us some as yet unpublished stuff (assuming its factually correct) knowing full well we will gobble it up as the ‘info hos’ we are, we have forfeited our right to examine and question whatever FUD he may also be trying to spread at many other times, through his mastery of language. Thanks, but I prefer to pass on the purple Kool-aid.

Now Bluescale, look at the perfect example you have inadvertently provided to us.

His original statement was:

Which I then quoted, noting my surprise in light of so many of his other comments, and asking what those “best features†might be? And what was his answer after you re-asked that question? Let’s take a close look.

First there was the slight rebuke:

What folks say way back when? Its October and he said this in August, and his prediction is still holding up two whole months later. Wow. Kreskin must be green with envy.

But I digress. More importantly, did you use the link to go back and read that post. Essentially all he does is tender a token compliment to his former employer (never know when the MS gig might fall apart), and that’s the ONLY positive thing he says about BD in his lengthy post, and its not even about BD itself. The rest is dedicated to highlighting BD’s problems in his opinion.

Does this answer the question? Let’s go back to the original comment again.

Ahh, so to support that he should be perceived as even-handed, Amir seems to suggest that there are best features to BD. But when the time comes to deliver, he names one of the proponents??

Do we refer to Edison as a feature of the incandescent light bulb? Were the Wright Brothers a feature of flight?

How about the responding post here? How different is it? Well, again we get the companies behind it ‘bit’, as if that were a feature. But wait. He seems to be throwing a bone as well:

So the first feature is a result of the limitations of HD DVD technology, but will be simply overcome by ‘buffering enough’. And theoretically (of course, we’re talking about in the lab, not real life or anything) BD is more flexible for base layer materials. Oh and here is that left handed compliment you asked him to avoid, “HD DVD relies on existing menus for way out if someone doesn't want to use iHD. BD's movie mode is improved over now decade old DVD menus (fortunately, all HD DVD studios plan to use iHD)â€.

And Bluescale, as for your belief that I want him to respond to me, to be perfectly blunt, I couldn’t care less, because the reason behind that is he just doesn’t like the questions I pose, nor the challenges to his crafted answers. Guess he figured his routine of self-righteous indignation or claiming that he wasn’t receiving enough respect, had run a little dry by that point.

I had no idea I had been honored by making Amir’s ‘no-response’ model (which apparently is his equivalent of the Watergate ‘enemies list’) until recently, right around the time that I had decided to pose a few questions about how MS had been interacting with the proponents of the respective dueling formats, while they were purportedly “neutralâ€, prior to the announcement of their formal alliance with HD DVD.

I would imagine that you, of all people, recall one of the questions, because you re-asked it. Whether or not any member of the BD had nicely requested MS to have BD support included in Vista, and what was MS’s response. Well, he never answered that first part, but finally admitted that there would be no native support for BD in Vista. Isn’t it curious that despite his hundreds and hundreds of posts concerning the dueling formats, he had somehow chosen to omit that little detail of information until he didn’t have a choice? How about that same question wrt HD DVD? Ducked that one at the time too, although we eventually found out that it was incorporated in Vista early on.

So, no, I don’t mind the ‘no response’ bit, because his silence is often is more informative than his actual responses.

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Palladin

Chance favors the prepared mind

Really? You just spent 1000 words talking about it. :)

It's been reported multiple times that AACS keys used in PC apps will be systematically nuked on a scheduled basis (originally reported to be every 6 months, now reported to be every 18 months), so any hacking will have a limited lifespan...basically, you're forced to constantly upgrade your media player to comply. Not perfect, but then again, neither is either format. :)

don't forget that what was said was 18m AT FIRST. My guess is that if they ever get close to cracking it the frequency will be changed to be shorter.

A number of pithy comments, AVS member attacks, unneccessary comments, comments that don't further the thread and quotes referencing those comments have all been moved to the all-new HDTV Software Cage Match Forum.

Yeah, the question is, will every end-user player have a unique key? Figure 100 million PC windows users, that's 200 million revocations per year. In 5 years, you have 1 billion revocations. Granted, the Naor technique scales, but it's still ugly.

On the other hand, they could have one global key per player software (e.g. one key for Windows Media Player) which gets revoked every 6 months. But if the hackers come up with a general purpose mechanism to extract this key, the revocations won't really help, since every 6 months, they'll just be a new hack.

The anti-cheat systems for online games are a good place to look to see how they can work. Valve, which makes one of the most popular online games: Half-Life/CounterStrike/Day of Defeat, has a system by which both the client and server download new code modules on a very frequent basis, to attempt to prevent process level injection of cheat code into the game client.

These updates are short lived, usually in a matter of hours, a new cheat is out, and some hacks are general purpose and are able to analyze the small changes and obfuscation made to the anti-cheat module using pattern matching.

Suffice it to say that if AACS software players get hacked, more frequent revocations won't stop the flow of piracy.

Demo,

All the reports I've read indicate that PC players will use the same key.

DemoCoder: the way I understand it is every stand alone will have an individual ID, every SW player for PC will not. My guess is that each different player from different manufacturer will have one or a handful of IDs.

My guess is that it is a cost/management issue for SW.