HD DVD protection scheme completely cracked! - Good or bad?  

I say positive.

But this is from an HD-DVD owner with very sketchy morals when it comes to these sorts of things, so that should be taken with a grain of salt.

-88 charlie zero FOREVER!

I doubt the studios see this as positive, so if it slows down releases its doom and gloom.

Neither. It was only a foregone conclusion that both HD DVD and Blu-Ray would be cracked. I don't see why this will be an issue one way or the other.

DVD was cracked what year again, 98/99? Since DVD continues to obliterate Blu-ray and HD DVD I don't really see it as a huge issue.

It still keeps 99% of people honest, so the studios don't mind.

It'll be good if this finally proves to the studios that they can't protect their content from being copied. To get the most profit they simply need to offer the right product at the right price point. Even though some will download instead of buy there's still Billions to be made.

I know how to use bittorent and I can find anything I want but still I BUY DVDs and HD-DVDs when the price and product are right.

Studios: Stop trying to restrict and encumber your customers and start trying to entice them to part with their cash for your product!

I'm not sure

Ohhh they mind, it's just nothing they can do about dvd's. That cow has left the barn.

Hear hear!

Well it does give HD DVD free publicity. Overall, I think that it's pointless to try and copy/post HD DVD movies on the internet. File sizes are much to large and ISPs normally have monthly bandwidth limitations. If AACS is ever fully cracked it would allow legitimate owners to copy their purchased HD DVDs to their hard drive to get around some HDCP requirements.

But keep in mind that if AACS is ever fully cracked, then Blu-ray's additional efforts will be pretty much in vain.

If the studios implemented managed copy, then this would be less of an issue IMO.

I have several thoughts on the issue:

1) It was inevitable. Anything that is locked can be unlocked, and it takes more time, effort, and money to create the "lock" than it does to break it. While I'm sure the content providers hoped it wouldn't happen so soon, it shouldn't have come as a surprise.

2) It is practically irrelevant at this point. Those of us who have invested in HD-DVD or BluRay aren't just going to stop buying discs. It will take quite some time before mainstream burning and copying of these discs is practical. Certainly, I could go onto the P2P network or the newsgroups and find the rips from both HD-DVD and BluRay right now. But I truly believe most of us would rather buy and own the discs.

3) The market isn't ready for mainstream digital distribution. It is quite clear that content providers would love to move everything to secure digital distribution where they could more closely manipulate their content. Microsoft has had some success with HD digital distribution on the Xbox 360 but even this is limited. Even with the larger hard drive that was released with the Xbox 360 Elite, there is still only enough room for a relatively small number of high definition downloads. And the broadband network in most countries is still too slow for mainstream digital distribution of HD content. And finally, even digital distribution can be cracked. In light of this, the studios have no other option than to choose either HD-DVD or BluRay for the next generation of content. They know if neither of these HD formats succeed, then the next wave of growth may not happen for quite some time. Standard DVD is matured and growth is slowing, so they NEED the new medium to revitalize the industry.

4) Both HD-DVD and BluRay have been cracked. Though these latest reports revolve around the HD-DVD key, the truth is that both formats have been cracked for quite some time. On the P2P network and newsgroups, right now you can find rips from both formats (about equally). Anyone who thinks this is just a problem for HD-DVD needs to do some research. And if both formats are compromised, then the studios have no options, really. They can't abandon both formats, and they can't do anything more than fight little fires to stop the cracking.

The only studio it has seem to even slow is Fox, so I would say that was good for HD DVD...

Really though I agree with the others, it was gonna happen and its gonna happen again in the future. Companies need to keep trying to secure things but can not stop all releases in the mean time...

Wouldn't more people buy an HD-DVD player knowing that they can get away without buying the movie? I always thought the companies allowed controlled piracy for adoption of a format or standard quickly. An example would be Photoshop, there are lots of people who gets that software by dishonest means, but the end results is that there are more talents and more studio adopting it because more people can use it.

Studios are going to hate this and some more then others. IMO the whole reason why they even offered us the next step up in quality was to have a method to protect their content. I believe this could make both formats niche and a continued stronger push towards downloadable content. And imo with downloadable content be prepared to see a lot of SD and lower quality HD. They will have their protection there and more or less force us over to this in the next 10-15 years, so there is NO NEED for them to give us the quality we actually want, it's that or nothing (like videogames moving more and more to online verification each and every time to play). Yes this is doom and gloom but again the only reason I felt they offered us what we have today was to have total copy protection with the new format and HD was the bait for us to bite on. What does humor me is every so often we hear someone bring up ICT again, like that will never ever need to be used because it's been digitally copied already. No reason to protect it analogally now.

I have zero desire, none to copy and again the person that goes along with the program losses out. I think every slant trying to say this is good, is off-base. Here is the situation folks, "They dont' want you to copy it, period". Buy or rent, don't copy.

Fox is looking ahead of itself. Right now today I'd say just file size alone is copy protection. But they assume and we have to as well that in 10 years we will have faster internet, larger media etc to put even HD's large file size at risk. I'm sure that is their concern as well as the others. The others maybe realizing it may not be a concern today so they release and they will deal with it later.

The way to protect is on-demand downloading, they know it, we all know it. That is our future only because of that. Not because it's better, in fact I'm totally braced for this to be worse quality-wise but they won't care it will be our only choice eventually.

I dont see how many titles were promised by each studio during this time, perhaps ya could add that into your info... and lets not end it with april bring it all the way up to present time since its fixed...

Wrong. It's not a production key, it's a processing key. And it didn't get hacked. It was just found.


Wrong. Current discs can be encrypted, if you have a Volume ID. But you still need to get a Volume ID. Future discs can *NOT* be decrypted by the known processing key.


Wrong again. CSS didn't have a way to revoke the key, AACS has.

*ANOTHER* over-dramatic, misleading subject line on the HD DVD Software forums? GET RIGHT OUTTA TOWN!

AACS "software engineers" should do their job as they are paid to. not running to dadies and mommies everytime their efforts are cracked by kids and drag the issue of freedom of speech into mud because keys are either taken down from websites.

Except for Blu-ray's ROM-Mark (however that is spelled), even if BD+ is worthless. Seems to me that the ROM-Mark isn't really needed if AACS completely protects the content and it really comes in when all the content is in the free and clear and the professional pirates could replicate it. There isn't enough of a market for that stuff now IMO, but in a few years the professional pirates could appreciate how easy it is to replicate the content on HD DVDs, where I don't believe the format has anything like the ROM-Mark to try to slow down or stop them.

--Darin

Yeah I agree, the file sizes are way too big. My internet connection is very slow, it took 10 hours to download Braveheart 720p a 7 GB file on the XBox 360. I wish my internet was faster

People on the internet have been sharing HD movies from cable tv for past five years or so. They only take a day or two to download (so I've heard).

Granted, this is a tiny portion of the population, but if people realized how easy it was to do, it would be a lot more common.

If they keep releasing $39.99 flippers, I could see a lot of people less scrupulous that you or I illegally downloading HD-DVDs.

It's simple economics/social dynamics: a high quality product at a decent price is the only way to prevent a black market from flourishing.

i guess so much for disney, fox, or lionsgate ever supporting hd-dvd. this is exactly what they feared in the first place.

Well I definetly wouldn't rule out Disney. Disney's beef with HD DVD was regional coding, which HD DVD never lost because it never had regional coding. Fox is definetly the most conservative studio so I see them jumping ship last, right after Lionsgate and right before Sony... of course Sony will have to be dragged kicking and screaming on the HD DVD format

"WHY DO WE HAVE TO RELEASE ON A FORMAT WHICH HAS BETTER INTERACTIVE FEATURES!!!! WHY!!!! ohh wait.... this is actually pretty cool stuff!!!"
~Sony

xbox360 movie downloads are slow as heck on good connections. The problem is the other end for most people I've talked with as they can download other sources at faster rates.

RUMOR: AASC has been cracked. It is the DVD "thing" all over again.
FACT: People nobody knows where they came from can claim all kinds of things.

RUMORS: I found the key! I found the key!!
FACT: It is a lucrative-egotistic thing to be a hacker: all the attention one person can get... wow!

RUMORS: HD DVD is cracked and everything is already available online.
FACT: IF there are HD movies illegally available online, I never saw it proved it came from a HD DVD disc. Plus: I'm yet to see a pirate HD DVD disc available for... say... $3.00.

If all this cracking had happened the way these sources claim... I guess we would have a different kind of response from studios and CE companies.
I'm tired of all this fuss about HD DVD being cracked.
That's what I think.

Great News For HD-DVD!

I originally had no interest in HD-DVD or BR because I assumed that they couldn't be copied to my hard drive. I have a huge server that stores all of my movies, TV shows, etc. The convenience of being able to stream media throughout my home, to me, outweighed the obviously improved quality of HD. All of my 800 DVDs are now stored in plastic bins in a closet. I gave away my DVD racks to friens. Ahh...the theater is so spacious now!

Now that I know I can use a program like AnyDVD to copy discs to HD, my views have changed. I'm actively researching adding HD movies to my system. A BR player for PC is still prohibitively expensive for me, but the Xbox 360 drive + AnyDVD + PowerDVD might just be the ticket. When BR drives come down in price, I'll add one of those too.

If I wasn't able to copy to hard drive, I wouldn't buy it. Period.