New BD copy protection scheme surfaces

[mike123abc]

This one is interesting, cinavia is using audio watermarking to prevent copying (company web site: Cinavia Consumer Information Center )

There is a big thread over at the slysoft forums. Essentially AnyDVD cannot defeat this new protection mechanism. It made its debut this week on "The Losers".

It works backwards. Essentially if a player detects the watermark, it will mute the audio if it does NOT detect copyprotection. So, essentially the player refuses to play discs that are not copy protected. Newer players seem to be the ones that are doing the enforcing (and the PS3). It is possible older players will be "upgraded" to the new feature in future firmware releases (which might be required to play new discs).

It is interesting technology because apparently it is being used in theaters now. It will survive a camcorder recording. If a camcorder recording is burned to BD it will not play. It is also speculated it might be headed into new DVD players too.

Of course slysoft forums tried experiments. If you videotape something with a protected soundtrack playing in the background, it will trigger the copy protection! So, if you are filming your kid trying to talk or something and someone is watching a protected DVD in the other room, you will not be able to make a BD out of it.

From the Cinavia web site http://www.cinavia.com/languages/english/index.html

If the video that you are playing is a home movie or other personal recording that includes some professionally produced content (including the audio track of a professionally produced video), to play your recording without muting you may either:

•Pause the video, wait 30 seconds for the audio to be un-muted, then skip over those portions where the professionally produced material is used and continue playing the rest of the video, or
•Pause the video, wait 30 seconds for the audio to be un-muted, then play video from a different optical disc for at least 10 minutes before continuing playback of this video.

WDs media players seem to enforce this new protection too. They enforce it on ripped tracks (or for example if you tried to play that video tape made with the background soundtrack).

 

[diogen]

My understanding is this is enforced on the player level (no personal experience).
And commercial software players are not updated yet.

Bottom line: stick to VLC/MPCHC players and soundtracks they can handle.
By the time this protection goes mainstream those players hopefully will be able to handle all lossless codecs.
Or long rumoured SlyPlayer will be out.

Diogen.

 

[TheForce]

I wonder if this is the same thing. I rented Cop Out on Tuesday and had a devil of a time trying to play it. I use an OPPO BD83SE and the sound would not play. I restarted the disk over and over but just no sound. So I stuck it in the PS3 and it played fine. Back in the Oppo and silent. Decided to unplug the OPPO for a minute and try again. still no sound. Thinking I had a failure in the OPPO I stuck in an old BD I owned and it played fine. Tried the CopOut disk one more time and after playing the owned BD, the Cop Out disk had sound, for about 3 minutes and then it quit. Ended up watching the disk in the PS3. I paid a lot of money to have a really great blu Ray player and if they are going to obsolete it with some copy protection scheme I better get ready to go to war. I recall we went through this nonsense with Macrovision on VHS years ago. That copy protection scheme hurt more legal viewers than ever stopped real pirates from copying the tapes.

PS- I just watched The Losers tonight and it played fine. ???? But it was a Block Buster rental version.

What is this SlySoft forum? Do they have a list of bluray disks that are infected with this problem scheme? I'd like a good location to keep current on what disks are now going to cause trouble in my OPPO.

 

[Ramy]

This is going to suck if you have trouble playing real discs you bought or rented. They will have a huge war on their hands if the stuff I paid big bucks for stops working because of some software crap.

 

[TheForce]

The only thing copy protection ever did was cause trouble for legal users and make money for the guys selling these fraudulent protection schemes to the duplicators and copyright owners.

I guess I'll start with Oppo. They are pretty responsive to issues like these.

 

[mike123abc]

I wonder if this is the same thing. I rented Cop Out on Tuesday and had a devil of a time trying to play it. I use an OPPO BD83SE and the sound would not play. I restarted the disk over and over but just no sound. So I stuck it in the PS3 and it played fine. Back in the Oppo and silent. Decided to unplug the OPPO for a minute and try again. still no sound. Thinking I had a failure in the OPPO I stuck in an old BD I owned and it played fine. Tried the CopOut disk one more time and after playing the owned BD, the Cop Out disk had sound, for about 3 minutes and then it quit. Ended up watching the disk in the PS3. I paid a lot of money to have a really great blu Ray player and if they are going to obsolete it with some copy protection scheme I better get ready to go to war. I recall we went through this nonsense with Macrovision on VHS years ago. That copy protection scheme hurt more legal viewers than ever stopped real pirates from copying the tapes.

PS- I just watched The Losers tonight and it played fine. ???? But it was a Block Buster rental version.

What is this SlySoft forum? Do they have a list of bluray disks that are infected with this problem scheme? I'd like a good location to keep current on what disks are now going to cause trouble in my OPPO.

The Losers is the first known commercial BD to be released with the new copy protection. If the copy protection kicks in your player is supposed to display an error that the BD is a pirated version.

This copy protection is different from the others since it is a negative test. If the player detects a secret pattern in the audio track it is required to be playing on a copy protected disc. It is supposed to mute the sound and display an error message.

Rental versions of movies should be fine since they are on original copy protected discs.

SlySoft Products | Copy Movie DVDs with AnyDVD and CloneDVD is where the forum is. They wrote the software that strips the copy protection off of BDs. It will be an interesting challenge to see if they can defeat this. Essentially they will have to figure out what alterations were made to the audio track and fix the audio track.

It appears that it was originally developed to defeat video camera recordings in theaters distributed by disc. A side effect is that it affects the slysoft system. The question is of course how many consumer devices they can get the system installed in?

 

[pro96]

Media players will have no prob playing the .mkv so no worries by me.

 

[navychop]

This can be a good thing, if we can update all our players. Sadly, my Sammy 1500 is in a remote location with no internet, but I can schlep it back for an update. I also have a PS3 & the OPPO.

If piracy goes too far, they'll just stop producing.

 

[diogen]

Audio watermarking (what this is all about) is in BD spec but just like BD+, it just wasn't implemented from the start..
That means
1. Whatever has been released doesn't have it and never will.
2. The players (all players, in theory!) have to be upgradeable to use it.
3. Just like BD+ it is an opt-in, i.e. if the studio ignores it, it won't be there.
4. This does not affect the "rippability" of BD disks.

Hence, if a player is not licensed by BD-LA, it can not be forced to obey the watermarking rules.
All commercial software players as well as hardware players should eventually be forced to follow those rules.

Bottom line: rip the BD disk and play it on an HTPC using VLC/MPCHC.
They don't support lossless audio (without latest ffdshow) but should ignore all watermarking.

A good analogy to this would be the broadcast flag...

Diogen.

 

[navychop]

Ok. TKS.

 

[mike123abc]

4. This does not affect the "rippability" of BD disks.

It only affects media players such as the PS3 and WD's media players that seem to have the detection built in right now. BD players that do not also do media files would only be affected if they are fed a BD disc that was copied from a copy protected disc. If all the hardware media players start enforcing the policy, it will probably require a PC running something like slysoft BD player (if it ever gets released). I would not put it past MS to putting the enforcement in Windows Media Player.

I am confident they will find ways around the copy protections, but it may require a HTPC solution if they take over all the hardware media players.

Since the primary use of this is to prevent movie theater taping, I would not be surprised if they try to get the protection in every consumer player, hardware and software. It will take someone living on a nice island with no worries about lawsuits to come out with independent software to work around it.

 

[diogen]

Since the primary use of this is to prevent movie theater taping...

This I don't understand: taping a movie in a theatre is by definition the lowest quality from what's available on torrents.
Nobody in its sober mind records it on a BD to play on a BD player. Regular DVD players and those capable of DivX/XviD aren't affected...

So, what's the point?

...I would not be surprised if they try to get the protection in every consumer player, hardware and software.

I think this is the long term goal... Commercial players only.

It will take someone living on a nice island with no worries about lawsuits to come out with independent software to work around it.

Why?
How can you prevent VLC from playing ripped BD disks? Or prevent me from using VLC?
It won't do DTS-MA but will bypass watermarking easily... Without doing anything!

Another example where legit consumers are screwed whereas pirates don't even notice...

Diogen.

 

[mike123abc]

This I don't understand: taping a movie in a theatre is by definition the lowest quality from what's available on torrents.
Nobody in its sober mind records it on a BD to play on a BD player. Regular DVD players and those capable of DivX/XviD aren't affected...

So, what's the point?
I think this is the long term goal... Commercial players only.
Why?

I believe the goal is to have all players enforce it. Yes old players will continue to play these, but new ones will be cut off. The movie theater recordings are big outside of the US. In areas without fast internet and the luxury of HTPCs it could make a big dent eventually (i.e. when all the players are upgraded).

How can you prevent VLC from playing ripped BD disks? Or prevent me from using VLC?
It won't do DTS-MA but will bypass watermarking easily... Without doing anything!

Another example where legit consumers are screwed whereas pirates don't even notice...

Diogen.

The island reference is to slysoft. They are where they are to avoid any pesky lawsuits or criminal issues with what they do. I hope that they are able to crack the encoded message and figure out a way to counteract it.

HTPC users will be ok, as you mention. But, the % of the viewers that have HTPCs is not that large, epecially outside developed nations.

 

[diogen]

HTPC users will be ok....

Hehe...
The HTPC almost left for dead in the last year or so due to the cheap WDTV/Patriot/PCH networked media players, gets a chance to live another day!

Seriously, the number of times I played anything NOT on an HTPC over the last 6 years I can count on one hand.
I'm very pleased to hear that it will live on. Here is a good example of one

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3824/asrock-core-100htbd-bringing-htpcs-to-the-mainstream-market

Diogen.