Blu-ray makes unexpected, three-way DRM choice for high-def DVD

[HAVIC]

More Blu-ray drm and support is making the battle between the 2 formats a dead heat.


http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050810_131820.html

[StanleyMuso]

Players permanently connected to content providers? Smacks of an authoritarian Big Brother to me. Many of our parents escaped totalitarian regimes to the West to live normal lives without being constantly spied upon. If Blu-ray goes this way, somebody somewhere will know whenever we play a disk, what disk and how often. Any body else uncomfortable with this idea? Perhaps we need to protest now, before it becomes a reality.

[Geoffcin]

Players permanently connected to content providers? Smacks of an authoritarian Big Brother to me. Many of our parents escaped totalitarian regimes to the West to live normal lives without being constantly spied upon. If Blu-ray goes this way, somebody somewhere will know whenever we play a disk, what disk and how often. Any body else uncomfortable with this idea? Perhaps we need to protest now, before it becomes a reality.

Besides spying, they want to have a trigger in the player that they can render it inoperable if you do play a bootlegged disk in it. I suppose next would be instant notification of the FBI.....

[StanleyMuso]

If this becomes a reality, I will boycot such products, no matter how great they may be. We take pride in living in a democracy, but such an idea violates our basic freedoms. Can you imagine the arrogance of these types - to threaten to disable products we have bought with our hard earned cash? And what of the costs of enabling them again? Will they even give us a choice whether to be permanently connected? What if a household, for some reason, is not connected to the internet? Will they be barred from using these new machines?

As you can see, I feel very strongly opposed to this proposal. This whole proposal stinks to high heaven.

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

There is a protest on both formats brewing on Hometheaterforum. Alot of them are really angry that both new formats will not be using any analog inputs for passing the HD signal.

The more information released about these new formats, the more turned off I am.

[Woochifer]

This requirement for a permanent internet connection to the player sounds an awful lot like "DIVX Lite." (DIVX here refers to the discontinued pay-per-view disposable disc scheme that was pushed by Circuit City and some studios -- mercifully, its shelf life was short) Having a two-way mechanism in place that would render both the disc and the player inoperable is eerily similar to what the DIVX players tried when they were introduced in late-2000.

Some of the articles I've read already indicated that HD-DVD/Blu-ray discs would have the option of putting some of the special features on a pay-per-view or purchase basis. In other words, you already paid for the HD-DVD/Blu-ray disc, but to unlock some of the special features, you would have to shell out even more. Having the special features done on this kind of a pay-to-play scheme is only a short step from the whole idea of pay-per-view discs rearing their ugly head once again.

I don't know about any of you, but my DVD player sits nowhere near a phone line or internet connection. Do they even have a clue as to how people actually setup their home theaters? With all these market barriers that the Mensas on both sides of the format war have already erected in front of consumers, this can only further erode whatever limited enthusiasm there might have been for these formats.

[StanleyMuso]

The more details that come out, the more my enthusiasm for the two formats wanes. I wonder if that is the general perception among likely consumers? If so, the adoption rate could be very slow.

[Geoffcin]

The more details that come out, the more my enthusiasm for the two formats wanes. I wonder if that is the general perception among likely consumers? If so, the adoption rate could be very slow.

It's not about what they want, it's about what I WANT. If any of the new formats don't do what I want, I'm staying with DVD, and **** them all. HD-DVD, and BlueRay look like they are set to make the same mistakes that their high-res audio bretherin made

The REAL reason that DVD-Audio, and SACD didn't catch on is not because the players cost more. Heck the price on players dropped to nearly no premium at all! The real reason was that they asked more for the software. If SACD cost what CD does, then the smart man would always choose SACD. Better performance for same price = no brainer. If HD-DVD and BlueRay not only cost more, but make users jump through hoops to use them,(and right-to-privacy hoops at that!) then my opinion of what their market share will be is even less.

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[Woochifer]

It's not about what they want, it's about what I WANT. If any of the new formats don't do what I want, I'm staying with DVD, and **** them all. HD-DVD, and BlueRay look like they are set to make the same mistakes that their high-res audio bretherin made

The REAL reason that DVD-Audio, and SACD didn't catch on is not because the players cost more. Heck the price on players dropped to nearly no premium at all! The real reason was that they asked more for the software. If SACD cost what CD does, then the smart man would always choose SACD. Better performance for same price = no brainer. If HD-DVD and BlueRay not only cost more, but make users jump through hoops to use them,(and right-to-privacy hoops at that!) then my opinion of what their market share will be is even less.

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Actually, I don't think that price of the discs was that huge a factor, especially after prices got rolled back to match the release prices for the CD versions (this occurred roughly two years ago). It was the totality of everything put together (the analog output restrictions, the format war, the consumer confusion, the lack of integration with bass management functionality, the inconsistency of the user controls on the players themselves, consumer apathy, etc.) that have prevented them from gaining traction in the market.

In the case of SACD, you had quite a few hybrid CD/SACD releases that cost no more than your typical CD prices. I found the CD/SACD of Pink Floyd's DSOTM selling for $13-$16 typically, and the Rolling Stones' hybrids going for about the same amount. With the single layer SACDs, Sony rolled the list prices on those discs down to about $19, which results in street prices that match what CDs typically sell for. With DVD-A, Warner Music was selling the new titles released concurrent with the CD titles for the same list price. At BB, you could easily find DVD-As typically going for $15.

The situation with SACD/DVD-A actually was better performance for the same price. But, the critical shortcoming with SACD/DVD-A was pretty simple in this age of iPods and MP3s -- the lack of portability. Much the same way that prerecorded cassettes had already begun outselling LPs even before the advent of the CD, you now have the portability factor with iPods and flash memory MP3 players trumping any performance considerations. With these kinds of market conditions, I think it was foolhardy for DVD-A and SACD to come with all of these restrictions and market barriers that impeded audiophiles and casual fans alike.

In my case, it was the analog output requirement and the lack of adequate and consistent bass management and delay/level controls with the universal players that have to this day kept me from committing to high res digital audio. And I consider myself an ardent supporter of multichannel music, and have even bought numerous DVD-A titles (listening to the DD and DTS tracks).

The situation with Blu-ray and HD-DVD looks eerily similar in that the backers have arrogantly presumed that consumers are so hard up for HD content that they will put up with any number of ridiculous restrictions and illogical copy protection hoops just to get that content. The fact that they are overlooking is that the HD market is still relatively small, and the vast majority of consumers seem quite content with the DVD. The analog video restriction already eliminates about half of their target market, which is not big to begin with. Unlike the DVD, the HD video disc formats will not benefit the majority of consumers out there, and with Blu-ray and HD-DVD dividing the market and putting arbitrary market barriers up, they are creating a self-fulfilling failure. And we're not even on the topic of disc prices yet!

[kexodusc]

It's not about what they want, it's about what I WANT. If any of the new formats don't do what I want, I'm staying with DVD, and **** them all.

And very true...

Nuff said.

[Mr Peabody]

Although I don't have any DVD's that are copies I sure don't want to have a player that you have to plug into a phone jack. I really think these guys are going to kill this product before it hits the market. They are taking for granted that there are enough people who care about HD to put up with their crap. You tell the average Joe that there could be a signal sent to the machine that will render it useless and that sale is dead in the water. This AACS is the most obcerd copy protection I've heard of.

[StanleyMuso]

"Although I don't have any DVD's that are copies I sure don't want to have a player that you have to plug into a phone jack". I'm in the same boat, and I thoroughly agree. Its the principle of the whole concept and the arrogant assumptions made by these types who have obviously lost touch with the real world and the real consumer that gets my goat! I believe that if we allow an erosion to our rights to privacy in one area, that this will be the thin edge of the wedge, and what next? Will Big Brother soon monitor all our activities, right down to when we have toilet breaks, or what we do in the bedroom??:(