What're the chances of backing up blu-ray discs?

[Skoorb]

I hope this is the right spot. Blu-ray and HD DVD plan on using some pretty nifty encryption it seems. Is it likely that in short order - or any order, for that matter - somebody will have something akin to DVD Decryptor, so that we can make backups of our movies that are in this format?

I think if the answer is no it will stunt the growth in PCs of blu-ray and/or HD-DVD drives, because other than those who watch movies on their PCs (and these are not many people, since most are watched on the home tv), what do we really need 20+ gigs of storage on a disk for anyway? I can think of some uses, but I bet a huge percentage of blank DVD media sold today is used to backup movies.

[bugster]

IMHO, it all depends on how succesful the format is and how much 'quality' material is available in that format. If Blu-ray or HD-DVD take off as quickly and to the same exten as DVD (which I doubt, look at the slow worldwide adoption of Hi-Def TV), then it becomes very worthwhile for some one to try an crack the encryption. If it is simply a niche format, then a lot less effort will be made to crack it (only a few enthusiasts that relish a challenge perhaps) and it will therefore be a lot longer before we see any 'DvdDecrytpter' type of tools, commercial or freeware.

[Skoorb]

IMHO, it all depends on how succesful the format is and how much 'quality' material is available in that format. If Blu-ray or HD-DVD take off as quickly and to the same exten as DVD (which I doubt, look at the slow worldwide adoption of Hi-Def TV), then it becomes very worthwhile for some one to try an crack the encryption. If it is simply a niche format, then a lot less effort will be made to crack it (only a few enthusiasts that relish a challenge perhaps) and it will therefore be a lot longer before we see any 'DvdDecrytpter' type of tools, commercial or freeware.

I don't know how CSS works, but apparently it was never supposed to be very tough. However, if Blu-ray is using some 128 bit encryption, does it really mean that somebody's going to have to find that one single key to break it, and if it does mean that, doesn't it seem possibly that by the time somebody finally breaks it blu-ray might be old news?

[Capmaster]

Sooner or later someone will leak the encryption keys. It's happened over and over

I'm guessing Blu-Ray will be on the market for two weeks before we see encryption cracking tools starting to appear. Maybe even sooner.

[shelbyGT]

Where there's a will, there's a naked kangaroo...

er, what?

[iooi]

More a case of will joe public be suckered into buying another format......
Look at the music side when they brought out mini disks the format never took off. People were sick of buying the same stuff over and over again in diffrent formats. I think video will hit that wall with blue-ray. We got the video and the dvd..... Are we really going to see any benefit from blue-ray etc for retail movies...

[mpack]

IMHO, it all depends on how succesful the format is and how much 'quality' material is available in that format.

Happiness is - never having to rewind a VHS tape again. At least, that was item one on my list of reasons for adopting DVD the moment it arrived. That plus the better video quality of course.

Now that I don't have to rewind, and that my picture quality is probably as good as my TV can give me, I don't feel a pressing need for a new format. I won't be rushing to buy blu-ray when it appears. Eventually my DVD player will break I suppose, and maybe by then every player will be blu-ray, backwards compatible with DVD. I'll consider it again then...

[Skoorb]

Yeah bluray could be a tough sell, since even those with budget bigscreens are not going to notice a benefit going from DVD up to blu-ray or anything else with a higher bitrate, save maybe getting an entire season on one DVD or something lame like that.

[vitualis]

Unless they plan on making Blu-Ray and HD-DVD absolutely excluded from PC playback, it shouldn't be too hard to crack. The strength of the algorithm and length of the key is irrelevant.

Why? Because, to play anything on your PC you must already have:

1. encrypted content (i.e., ciphertext)
2. known algorithm
3. working key (either obsfucated on the disc or in the playback program).

The model of encrypted content on fixed media is inherently unsafe.

Regards.

[guns1inger]

You have to remember that CSS wasn't cracked from scratch. The initial break came from reverse engineering sloppy code in a licensed commercial software player. This gave enough information to crack the rest of the encryption. This is not to say it would not have been cracked eventually, but this certainly sped the process up dramatically. If lessons have been learned, Blu-ray et al will be a lot harder to beat.

[vitualis]

Yes, but the strength of the protection isn't from the innate encryption itself. It is from the obsfucation of the key.

It is analogous to giving someone a box with a super fancy lock but with the key camoflaged but taped to the back. The hard part is just finding the key. The security isn't in the complexity of the lock itself.

Regards.

[Skoorb]

Cool Now, somebody on a thread I managed to find on the net brought up "physical hooks". Presumably this would be something that links the software directly to the disk in a manner that a burner could not replicate. Was there any possible truth to that, and how does it work?

[smearbrick1]

Sounds something like media checks on an Xbox machine. Those can be bypassed with a media patcher... not sure if the same thing will apply to Blu-Ray, but could be.

[Skoorb]

Sounds something like media checks on an Xbox machine. Those can be bypassed with a media patcher... not sure if the same thing will apply to Blu-Ray, but could be.

So, if that's the case, you'd probably need something akin to a mod chip on your standalone blu ray player to play it?

[waheed]

Unless they plan on making Blu-Ray and HD-DVD absolutely excluded from PC playback, it shouldn't be too hard to crack

This will never be the case. one thing you need to remember is that businesses are out there to make money. more money means more profit. if one company doesn't enter the market and produce blu-ray or hd-dvd for pcs, chances are another one will. its all about making money.