DRM built in any DVD writers'?

[LT9000]

I found this review at newegg about a Liteon burner:

Pros: Nice burner Except: See Cons

Cons: This Burner has digital Rights Management built in. This is to stop piracy. But It was always my understanding your allowed to make backup copys of software that you purchased for your own use. This burner will not allow you to play backup copys of games and such. This Is Garbage. Risk trashing Original software that costs more than this drive. I DO NOT PIRATE, BUT I HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE BACKUPS!!!!

Other Thoughts: I Fully understand the need for DRM. But I've Also had disks get destroyed in drives. Is LiteOn going to buy me new software if their drive messes up my disk?? I think not. I own nothing but LiteOn optical drives, but this is my last one. (end)

Is this true, or is he mistaken?

[yoda313]

That has to be a total crock.

You can't do that to a burner can you??? The point is to burn. I can't see how any company could do that, I don't even see why they would do it if they could.

EDIT - Besides thats what dvdfabdecrytper is for. And I can't see there is anyway to restrict burning on your own burner - nobody would ever buy it if you could only make one backup of every disc or some such nonsense. The reviewer has got to be crazy.

[CrayonEater]

Many drives do have RipGuard, which is not DRM, but just slows down an original disc so it acn't be ripped as fast during the actual copy process. And the link between the drive and the player software is encrypted to prevent people from simply sniffing the IDE cable, but I tend to doubt there is any DRM like that described. I suspect this reviewer is referring to RipGuard or some such.

[lordsmurf]

I think 75% of all people that leave reviews are idiots. To get any value from a review, you have to be smart enough to weed out ignorant comments. Which really almost destroys the entire point.

[LT9000]

That has to be a total crock.

You can't do that to a burner can you??? The point is to burn. I can't see how any company could do that, I don't even see why they would do it if they could.

EDIT - Besides thats what dvdfabdecrytper is for. And I can't see there is anyway to restrict burning on your own burner - nobody would ever buy it if you could only make one backup of every disc or some such nonsense. The reviewer has got to be crazy.

I've heard ppl talk of DRM for hardware in the future - but never a burner. Guess there's nothing to this.

[LT9000]

OK I'm gonna put in this other reviewers response. He did some testing and thinks the problem is a new version of Nero:

Pros: This is really a great drive. I realize a few people have had problems and I will admit that I too had the "won't burn DVD problem", but you can't blame Lite-On. I beleive the problem exists with the version of NERO that is packaged with this burner. This burner was put in a system that didn't have any DVD capability. After installing NERO it wouldn't let me burn DVD's. Not one to give up, I did major testing before complaining about it and RMAing the drive. I put this drive in a system with a working DVD burner and it was able to burn DVD's very well. I put my old drive in the system with the problems and it too wouldn't burn DVDs. Because I had an older DVD burner, I uninstalled the new NERO and installed the version of NERO from the old DVD burner. Everything now works great in both systems. No need to RMA the drive, and a great burner to boot. Fairly quiet, fast and so far reliable.

Cons: Seems to have a bad version of NERO which I beleive has new Digital Rights issues. This version did finally let me burn just a data DVD, but if I put in a copyrighted movie for personal back-up, Nero shut right down. Installing a previous version of Nero resolved that problem. Funny, but both versions are Nero 6.6 and Nerovision 3.

Other Thoughts: Great drive, if you have a previous version of Nero or some other DVD burn utility. (end)

This was on the Liteon SHM-165P6S RTL - Retail at newegg.

I had a guy at work complain bad about the new version of Nero, but he didn't say exactly what the problem was.