DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'

[yoda313]

Most likely yes. It will just be at a lower resolution and you'll lose the digital surround sound.

[rayzray]

i hate 5.1 surround sound;; and all these new TV's;; like i wanna be "IN FRONT" of the band;; i don't want the band in back of me,, under me.. and in my back pocket..

oh,, i (rayzray) will always copy illegally (for myself);; it the fun of it..

i only buy music DVD's and quickly turn them into regular stereo;; and put my own scenes in them..

maybe a 1950's cereal commercial between Agruilera and Rihanna too..!!

[ViRaL1]

FUD

[RLT69]

How do you know it's fake news?

This fake article

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=309307

doesn't compare with the article posted at vnunet:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2164309/embedded-dvd-chip-fights-piracy

This phrase is the only common point between them:

'Ritek's CEO, Gordon Yeh is quoted saying, "this technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios and gaming and software developers worldwide." '


What's actually very interesting is the following from the vnunet article:

"U-Tech Australia, where the project will undergo a large scale trial, did not reply today to vnunet.com's request for comment on the new embedded RFID chip process and the precise schedule for its rollout.

Press relations staff at U-Tech's office in Taiwan refused to provide more information about the technology."

So we have a no comment from U-Tech. They neither confirm nor deny the story.

Time will tell if this is real or fake.

[ViRaL1]

In the end the real question is, who's going to purchase these discs?

[RLT69]

In the end the real question is, who's going to purchase these discs?

Agreed, but in the end will we have a choice

[adam]

If a studio chooses to go this route its mostly likely going to be across the board. If it becomes widespread than you've got no option but to boycott all new music and movies, including future pressing runs of older music and movies. I don't see many people doing this.

[ViRaL1]

Where's the improvment that makes it worthwhile to change from what's already in place?

[adam]

Not sure what you mean. Are you maybe thinking that they are putting the chips on blank media?

The chips are for use with commercially pressed discs. Studios would choose to use it over current media because it would allow them more control. Its the same reason that any form of copy protection is used.

[ViRaL1]

I'm wondering what the incentive is for consumers to not only buy these discs versus the now standard DVD discs sans-chip but the new players required to make use of them.

[adam]

Its not a matter of incentive its a matter of no alternative options. Technologies like this have to be phased in over a long period of time, but once they are consumers have no choice. In 10 years you may not be able to buy a DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/CD without a chip on it, and you may not be able to buy a player that doesn't recognize that chip.

Actually the players are the only thing that would require phasing in. Assuming the chips work and don't cause compatibility problems, studios could switch over every release overnight and consumers would have no choice. Either they buy it with the chip or they don't buy it at all. It might not affect them now but when it comes time to replace their player it might. And HD-DVD and Blu-ray are still so new that you could phase the players in very quickly too.

[ViRaL1]

But until there are no options we have the choice to avoid this technology like the plague until it dies a slow death and eventually it might not be worth the investment (or the headache) for the studios.

[TBoneit]

Not to stomp on anybodys toes.... However do you really think the average person cares?

You go to him and say you can buy our release but it has massive copy protection to prevent piracy or you do without. The answer will in the form of a question, Can I Still play it like I want too, Answer, Of course. Joe consumer, whatever it doesn't impact me, who cares, go ahead.

Think I'm wrong?

[painkiller]

The moment an average joe finds out that he can no longer do what he used to ...

He should return it for a full refund.

But then, we aren't "average " are we?

[gll99]

Adam wrote

Its not a matter of incentive its a matter of no alternative options. Technologies like this have to be phased in over a long period of time, but once they are consumers have no choice.

I agree with that but I have some comments.

Eventually we will all have to move with the new technology. Partly because of lack of another choice and probably because prices will make it such that there will be little reason to resist the change to a higher resolution medium.
In the long run, not being able to back up my discs will not be enough reason to hold back on switching to whatever is the best or wins with whatever technology ends up on top.

I can easily resist the change now because everything is weighed on the side of waiting.

1- I don't even own 1 HDTV yet so HD-DVD would be of little value
2- Not enough HD programming to justify buying a HDtv to remove obstacle 1
3- The cost of a DVD player unit is far too high (early adopters can ignore this)
4- Not enough HDDVD material available that draws my interest
5- I don't know which format to buy even if I wanted to. This format conflict has to end first
6- No-one has yet proven to me that just to save a buck, they won't frequently replicate a standard dvd but change the resolution and bitrate, add some dumb extras and call it hdDVD. Something which I could emulate with an upconverting DVD player (this is just my skepticism talking)
7- I got interested in DVD players when I could also record my own material ie tv shows and movies for later viewing as well as personal home videos. I'm not convinced that I will be able to do this easily if at all. Even if the means are available to do this, the cost of re-acquiring suitable burners, HD blank discs, hd capture cards, computer, video card,hdd etc.. all weight into the equation. To me these 2 developments compliment and help drive one another.
8- It will be very important that any new computer and or standalone players/recorder/burners be totally backward compatible with existing pressed and burned sl and dl discs dvd/-+rw,cdr,cdrw,dvdr-+ otherwise all our stored data will be unusable. This alone might cause me to stock up on older equipment and resist change that much longer. Burners and players are very cheap right now so just buy a few spares and put them in storage so my archived data will not become obsolete.
9- Many people have just bought dvd players in the last few years and upconverting DVD players have only been marketed in the last year or two. The price of DVD recorder/players has been artificially high in Canada and are only dropping a bit now. For many I can't see a rush to rebuy anything in the next few years at least
10- The longer it takes for HDDVD to take hold the more nervous the industry becomes. If they are making money on the standard stuff, is it worth their while pushing something no-one owns just for the sake of the better digital copy protection. What if the switch to hdDVD doesn't happen fast enough and their sale of hd discs is at a crawl and there is still a high demand for standard dvd? Are they going to stop making standard DVDs and lose all that money hoping that this alone will drive the market to HD. That would be a very costly risk. They would have to start giving away the hd hardware just to move things along. This by itself might make me wait it out a bit longer to see how far prices would drop.
11- The longer it takes just means that other technologies might change the mix of things a bit... ie the internet video, ipods etc... who would have predicted people would watch crappy video on cell phones or small video players but now companies are talking of "larger" 2 or 3 inch screens. wow!!! I know this might be a non competing market but who knows. A customer gained here may take away a customer from there. There is even the possibility that something brand new could develop which could cause the industry to lose faith in these hd discs and they could decide to cut their losses and wait for this new medium. That's what time can do to ideas that are too slow to take hold.

In spite of what I just said:

If the price of players drops enough and they incorporate standard and hd-dvd capabilities in the players then there may be room for both technologies to co-exist for many years to come. Eventually hd-dvd (or Blu-ray if you prefer but not both so this has to be settled soon) will take on the larger portion of the market and phase out regular dvds

But watch out for true 3D this may push things beyond the capabilities of hd-dvd/blu-ray discs

[rayzray]

this is going the way of Sony's minidisc recorders and all their copy protection crap;; they LOST the game.. i-pod/mp-3's won..

i hope that a NEW technology will take hole like mentioned above that will totally replace DVD;; HD-DVD etc;; probably cute LITTE units that can copy for anything and watched on anything;; including ANY TV..!!

[RLT69]

The longer it takes for HDDVD to take hold the more nervous the industry becomes. If they are making money on the standard stuff, is it worth their while pushing something no-one owns just for the sake of the better digital copy protection. What if the switch to hdDVD doesn't happen fast enough and their sale of hd discs is at a crawl and there is still a high demand for standard dvd? Are they going to stop making standard DVDs and lose all that money hoping that this alone will drive the market to HD. That would be a very costly risk. They would have to start giving away the hd hardware just to move things along. This by itself might make me wait it out a bit longer to see how far prices would drop.

1. Let me get this straight the Industry is more nervous about the adoption of a new and untested technology versus piracy?? You seriously underestimate the piracy paranoia among studio executives. They can easily point to numbers and say we are losing X number of dollars do to piracy. They cannot point to losing X number of dollars of revenue from DRM HD DVD sales. Big difference.

2. Again your argument and everyone elses is based on the idea that the consumer will have a choice. As others have pointed out - what if you don't have a choice?

Consider the fact that once DVDs were out, new movies were being released on DVD first and VHS tape second - assuming the movie was released on VHS tape at all. It doesn't take much for the Industry to force a new technology down your throats. You want to see the latest block buster flick - well then buy the HD version with DRM or piss off. That's how it works.

The simple fact is HD-DVD and BlueRay both support DRM. So if you want HD you are going to get DRM, period. Some people are gaga over HD they won't care. Most people don't even know what DRM is. Most people don't make backups. Most people don't even know their DVDs are regionally encoded and don't care that they are. They just want to go to the store and buy the latest movie, period. The rest they just don't care about.

The problem is that fight against DRM and CopyProtection will never reach critical mass. Why, because most people want to do is watch a movie. You tell them that all DRM does is prevent piracy, then they won't care.

[TBoneit]

The moment an average joe finds out that he can no longer do what he used to ...

He should return it for a full refund.

But then, we aren't "average " are we?

The average Joe will still be able to plunk it into the player and press play, They'll be happy.

I do not know about you but I tend to back up anything I watch from DVD because it is either that or sit there felling like throwing the remote at the TV to to being forced to watch crap that the restrictions won't let me skip, or put it in the player, switch the TV back to computer for a little while then come back and watch the DVD.

I haven't seen any big revolt against DVDs because the user can't FF past the FBI warnings for example like they used to be able to do with VCRs.

[sammie]

As I read it this is a new technology for HD DVD or BluRay. Won't impact DVDs at all as there are way too many existing players and I doubt they could write code that would require the recognition of the chip and have it be both compatible and responded to by existing players.

Techwise, what I think most of you are missing is that there will be two parts to this, first the chip, then some piece of code that resides on the disk, or if they are smart within the movie itself that requires a "valid" chip in order for the movie to be played, or alternatively played at full resolution. In other words, frying the chip or masking it may be easy, but it means the disk won't play. So what will be more important than frying the chip will be having a de-crypter program that removes the code like current ones that allow removing PUOs or RCEs.

Of course ultimately what would probably be easiest is if players and recorders allow firmware updates, to just hack the firmware in such a way that it ignores the chip results. I think we've seen enought to realize that once players start coming from the discount Chinese and Korean manufactuers that will almost certainly be possible, or even built in if you know the right sequence of buttons to push.

The other part I find strange is that they are talking mostly about enforcing region codes. I thought even many of the studios were at least somewhat questioning what good those did. I can't imagine they'd waste all this time, energy and money coming up with an improved region code enforcement? My take/worry is that this is more laying the grounds for keeping tabs on where the original disk came from. That is, it won't be hard to defeat and copy, but that as more and more electronicware devices phones home they will use this to ID who's got which disk and where did it come from and some sort of second identifier key embeded in the movie will identify a mismatch. That is, your HD-DVD player just called us and you are playing movie ID 79B-GOBBLDY-GOOK-2006, the player reports a chip mismatch or no chip. You are therefore playing a pirated movie and can expect a visit from the FBI shortly. So when players start "Featuring" an internet connection for an "Enhanced Experience". That's when I'll worry about this technology.

[RLT69]

I haven't seen any big revolt against DVDs because the user can't FF past the FBI warnings for example like they used to be able to do with VCRs.

Or how about people walking out of the movie theater because they have to sit through Commercials and then coming Attractions. Meanwhile the cost of a movie ticket keeps going up and people still go to the movies....

[dphirschler]

So say this technology becomes widespread. All new players now have the chip; all new discs now have the chip. All new players refuse to play anything without the chip. So what does that accomplish?

1) all of our current discs will no longer play.

2) the entire DVD recorder industry is killed.

3) all of our home-made DVDs will no longer play.

4) the blank DVD industry will be killed.

It doesn't add up. Am I missing something? I call BS.


Darryl

[RLT69]

1) all of our current discs will no longer play."

2) the entire DVD recorder industry is killed.

3) all of our home-made DVDs will no longer play.

4) the blank DVD industry will be killed.

It doesn't add up. Am I missing something? I call BS.

1. Just like: Vinyl LPs, Reel-To-Reel, 8 track tape, cassette tape, DAT, BetaMax tape, VHS Tape, LaserDisc, etc.,...History is littered with Audio/Video formats that were once cutting edge, new technology only to become obsolete. The death of the DVD format is nothing new. Thing is, as long as you have a DVD player that works, you can continue to play your DVDs long into the future.

This assume that the next generation of player will not be backwards compatible. Making it backwards compatible will not stifle adoption of the new tech. You simply do not release anymore movies on the old format. It's that simple.

2. And the movie executives care why? Considering that most people who have satelite or cable have a DVR, the stand-alone dvd recorder seems like an awfully small market.

3. Again, the movie executives care why? Backwards compatibility would solve this.

4. Hardly. Unless home movies account for the majority of blank DVD sales, people are doing two things with them - Computer Data backup and backing up movies, which the movie executives don't want you to do in the first place.

Outside of Data backup, one could argue that Blank DVDs are dying out. Without increased capacity they are not good for much. Given DVRs and downloading video content from iTunes and the like, people are storing their content on Hard Drives, on media PCs. Essentially HDs could kill blank DVDs. Which would you rather have a digital camcorder that burns DVDs internally or a digital camcorder with an internal HD? Most people would go with the HD.

[adam]

All new players refuse to play anything without the chip. So what does that accomplish?

1) all of our current discs will no longer play.

2) the entire DVD recorder industry is killed.

3) all of our home-made DVDs will no longer play.

4) the blank DVD industry will be killed.

It doesn't add up. Am I missing something? I call BS.

The content on the disc would have to be tied to the ID of that chip. The dvd player would only check for the chip if instructed to by something in the authoring of the content. I'm reading about this subject on numerous other sites and this is the consensus. So none of the things you mention would occur except for maybe #4.

[dvdcrack]

Thats nothing use a bbq ignitor that come with the bbq, and put it close to the chip and that will fry the transistors in the IC. That solves the tracking. But if they were to embed a microchip into the disc how are they going to power it????? A dvd disc is to small to put a cell in! Even if they found a way of doing this procedure then the dvd player/recorder will have to have some sort of receiver in order for it to play....so all one would have to do is modifiy the player and take the receiver out and then just complete the circuit so that the dvd disc will play.......But the true question is would something of that sort of technology really work aganist exsisting players?....I think not!.....as long it is not blue ray. Oh yeah I got a blue ray player it's nice but there is one problem it won't play any dvd's that I burned.....No problem playing original DVD's...so hold on to your dvd players!

[dvdcrack]

The moment an average joe finds out that he can no longer do what he used to ...

He should return it for a full refund.

But then, we aren't "average " are we?

We can pretend to be average

[dvdcrack]

Most likely yes. It will just be at a lower resolution and you'll lose the digital surround sound.

May the force be with you yoda????hey aint that the star trex communicator? why not God speed or some S__T like that!

[hanugro]

so my new DVD won't play in my old player because the player can't read the chip?
guess I'll not be buying your movies then....

Well actually it is both way. Ppl will refuse to buy DVD players that incorporate this as well. In some part of Asia ppl will ask: 'is this region free players?' CE manufacturers don't have a choice and make their players region free, otherwise ppl won't buy it.

[RabidDog]

This is only mooted for NEW hd formats and of course for it to work you need both players and disks to have the technology. I think its more about shop shrinkage(theft). Tracking discs thru the retail chain. These chips need no (onboard) power. I expect it will be the norm in 10 years on both players and discs.
Blank dvd's are still going strong. DVD recorders have a great future and a large market.
Cod is dying out but these chips are here to stay.
I am going to eat one as an anti-kidnap measure

[dnix71]

Piratz will just use camcorders.

Good camcorders.

The result won't be as hi def, but it will make a copy that is drm free.

[InXess]

"DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'..."

ankle brace installed with every DVD purchase would do even better job.