Cinavia DRM: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blu-ray’s Self-Destruction
by Ganesh T S on March 21, 2012 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Blu-Ray
- DRM
- Cinavia
Studios, Blu-ray system manufacturers, and consumers have different requirements with respect to the DRM measures adopted in Blu-rays. The ideal scenario for consumers would be the complete absence of DRM, but this is obviously unacceptable to the content owners. The Blu-ray industry seems to be under the impression that consumers are fairly happy with the current state of content protection used in Blu-rays. Is this really true?
In our opinion, it is the studios and the Blu-ray system manufacturers who have had the say in deciding upon the suitability of a particular DRM scheme. Consumers have had to put up with whatever has been thrust upon them. The rise in popularity of streaming services (such as Netflix and Vudu) which provide instant gratification should make the Blu-ray industry realize its follies. The only reason that streaming services haven't completely phased out Blu-rays is the fact that a majority of the consumers don't have a fast and reliable Internet connection. Once such connections become ubiquitous, most of the titles owned by consumers would probably end up being stored in the cloud. The Blu-ray industry has thankfully taken note of this and started in earnest towards making their UltraViolet initiative successful amongst consumers. Before talking in detail about how Blu-rays tend to frustrate consumers, we will take a small detour to analyze the effects of Cinavia.
Cinavia: An Exercise in Futility
Does Cinavia really help in tackling the piracy problem? We make the following assumptions:
- People interested in pirating movies are looking for instant gratification
- 'Piracy' has moved on from disc based copies (i.e, counterfeit DVDs) to standalone files (i.e, MKVs) when it comes to high definition content.
- People interested in backing up their purchased Blu-rays on hard drives do so in the ISO or folder backup format
As justification for (1), we note that most of the content available on P2P channels and one-click filehosters is in the form of MKVs with varying resolutions. When DVDs were popular, the Digital Media Adapter category of products was almost non-existent. Therefore, the bulk of piracy involving DVDs were based on disc-based copies. Counterfeit DVDs were common in the street markets of India and China. Nowadays, the same places are selling hard disks filled with pirated movies (MKVs, MP4s and AVIs).
The move from optical media to hard drives has been enabled by the rapid rise of Digital Media Adapters. We present this as justification for (2). Despite storage becoming cheaper by the day, pirates are still hesitant to spare 35 - 50 GB for a single movie. Only users who are ready to spend money to purchase Blu-rays are likely to spend money on storage to safeguard their investment.
Backups in the ISO or folder structure format retain all the information present on a Blu-ray after decryption. This removes all the annoyances associated with a protected Blu-ray disc. There are a host of other advantages to backing up Blu-rays on a hard drive which we will cover in the next section, but we present the above facts as justification for (3).
Now, consider the following 'piracy' scenarios involving Cinavia-infected soundtracks:
- User downloads a CAM print or similar copy of a theatrical screening protected by Cinavia: The Cinavia watermark detection will trigger only when the CAM print is played back on a suitable Blu-ray player. No 'pirate' worth his salt will be without a PC (with VLC) or a cheap $40 media player capable of playing back scene content of such quality. The Cinavia issues are easily bypassed by just using a media player which doesn't have the watermark detector.
- User purchases a Cinavia protected Blu-ray and backs it up in ISO / folder structure / MKV: Though the law might be taking a dim view of this process, it is only logical that a consumer who has already paid for a Blu-ray be able to enjoy it in any manner he wishes. The number of licensed Blu-ray players capable of playing unprotected ISOs is dwindling as the days go by. Recently, the Oppo BDP93 removed the unofficial capability of playing back Blu-ray ISOs in a firmware update. They cited pressure from studios as the main reason. In the absence of Blu-ray players with ISO support, users opt for DMAs such as Popcorn Hour A300 / WDTV Live / Boxee Box / etc. which have varying levels of support for Blu-ray backups. None of these are BDA certified and so they don't have a Cinavia watermark detector. Once we get open source software support for Blu-ray ISOs with full menus, Cinavia in such a situation will be rendered useless. Some positive steps have already started taking place in this respect, with VLC planning support for playback of Blu-rays with menus.
- User unknowingly purchases a pirated Cinavia protected Blu-ray disc under the impression that it is actually legal: In this situation, the Blu-ray player recognizes the Cinavia watermark, finds that the Blu-ray disc is not protected by AACS, and mutes the audio. This is one case where Cinavia is actually effective. However, the affected party is actually a counterfeiting victim himself. The case that the user has knowingly purchased a pirated Blu-ray disc doesn't arise (under our second assumption outlined at the beginning of this subsection).
Having followed the Blu-ray industry closely since its beginning, I have not heard claims from anyone about pirated Blu-ray discs being a problem. The MPAA believes (rightly so) that most of the piracy is happening on P2P networks and through one-click filehosters. We have seen that Cinavia is effective only in one piracy scenario, and that scenario is actually quite unlikely in real life.
Cinavia: The Truly Inconvenienced Minority
At this juncture, why are we devoting so much attention to Cinavia? As mentioned in an earlier section, there are premium DMAs like the Popcorn Hour C300 and the Dune Smart series that have a Blu-ray license also. The next generation version of these players may be forced to implement Cinavia support. Users with legitimate backups wanting the full Blu-ray experience and using such players will end up being affected. Our main aim with this piece is to appeal to the Blu-ray industry to consider personal backups as fair use and exempt ISO capable DMAs from Cinavia.
We hope the industry sees reason with the argument that ISOs are not the preferred medium for pirates. Instead, it is files in MKV format with sizes ranging from 4 to 20 GB that are most popular. The latter category is not played back with Cinavia enabled players, and hence, Cinavia is rendered useless. Once premium DMAs get infected with Cinavia detection routines, legitimate purchasers of Blu-rays who back up their collections will see no point in investing in optical discs. Their money would be better spent on purchasing movies from Vudu or any other similar avenue. If it comes to the worst, the Blu-ray industry may even end up driving the legitimate consumers to piracy. The word-of-mouth from such 'power consumers' will also lead to a negative impression of the Blu-ray industry amongst consumers.
The Blu-ray industry believes that a majority of the consumers don't back up their Blu-ray purchases, and may even try to convince them that Cinavia doesn't affect them in any way. Let us take a moment to analyze the people who really benefit from Cinavia. Is it the studios? As I clearly explained above, Cinavia is not going to help deter piracy or playback of (most) pirated material. Is it the consumer? Not really, as it is just a hassle at best and never a direct benefit. The real beneficiary is Verance.
Disc replicators / content providers pay four cents for each disc with Cinavia protected content. Production houses also have to provide $50 for each watermarked track. Blu-ray player manufacturers have to provide anywhere between $10,000 to $300,000 per annum depending on their unit volume if they want to embed a Cinavia detector in their firmware / software. Of course, Verance also strongly encourages its licensees to purchase the code for the watermark detector from them. We were not able to obtain an estimate of the price for the software. All these costs borne by the studios and the player manufacturers are eventually passed on down to the consumer. Note that these costs get amplified as they go through various middle-men down to the retail market. With licensing costs of other Blu-ray technologies going down as time goes by (and making Blu-ray discs and equipment cheaper for consumers), the BDA / AACS LA seems to have bucked the trend by burdening the consumers with another licensing entity to satisfy.
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Valis - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
DAT SCMS, DRM, SWG, Blu-Ray... The list goes on and on. Sony, hope it dies a slow an agonizing death. Will never buy a Sony product again, for as long as I live.jharper12 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
My freshman year of college I downloaded music and movies. I went to a well regarded university with Tech in its name. That year, every person on campus had watched LOTR weeks before it came out. I was a pirate, for one year.I have always worked hard though, and after that first year I didn't have time to consume massive amounts of media. Convenience started to matter, and services started to pop up that legally offered a means to consume media for a reasonable fee. My pirating days were over, not long after they began.
Here's what bothers me. I have two HP LP2465 monitors hooked up to a nice home built computer. What do they lack? HDCP. I purchased AnyDVD HD for the sole purpose of playing my legally acquired Bluray collection on my computer. Someone should go to jail for that, and it shouldn't be me. Next up? I encountered that lovely little DRM issue with Silverlight while trying to watch movies on my paid subscription for Netflix. I have to run extra cabling to my Bluray players, so they can update to play discs that I bought... legally. I have to update, right as I'm excited to watch. The last time I didn't have to worry about DRM? My freshman year of college. Take note content industry, you didn't slow me down or even inconvenience me for that brief sliver of time in which I stole from you. No, only now, as a paying customer, do you make my life miserable. Thanks for that.
GoodToGo - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
I just wanted to say what an amazing read this was.*Tips hat*
PeTroL42 - Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - link
The majority of my friends aren't geeks like I am so most of them have no clue as to what DRM even is. While DRM is a major headache for a person like me where I'd like to have all my content in a central location, DRM isn't a major headache for the average consumer who just wants to buy a BD at Best Buy and play the movie when they get home and most of the time this works out for the average consumer who buys everything legitimately. Of course there are headaches for the average consumer such as firmware updates but c'mon, issues like these aren't common for the average consumer. One other thing unrelated to DRM, some of my friends LOVE to show off their massive BD collection.Also, the scenario where a consumer unknowingly buys a pirated BD is pretty ridiculous unless you regularly buy your BDs on the streets of Downtown LA or China.
I understand why the Studios are taking measures like using Cinavia to protect their content.
I'm not being an apologist for the studios but movies cost A LOT of money to produce. Just ask any independent film maker. I feel anybody who reads this article and then goes and spends 50 to 100 million dollars to produce a movie, I'd bet you'd want to get the maximum profits out of that movie which includes the sale of BDs.
Also, low budget movies don't rake in a lot of profit. That's why low budget movies like Blair Witch Project or My Fat Greek Wedding garner a lot of attention when they make lots of money at the box office. This isn't common.
There's no doubt that piracy hurts everyone except the people who pirate the material and the people who buy the pirated material or get it free if its made available such as when Napster was around. Take PC Games for instance. The PC Game piracy is so bad that the Publishers are currently using some draconian methods to combat it. This ONLY hurts the legitimate purchasers of the game. Back in the day, (like 1998) I'd buy a game, bring it home, install it, the game would ask me for the serial # on the Jewel Case, I'd enter it, wait a few more minutes and then I'm playing. Now, you usually have to be connected online to even play single player games. Now Big Brother knows when and how long I've been playing their game.
I'm for the argument that if the Music industry had embraced technological advances such as MP3s instead of trying to combat it, they'd probably be in a better position than they are today but there's no doubt that piracy hit the music industry hard.
The reason for this long post is this. I was just thinking the other day that there isn't a legitimate way to purchase movies in file format so I could put it on my NAS and play it through my Western Digital set top box. The only options for a person like me is to either download the content through P2P or RIP a DVD or BD myself and encode it into a format that my WD set top box could read which I am not admitting to. Because of the DMCA, ripping movies is illegal. And why was the DMCA written into law? Because of rampant piracy. CDs aren't encrypted so the DMCA doesn't apply to CDs so legitimate purchasers are allowed under law to RIP it to MP3 and play it on any device they choose. CDs don't have encryption because they were created in the early 80s and MP3s weren't even invented back then.
If the average consumer has access to free stuff and they know how to use it, then they'll use it but if that access gets cut off and it becomes too difficult for the average consumer to figure out, then they'll eventually buy the stuff they want. If Napster and Kazaa and all those other easy file sharing programs were still around today, I'd bet Katy Perry wouldn't be selling the same amount of downloads from iTunes or Amazon.
This sounds selfish of me but If piracy wasn't so rampant now and people would actually pay for the content they want, then there probably wouldn't be a bill written into law such as the DMCA and then I'd be free to RIP any movie that I legitimately purchased and enjoy it today on any device I please or I could've been buying movies in MP4 or some other format that my set top box could read. Thanks Pirates! (and I'm not talking about Pittsburgh)
DVDRanger1 - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
The developers of the DVD-Ranger software have the first future-proof solution for Cinavia free DVD and Blu-raySanta Ponsa (Spain), 09/21/2012 – Many DVD and Blu-ray users know this problem: the DVD or Blu-ray playback stops suddenly with a cryptic error message or remains frozen or silent. This is caused by the relatively new copy protection system Cinavia.
Shortly after the Cinavia solution of DVDFab has been once again made useless by the Cinavia producer, DVD-Ranger Software offers help. The developers of DVD-Ranger have eliminated the Cinavia’s signal during the development of other software by accident. The Cinavia’s signal has been changed so that it has become unreadable. They have not fought against the Cinavia’s system directly; it is more likely triggered by a design error of Cinavia itself.
Pixbyte has chosen the release date for the DVD-Ranger 5 with Cinavia module to be 10/31/2012 (Halloween). At the moment, the solution is being tested by well known people in the world of copying. Approx. 55% of all reported Blu-ray Region A/B disks and DVDs have been successfully tested so far. It will be also tested on PS3, various Blu-ray players and PowerDVD.
Pixbyte is known by the DVD neXt COPY Software and DVD-Ranger products line. Pixbyte has been present for about 10 years on the backup and copy software market.
Price and availability: DVD-Ranger 5 is currently available as pre-order at a price of $69.99. The final release price will be approx. $89.99. The Cinavia module will cost approx. $39.99 (included in pre-order).
About Pixbyte:
Pixbyte is a trusted and respected researcher and developer of CD/DVD and BD recording and conversion technology. Its products are sold worldwide and are utilized by end-users and companies. The products are designed to provide speed and quality of copy operations and are developed continually in accordance with technological progress.
Cypher1994 - Saturday, August 17, 2013 - link
I like your Stanley Kubrick reference.ceceliagibson - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Hi very useful info about cinavia errors, this will protect playstation devices against playing un authorized movies.Carole Harris - Monday, March 14, 2016 - link
Here is a bit more information on Cinavia, pertaining to what it is and how it functions: http://cinavia-removal.webs.com/But please, ignore the webmaster's link at the bottom of the article, as DVDFab can be used to remove Cinavia without question.
DVDRanger - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
Cinavia has been broken by a software company. I suggest to search for DVD-Ranger and CinEx to forget Cinavia forever.Marrie Hill - Sunday, February 13, 2022 - link
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