Cinavia DRM: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blu-ray’s Self-Destruction

We originally set out to provide a one-stop information piece about Cinavia. Soon enough, we felt the need to make the Blu-ray industry aware of how they are completely ignoring the consumers. Just as we were wrapping up the piece, details of the Walmart - Vudu - UltraViolet initiative came to light. The conversion pricing for existing disc owners only furthered our conclusion that the Blu-ray industry is woefully out of touch with consumer reality.

From our perspective, we feel that the Blu-ray industry (studios as well as the licensing authorities) is overpricing their technology in today's connected world. Most of the Blu-ray features such as BD-Live and interactive BD-J content are just too much effort spent for very little return (because the consumer has no real interest in using them). The addition of new licensing requirements such as Cinavia are preventing the natural downward price progression of Blu-ray related technology. Instead of spending time, money and effort on new DRM measures that get circumvented within a few days of release, the industry would do well to lower the launch price of Blu-rays. There is really no justification for the current media pricing.

We also covered some wonderful tools that enable the consumers to enjoy their Blu-rays in the best possible manner. It is really disappointing that backing up discs after removing the content protection mechanism is illegal in many parts of the world.

In light of what we have covered in this piece, we do hope the mainstream consumers wake up and evaluate whether the Blu-ray industry is really worthy of their support.