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
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.
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archer75 - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Clearly your out of touch with how things are done now. MKV's are indeed the way to go for HD and have been for quite a while now. AVI's? Seriously?~wolverine~ - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
You have no idea what your talking about.p05esto - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Are you serious? MKV is of course the ultimate video format right now, nothing else comes close. You obviously don't know what you're talking about. I rip all my movies to MKV. Only kids posting crappy quality torrents use Divx/Xvid and all the .avi variations.Sorry man but H.264 MKV files are THE only way to go.
SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I'd say for HD stuff MKV is the only way to go. I don't believe you can even put HD audio in AVI.SlyNine - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Also AVI has limited B-Frame support according to Wiki.My guess is you'll be googling what B-Frames are.
cjb110 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I've started seeing a lot more .mp4's about, esp for HD TV stuff. But MKV is by far the leading format that is being used through out the scene.AVI's are still popular for the non-hd, or the hd->non-hd conversions.
khory - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
mp4s are getting popular because a lot of the mobile devices can decode them in hardware.BaronMatrix - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
I mean sucks. I have to get updates when new movies come out and if my Player doesn't have an update I bought a movie for nothing. At least you can but ones with DVDs in it also.And whoever is writing the Java code should be killed. I don't need bells and whistles, I need HD video. AT least you should be able to opt out of special features. I could write that with my eyes closed. And I do C#.
Someone else mentioned the time it takes to actually play a disc...unacceptable... I still can't get Thor and Green Lantern to play .. at least not all the way through...even more unacceptable... Then when you throw in the horror of the HDMI handshake, it's amazing anyone buys them...Picture and sound is beautiful though...
IF IT PLAYS...
I reiterate the SUBJECT.
Jaybus - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Indeed. The problem is not the concept, but the implementation. Very poor quality control. What nobody seems to cover is the fact that BD player manufacturers are forced to operate at really low margins. Then when you consider that at the time they designed a player and set the cost margin, those manufacturers had no idea that the content providers were going to force through a new DRM method practically every time a new movie came out. Those new firmware updates that everyone screams for cost the manufacturer and eat into their already low margins.Thus, DRM increases the cost of making BD players. Yet, the BD manufacturers realize that nobody will buy their product if they start raising the price, so they instead cut corners, resulting in poor quality, badly coded firmware with little or no quality control. The push for new DRM methods is making the manufacture of BD players unprofitable, so will in that way eventually kill BD.
cmdrdredd - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Every movie I've ever bought always works on a 1st gen Samsung Blu-Ray player. I have never been asked to update. What you're saying is spewing an internet fallacy back out again like a monkey.