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
Blu-ray Profile Updates
Despite setting out to clear the air about Cinavia in today's piece, we will also take the opportunity to provide a few comments on how the BDA is insulting the intelligence of the consumers. When Blu-ray Profile 1.0 was released, it imitated the tried and tested DVD menu system. By getting access to a simple menu interface to choose the audio and video tracks (theatrical or director's cut, for example), consumers were able to easily identify and adopt Blu-rays as the successor to DVDs for high definition content. Rarely used DVD features such as multiple viewing angles were rightly ignored by most of the initial Blu-rays.
The Blu-ray industry, in trying to make Blu-rays more attractive to the consumers, brought about BonusView (Picture-in-Picture) in a profile update in November 2007. With its usefulness as a medium for commentary tracks, it did solve an existing problem. However, subsequent profile updates haven't caught the imagination of the consumers. While the BD-Live (Profile 2.0) features are an inexcusable addition, Blu-ray 3D is at least acceptable because of the big push given by the studios for theatrical screenings in 3D.
As a tech journalist, I spend countless hours browsing public forums such as Doom9, AVSForum and VideoHelp to gauge public opinion about various topics in my area of coverage. I haven't seen a single post in praise of BD-Live. I have seen BD-Live in action on various discs, and they bring one or more of the following features to the consumers:
- Push the trailers of the studios' latest movies to the consumer: Why do studios think that a Blu-ray in the retail market is an advertising medium for future use? In addition, trailers are also forced before the main movie (and it is not clear if BD-Live can deliver new trailers for that segment, or whether BD-Live trailers have to be specifically requested by the users). As we mentioned earlier, consumers seem to prefer instant gratification and don't want to be forced to sit through multiple trailers in their home theater. In this situation, I find it hard to see consumers willfully going to the BD-Live section and requesting and waiting for a new trailer to download and play on their Blu-ray player.
- Downloadable games and activities realted to the movie: I have actually tried a few of these games, and my belief is that most Blu-ray remotes are ill-suited to these types of activities. With the rise of social networks with gaming apps, there are multiple available alternatives for casual games related to most popular movies, and nearly all of them are better than BD-Live offerings.
- Chat with other fans and other social activities: Blu-ray remotes are not comfortable enough for online chatting, and the big screen doesn't really seem to be the right place for social interaction.
- Avenue for firmware updates: With Profile 2.0 making it compulsory for players to have an Ethernet port connected to the Internet, it has become a convenient excuse for the Blu-ray industry to release discs which don't play on units with older firmwares. Requiring your player to get connected to the Internet and download a huge firmware update just to play back one's latest Blu-ray purchase is definitely one item encouraging people to 'pirate' movies.
Some of the Profile 5.0 Blu-rays (3D) often refuse to play in 2D on older profile players. This type of mess-up often leads to consumer frustration.
Despite the studios putting lots of money and effort into promoting 3D, it doesn't seem to have taken off as much as expected.
Blu-ray Rentals
Retail Blu-rays and rental Blu-rays (from services such as Netflix and RedBox) for a particular movie title are not the same. Last year, I had the opportunity to see the movie Rango in the theater. When the Blu-ray released, I found out that it contained two cuts (one theatrical, and the other, extended). I also found that my nearby RedBox kiosk had the Blu-ray version available for rental. Upon renting the movie (the RedBox movies come in a non-descript box), I found that the rental Blu-ray contained only the theatrical version. I am sure I am not alone in feeling frustrated by this type of treatment from the studios.
Providing separate versions of the masters for the rental and retail Blu-rays is okay as long as information is provided upfront. However, sweeping this under the carpet like what is being done now only increases the consumers' ill-feelings towards the Blu-ray industry.
UltraViolet : Blu-ray in the Cloud
The Blu-ray industry's move into online streaming with UltraViolet has also got off to a disastrous start, with Walmart now being roped in to help salvage the initiative. Vudu (owned by Walmart) is trying to help the UltraViolet consortium by becoming a player / source of UV copies in the cloud . However, it is not clear how and why studios expect consumers to pony up money again for content that they have already paid for. StreamingMedia's blog piece and CNET's op-ed both carry very convincing arguments about how the UV initiative is completely loaded against the consumers.
The aim of UltraViolet is to currently provide users with a copy of the movie in the cloud, though the initiative also provides for downloadable copies. As of today, it is easier for users to strip the DRM, rip and re-encode their purchased Blu-ray movies into any format they wish. Can the UV initiative provide something easier to use? While the Blu-ray industry tries to solve the problem, let us provide you with a few tips on getting the most out of the money spent on your Blu-ray collection.
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Exodite - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Ditto for Sweden.I often lament the complete lack of legal, and convenient, ways of accessing digital media.
I pay for cable access but frankly I download all my shows as it's simply that much more convenient.
I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable amount, say what I'm currently paying for cable, for access to digital media in a timely and convenient manner.
It's not happening though, which is why my shows come off the 'net and my movies are bought in hard-copy Blu-rays.
Penti - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Lovefilm is pretty much none existent no matter country. You can pretty much forget about any such service in EU/EEA, it's to regionalized and oligopoly oriented which basically forms distribution monopolies not even Mussolini could fatom, it's further exacerbated by the music rights which is also negotiated at a national level making it impossible to even stream stuff you own the rights for to different countries, all at national levels and too many content distributors to deal with. It's the only one field that isn't fully included in the common market. Any other service, software, games and books is fine doing cross border with no local agreements at all. Amazon sells us EU citizens about 1 million ebooks for example. I think Lovefilm in UK where most movie and TV rights go trough when they are sold to us, still has about 6000 titles on the streaming instant on version. It's nothing nothing at all compared to Amazons over 100 000 titles in the states.Even if companies in London say sell TV-rights to another country there are still some shows/networks that will have local distributors where they have been granted a monopoly over a region making it impossible to get the rights for your territory and means you can't just go to the creators and official distributors and so on. Companies in London sometimes even releases DVD's with Scandinavian subtitles but aren't allowed to sell their own movies/releases in those countries if somebody else own the regional rights, which means they might not end up doing a release at all or will be doing their own technical inferior one. Subtitling is definitively not an issue at all here.
Services with 2000-6000 titles is pretty much useless, you can't subscribe to your favorite show or see the movies you like. Your better of subscribe to some physical dvd/bd disc rental service where the offering is better. I don't know of a EU country where that isn't true at least. In US Netflix physical service of course has worse catalog then Amazon VOD and Netflix on-demand offerings.
Johnmcl7 - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
Netflix has just launched here and the pricing is very good but the selection unfortunately isn't, Lovefilm instant are meant to have a slightly better selection but the market is still quite a bit behind the US. I prefer buying my films on blu-ray for the quality and not having to worry about bandwidth but I could certainly see myself using something like Netflix for films I fancy watching as one-offs.John
LancerVI - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
I agree. They are promoting their own death.Ten years from now, physical media will be all but gone IMHO.
Maybe they want it this way. After all, streaming gives absolute control of the content to the provider, not the consumer.
Anonymous Blowhard - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
> Maybe they want it this way. After all, streaming gives absolute control of the content to the provider, not the consumer.Bingo. They'd rather you rent it every time you want to watch it than be able to buy once and watch it forever (after the requisite 15 minutes of unskippable preview, fluff, FBI warnings, etc. See the "pirate dvd" image below :) )
Hrel - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
If you are displaying it on a screen, streaming from the internet, local network, secured VPN, DVD, Blu Ray or anything else. You can make a copy of that movie in full quality. That's the bottom line, there's literally nothing you can do to stop that.If the filthy rich movie studios want to stay in business they need to just "trust" (Huh, I KNOW what a fucking concept) that the people who can afford to pay for their content will. Because they honestly WANT to support the people who made the content they like, and want more of it. This means no DRM of any kind, it doesn't work, so it's just a waste of money. And, this is the big one, lowering prices. A LOT. I don't mean instead of releasing at 25 dollars USD release at 20, I mean release at 5, and let it drop RAPIDLY!!!
Get with the times. I don't even own DVD's anymore, I have 6TB of external storage, with redundancy. I don't want 5000 physical cases laying around my house when I can have ONE NAS. If there's no physical media to buy, just a digital copy you download off the internet. That means there's less cost. No disc, no case, no artwork for either. No shipping and no middle man. (The retailer selling the physical media). Meaning digital copies should be quite a bit cheaper, not the same price, not even close.
It seems like perfectly clear common sense to me, and everyone I've seen on reddit or any other online forum. How out of touch do studio execs have to be to continue trying to hold on to how things were in the mid 1900's and on? Seriously, it's 2012, move on.
cmdrdredd - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
no....Stream dual 1080p video for 3D with a DTS-HD MA audio track and then MAYBE....You can't stream that off netflix or hulu. The bandwidth coming from a Blu-Ray is much higher than you could stream on most internet connections.
" The net result is that almost every new Blu-ray fails to play back on a player if it doesn’t have the latest firmware updates."
Wrong buddy...I have a first gen Samsung Blu-Ray player and haven't ever once had a disk not play. Some load slowly, but that's because the drive is not as speedy as newer models. Everything works though and always has.
Botia - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
I have started timing how long it takes to get bluray movies to play from the time the disc is inserted until the time when the main movie is playing. Any thing possible to speed up the process is done, such as using the disc menu, next track, fast forward, etc.What I have found is that it takes on average 15 minutes to start a movie. In our age of instant gratification this is nauseating. One movie took 2 hours before giving up. It insisted on downloading previews from the Internet and playing them. While the picture and sound quality is significantly better than other media, the user experience is so far behind. How do they expect to survive?
One special note, Transformers: Dark of the Moon started up almost immediately. Thank you!
Colin1497 - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
We actually got a movie the other day that wouldn't let us skip ANY of the previews, and to top it off, we were interrupted watching it had to reboot it and wait through all the previews a second time. The studios really know how to make everyone hate them.superccs - Wednesday, March 21, 2012 - link
It takes less effort to pirate the movie you want to watch then to get it through any other source.This is like going to a nice expensive restaurant not get seated promptly, having the service suck, and food take forever. So you go home and make whatever you originally wanted off their menu and tip yourself handsomely.
Why should anyone pay for an inferior product/service especially when you are trying to attract the business of a bunch of cooks.