posted 01-06-2005 04:44 PM                       

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New DRM Scheme Could Make Current DVD Players Obsolete

LAS VEGAS -- Guess what? Your DVD player might now be obsolete.

Hewlett-Packard and Philips said Wednesday that they have developed a content-protection system for DVDs, designed to protect users from burning "protected" DTV broadcasts. The encryption system will be built into next-generation DVD players as well as media.

Without a player and disc using the new Video Content Protection Scheme (VTCS), DVD burners won't be able to record digital video under the new regulations. That will mean that the enormous installed base of DVD players and burners may be forced into obsolescence, executives said.

The new Video Content Protection Scheme scheme is designed to work hand-in-glove with the new FCC "broadcast flag" initiative, scheduled to begin on July 1, 2005. The FCC wants to try and protect content from being passed indiscriminately among private individuals via the Internet and other means. VCTS has been approved by the FCC, the CableLabs consortium of cable providers, and is under consideration by the Japanese ARIB standards body.

Even the VCTS solution is not foolproof, however.

For example, the VCTS the DRM solution will only work with the single- and dual-layer versions of DVD+R and DVD+RW media, not the "-R" counterparts. Furthermore, analog video will not require the protection scheme, meaning that video stored on analog VCRs could be free of the copyright restrictions. On the other hand, if either digital video or a digital connection is used, the VCTS scheme will be used. That will also include PCs, where content could be piped over the Internet.

"The primary goal if you read FCC regulations is to create a situation where it is not possible to randomly, indiscriminately distribute content over something," said Kevin Saldanha, HP's DVD+RW program manager, speaking at a press conference here.

For example, the system is designed to prevent users watching a locally "blacked out" football game in New York from viewing a video stream sent to them from friends in California, who are not subject to the blackout restrictions.

The VCTS scheme will also be built into next-generation media, which will slowly replace the non-DRM encoded DVD+R discs over time. The new discs will be somewhat more expensive than their DRM-free counterparts, explained Jun Ishihara, a product manager for Mitsubishi Chemical Media Co., also known as Verbatim. Likewise, the new players will probably be priced somewhat higher than conventional players, HP executives said, although pricing will be up to individual manufacturers.

Although it is still too early to tell what consumer reaction will be, customers have generally rejected schemes like Divx, the Digital Video Express initiative backed by retailer Circuit City. DivX allowed users to watch the disc for 48 hours before it was rendered unusable. The Divx program was killed off in 1999.

"In large part, the issue with the new players will solve itself," said Chris Buma, an A/V program manager with Philips Consumer Electronics, at a press conference held by the DVD+RW Alliance here. "It is a restriction, but a restriction that can be overcome."

Furthermore, the DVD market is still plagued by incompatible standards. Although most drive manufacturers support both the DVD-R and DVD+R standards, the two formats are nevertheless incompatible. Most U.S. players also neglect to include DVD-RAM, a third standard in wide use in Japan for recording digital video broadcasts. According to attendees of a press conference held by LG Electronics here, a significant portion of DVD players are returned to retailers because of format confusion.

While DVD players will not be able to be upgraded, PCs might be, Saldanha said. Even DVD burners aren't free from content protection, however. Most DVD-ROM drives include some sort of region encoding that allows a user a certain number of opportunities to change the region to watch foreign discs.

Wolfgang Schlichting, an optical storage analyst for IDC, said that characterizing the VCTS DRM scheme as a forced obsolescence of DVD players was a "bit of an overstatement". However, the addition of the copyright restrictions will add more confusion to the market, he acknowledged.

The DVD+RW Alliance includes Dell, HP, Mitsubishi Chemical/Verbatim, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson and Yamaha.

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posted 01-06-2005 08:24 PM                       

quote: Some moron

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For example, the system is designed to prevent users watching a locally "blacked out" football game in New York from viewing a video stream sent to them from friends in California, who are not subject to the blackout restrictions.

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quote: Teh Brad Miller

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Third, even the amateur pirates out there will simply record the analog stream and it will look plenty fine.

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quote: Some moron

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That will mean that the enormous installed base of DVD players and burners may be forced into obsolescence, executives said.

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posted 01-08-2005 05:31 AM                       

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designed to protect users from burning "protected" DTV broadcasts.

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posted 02-11-2005 09:00 PM                    

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remember when VCRs were new? "Holy God, they're RENTING these tapes! We've gotta put a stop to that ... it'll mean the end of the movie business! Quick, pass a law!"

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posted 02-13-2005 06:00 AM                       

quote: Frank Angel

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I wouldn't be surprised if Congress just turns around and reverses the single copy provision of the current law.

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posted 02-15-2005 01:04 AM                       

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New copy-proof DVDs on the way?
Published: February 14, 2005, 9:00 PM PST
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Content-protection company Macrovision is expected to release a new DVD copy-protection technology Tuesday in hopes of substantially broadening its role in Hollywood's antipiracy effort.

The company is pointing to the failure of the copy-proofing on today's DVDs, which was broken in 1999. Courts have ordered that DVD-copying tools be taken off the market, but variations of the software remain widely available online.

Macrovision's new "RipGuard DVD" technology can prevent much of the copying now being done with those tools and can help bolster studios' DVD sales even if it's not perfect, company executives say.

"Encryption standards either work or they don't," said Adam Gervin, Macrovision's senior director of marketing, "Now the cat's out of the bag. (DVD sales) are going to be one of the main sources of revenue for Hollywood for a long time, so why leave billions of dollars on the table when you can do something about it?"

The company could be hard pressed to break into an arena of the content protection market that has historically been managed by companies or industry groups closely associated with the Hollywood studios themselves. However, studios have been deeply concerned by the failure of today's DVD copy protection and might be willing to experiment with an alternative if it proves practical.

The original DVD copy-protection tools--called Content Scramble System--was developed by a technology coalition that included studio representatives and is licensed by a groupwith close ties to Hollywood.

A new coalition, which includes Warner Bros. and the Walt Disney Company as well as powerful technology companies such as IBM, Sony, Microsoft and Intel, is working on a new content-protection technology for next-generation DVDs. That technology called the Advanced Access Content System, which is not designed for today's DVDs, is being designed to allow movies to be moved around a home though a digital network.

The group has said little about its progress since announcing the project last year, but companies involved have said they expect to have it ready in time for the first expected release of high-definition videos on DVD late in 2005.

Macrovision does have a longstanding relationship with studios, however. The company is responsible for the technique that makes it difficult to copy movies from one VCR to another, and it has updated that technique to help prevent copies of movies being made using the analog plugs on DVD players.

It's using a new version of that analog guard to create copy protection for video-on-demand services, and will be included in new TiVo devices and other set-top boxes beginning later this year.

The company's new product takes a different approach to antipiracy than it has taken for analog or audio CDs. Gervin said Macrovision engineers have spent several years looking at how various DVD-copying software packages work, and have devised ways to tweak the encoding of a DVD to block most of them.

That means the audio and video content itself requires no new hardware and isn't scrambled anew, as is the case with most rights-management techniques. Someone using one of the ripping tools on a protected DVD might simply find their software crashing, or be presented with error messages instead of a copy.

Macrovision's analog copy-protection business means that it receives pre-market versions of most major DVD players in order to test for compatibility, and it has been performing RipGuard DVD tests on these machines for months. As a result, the company says it is confident that discs encoded with its new product would be playable on all major DVD player brands and PC drives.

Gervin said that the technique would block most rippers, but not all, and could be easily updated for future discs as underground programmers find ways to work around RipGuard.

If adopted, the technology could be a welcome financial shot in the arm for Macrovision. The company has seen its revenues from DVD copy protection fall over recent quarters, and has increasingly been looking to other businesses to make up the shortfall.

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