| Video Noise February 2006
What Ever Happened to
High-Definition Optical Discs?
We were promised two high-definition optical disc
formats in 2005: Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Today, a 2006 introduction is promised for both, but
the way the film studios are insisting on draconian copy-protection schemes, you have to
wonder if hi-def discs will make the scene even in 2006. There are two root causes for the
delay.
The first involves the lucrative royalties the
inventor-developer of the winning format will earn by granting licenses for its use to the
studios. Sony and Philips receive royalties and license fees from diverse sources because
they own the patents on the CD format.
The second involves the film studios wrangling for controls
they think will limit or eliminate the pirating of their intellectual property. The
studios have proposed, and appear to be getting, a protection scheme that exceeds anything
you might have imagined. It begins with an encrypted enablement code embedded in every
hi-def optical disc. If a studio believes that a particular title is being widely pirated,
they could put the code for that movie on any subsequent hi-def release and thus
prevent any player in the world from being able to play the first title. As soon as a
player would read any newer disc, it would pick up the entire list of "canceled"
codes and retain them in inaccessible memory. Furthermore, the codes are located in parts
of the disc that, outside of DVD mastering houses, can’t be accessed by hi-def
disc-authoring tools. In theory, you could spend $30 on a hi-def disc and, a year later,
the studio could incorporate on some newer release a code that would render your $30,
legitimately purchased movie unplayable on your player -- or on any other player that has
read one of the newer discs.
No plans have been announced that explain how consumers
will be protected from losing the ability to play a disc they legitimately purchased.
Presumably, the studio would re-release the title with a different code, but there has
been no announcement about how an owner of the original pressing would get a playable
version in exchange for the disabled disc.
If a studio sells a million copies of a movie and then
decides to render that movie unplayable by disseminating the code on new discs, you’d
think the studio would be liable to replace all one million copies with new copies that
would not be disabled. This would cost the studios a minimum of $1.5 million -- perhaps
more, if retailers had to be paid to be the middlemen in the exchange of discs. The
studios would have to want to cut off play of a particular title very badly to incur such
costs. It would be unconscionable for the studio to disable a movie people have paid for,
and are using legally for their own private use -- but the studios have yet to deny that
this could never happen.
Coming to a HD-DVD or Blu-ray player near you! Viruses,
worms, malware!
Don’t even get me started on the potential for hacking
via the new hi-def formats. The studios are proposing that every hi-def player have an
Ethernet port for connection to the Internet. This would permit studios to release a film
on disc very quickly and allow the studio to add "special feature" content via
the Internet. You might purchase the movie with no special features, but four months
later, the director’s commentary would be available in real time via the Internet. I
can all too easily imagine hackers figuring out how to hack DVD players, then sending
"disable" codes around the world to render unplayable movies the studios had not
themselves disabled. And that’s not even considering the problems people in remote
areas have with getting acceptable Internet access by phone, let alone a fast enough
connection to permit the seamless downloading of what might be hours’ worth of
special features in high definition.
Format wars -- off again, on again
For a while in 2005, it looked as if the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray
format war might be resolved in a way that would have pleased everyone -- but at the last
minute, the deal disintegrated. In exchange for a smaller slice of the bigger pie a single
high-definition format would create, no one wanted to give up the huge licensing revenues
a successful format would generate.
...Doug Blackburn
db@hometheatersound.com |
