14 DAY TRIAL // Blu-Ray Disc Association (BDA) has finally decided to reveal its wonder technology aimed at protecting Blu-Ray discs, the same technology that convinced Fox Entertainment to say that all its movies will be coming only on this support.
A rather foreseeable ending, because, after it promised something mysterious and kept the whole project locked-up tight from the ?nosy? journalists, the Blu-Ray standard ended-up choosing the same anti-piracy system as its eternal rival HD-DVD, AACS, short for Advanced Access Content System.
The only difference being that Blu Ray is adding another two supplementary security elements: ROM Mark and BD+.
ROM Mark is a sort of stamp, invisible to the consumer, which can be embedded using special equipment available only to licensed Blu-Ray disc producers. Obviously, these discs will only be compatible with Blu-Ray equipments.
The other standard, BD, is a little bit more complicated invention and it allows BDA to dynamically change that encrypting code if DVD Jon type hackers compromise it. In other words, if someone invents an application similar to DeCSS, BDA will change the encrypting key and everything goes back to normal, all the discs released afterwards implementing the new scheme.
HD-DVD went for something simpler and decided to use just AACS for the content?s protection.
The protection system revealed by Blu-Ray looks like the result of some genius raised on movie production studios, who has made researches all his life to find a way to prevent the annual $3 billion losses from the movie industry. And all this, because some funny hacker decided that DeCSS has to be brought to the world.
The only thing BDA didn?t mention is the price of such a miraculous disc, but you can bet your state of the art DVD player, which you have recently bought and which will end up in the dumpster (you didn?t think you will be able to use Blu-Ray discs with it, did you, now?), that it will be far more expensive than its HD-DVD counterpart.
Just think about the fact that producers will have to modify all their production lines and to purchase BDA licensed equipments able to embed the ROM Mark; all these expenses will be recovered, obviously, from the consumer?s pocket.
Another detail BDA forgot to mention is what happens with the wonderful protection system if the disc suffers physical shocks. If your DVD has a tiny scratch on its surface, it doesn?t render the disc unusable, but if the same happens on your Mark ROM, all that you?ll be able to do is to throw away the disc with Spielberg?s last movie, which probably cost for times the price of a regular DVD.
The protection scheme proposed by BDA will even prevent you from making backup copies of the discs, so be extra careful with your future optical acquisitions.
Moreover, the other security element, BD+, will be able to block the players that have been modified so that they allow the playback of alleged pirated Blu-Ray discs.
In other words, although you have always been on the legal side and you?ve always purchased only the most genuine Blu-Ray discs, if one of your ?loving? friends gives you a pirated disc, the next time you?ll want to view a movie (from a genuine Blu-ray disc), you will probably have to throw your Blu-Ray player out the window (because BDA has changed the encrypting scheme).
Movie producers might have been thrilled by the system proposed by Blu-Ray, but for us, the consumers, it looks very complicated and prone to errors.
Anyway, it?s clear now that the unified format dream is over, and all these security measures will only cause confusion amongst consumers and the postponing of the standard?s adoption towards the end of 2007, if we take into consideration the changes disc producers will have to make.