14 DAY TRIAL // Since the HD DVD (High-density optical disc) format was released to general public in March 2006, when Toshiba announced their first HD DVD player in Japan, many movie titles were released in this high-quality video format. As movies were released, the need for "magical" tools to decrypt the HD content went forth because most of the HD DVD content is protected by the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) standard for content distribution and Digital Rights Management (DRM).
Two days ago, someone (user Zotty) from the doom9.org forums released a new tool called DecryptHD. This looks like the first real time decryption and streaming Linux software. The cool thing about DecryptHD is that, while other HD decryption tools are focused on backing up an entire HD DVD, this one can do real time HD decryption while streaming the decrypted movie to the player. It does not even need a key database.
How does it work? Very simple, DecryptHD uses the HD DVD optical drive authentication in order to obtain the volume ID from it. That means, if you don't have a HD DVD drive, there is no point using this tool.
Unfortunately, DecryptHD is in development and it was tested only on one HD DVD movie (Bourne Supremacy), because the developer didn't have any other HD discs. For this, we urge you to test this tool with your own HD DVD discs and report any bugs you'll find.
How do you use it? First of all, make sure you have the following applications installed:
￭ libssl0.9.8 ￭ mplayer 1.0 RC1 (the latest version)
Plug in your HD DVD drive (tested on an unmodified Xbox-360 HD DVD player) then find its device. If it's the first optical drive, then it should be /dev/scd0. Next, you must create a mount point, let's say /media/hddvd/, insert a HD DVD disc and mount the drive:
sudo mount -t auto /dev/scd0 /media/hddvd
To start decrypting/streaming a video file, go in the root of your HD DVD disc and look in the HDDVD_TS folder for a file with the .EVO extension (e.g. FEATURE_1.EVO). Then start the real time decryption/streaming by typing:
decrypthd /dev/scd0 /media/hddvd/ FEATURE_1.EVO -o | mplayer -demuxer mpegps -vc ffvc1 -
All in all, DecyptHD is a 100% FREE software and you can download it right now from Softpedia. Enjoy!