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LeoPanthera
flotzam
> Some drives need to have their firmware flashed in order to enable ripping of UHD discs
I love their summary of what the patched firmware does:
'A LibreDrive is a mode of operation of an optical disc drive (DVD, Blu-ray or UHD) when the data on the disc are accessed directly, without any restrictions or transformations enforced by drive firmware. A LibreDrive would never refuse to read the data from the disc or declare itself “revoked”.
(...) Change the optical drive embedded software in a way that the drive becomes a “primitive” device - one that just positions a laser, reads and decodes the data. Make a drive free from “policing” functionality, a drive that just passes all data from the disc to the user.'
- from What is LibreDrive? at https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=18856
antihero
How easy would it be to use libredrive, dd and ffmpeg to rip?
flotzam
Probably pretty hard. It's not a transparent patch to the drive's normal read routines but a parallel low-level API. Then they wrap that in their own high-level userspace API libdriveio (which you'd have to patch dd to use).
And once you've pried the data out of the drive's hands you still have to decrypt it.
https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=96988 https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=24312
edude03
Very easy but my understanding is you’d end up with an unplayable disc still because you need to perform decryption to get a file ffmpeg can play. That said makemkv does work on ISOs of discs made with a libredrive
snnn
I believe any DVD drive made in recent years won't support it. Some drives had bugs in their old firmware so that the drives can be used with makemkv, but it doesn't mean it is usual. They can fix the bugs. They can stop making problematic hardware. Even if you can find such a hardware, it might be more expensive than your CPU. Normally people won't invest much on it.
And, like what SGX is providing, if the film industry really want to stop pirating, they can. Then makemkv will be a history.
bitwize
This probably counts as "circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work" under the DMCA and is thus illegal.
flotzam
There are plenty of use cases qualifying for an exception. The list is getting longer with every ruling, here's a link to the whole unwieldy mess: https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-23311.pdf... (§ 201.40)
burkaman
Morally and ethically there's no issue though, and the risk of prosecution seems incredibly low if you're just ripping your own discs for private use, so I don't think this really matters.
Guvante
It is a grey area. Right to repair has had success without legislation for abandonware. The rights of the copyright holder generally don't actually extend to blocking your access.
Now whether "latest Intel chips don't support playback" is sufficient to fall under this flag is obviously a complex topic but I think it is certainly not cut and dry.
stjohnswarts
some things are worth it.
iforgotpassword
Agreed. If you want to (physically) own a movie or TV show, use MakeMKV, or just torrent/IRC/usenet it. It really seems the rights owners want you to go that route.
Otherwise if you just want to watch a movie and don't care that it might not be available at a later time, use a streaming service, it's by far the most convenient.
coryfklein
> If you want to (physically) own a movie or TV show
I find this phrasing quite fascinating. What does it even mean to "own" a movie? If you torrent or rip it, you now simply possess a copy and with the ability to watch it without any artificial restrictions, but I'd hardly say that you "own" it at that point.
I find it so depressing that our legal system does not even have the concept of an individual having access to a movie such that they can play it for themselves conveniently without restrictions. Even when you physically own a DVD there is no "sanctioned" way to watch it without being forced to watch the commercials and legal disclaimers at the beginning.
Which reminds me of the irony always repeated in these threads, that the folks who rip or torrent the film never see these legal disclaimers and only the folks who obey all the "rules" and don't need to see the disclaimer are constantly exposed to it.
Why can't we have nice things? This world is so distopian.
ryandrake
> Why can't we have nice things? This world is so distopian.
Bonus: As technologists and developers, we are actively creating this dystopia! I'm sure a non-zero portion of HN's audience is hard at work implementing DRM, locking users out of products they own, and coming up with new roadblocks for users. Perhaps someone reading this very comment implemented this exact Blu-Ray DRM in a devices's firmware. To the rest of us, it's dystopia, but to that person, it's just another JIRA ticket Boss says they need to implement, so they do.
Blame the evil managers all you want, but you, dear reader, are the one writing the code and hitting Commit.
knaik94
Honestly, putting aside the philosophical debate, I own something I have access to without limitation and without the ability of a third party to take it away from me. I own a book I can read whenever, wherever and however I want. I don't own a book I have to give back to the library. I own blu rays I ripped in a similar way.
pipodeclown
There is such a concept, rights owners just choose not to offer that option, which they're not obliged to.
This works for them as most people do not how the technical know-how to break through the DRM and most people are therefore discouraged by it.
smaryjerry
The obvious solution to creating digital scarcity is putting the ownership into an NFT. That way you can still “own” a copy of a movie exactly in the same way DVDs used to be owned. NFTs aren’t ready for that yet, but one day when there is a centralized platform that becomes the YouTube of NFTs then it may be large enough. None of this will happen without regulation in the space though because right now owning an NFT is no different than say having the movie on Comcast’s website, but being unable to play it from any other application. When regulations making NFTs standard across multimedia occur then there will be true use of NFTs, meaning the websites just become the DVD player, and once you own an NFT of a movie you can play it on any website you link your wallet to so it knows you own that specific NFT. I’d guess that’s at least 20 years away though.
deelowe
They don't want you to own anything. The industry has collectively decided we should move to an "AAS" model for everything and everyone is just playing the long game now. I hate it...
knaik94
Torrenting a reencode seems reasonable but for some releases I liked buying the blu ray because my internet speed isn't great.
bayindirh
I use put.io. It's a web service which downloads, seeds and stores your torrents. It also converts, streams, finds subtitles for movies and similar stuff. Also allows for you to download the file if you want.
Moreover, it can follow RSS feeds for automated downloads, and has plethora of other features.
[0]: https://put.io
cabalamat
> I liked buying the blu ray because my internet speed isn't great
This is mostly an issue when streaming, which I prefer not to do for that reason. When I've had slow connections, torrenting a movie has generally been fine as I just let it run overnight.
washadjeffmad
This is how I first ended up with an inexpensive disk shelf on 6.5Mbps ADSL.
Similar constraints, different solutions.
asiachick
streaming services build a profile of me based on what I watch and share with with other companies. No thanks
vanviegen
> and share with with other companies
Is there any evidence to suggest that the likes of Netflix and Disney+ are doing this?
wayoutthere
Honestly if it’s like the viewing data I saw when I worked in cable, your watching habits are not remotely unique and you can be more effectively targeted using the data pulled from a credit check.
Viewing data is largely used in aggregate to make decisions about content. They’ll collect demographic data because it’s useful to know, but by and large it’s all used in aggregate or as cohorts because there really aren’t enough permutations. On a streaming service like Netflix or Disney there just isn’t enough content for people to look all that different at an individual level.
unethical_ban
What drive is recommended? I have considered acquiring some UHD movies on physical media and would want to rip them for backup.
jjgreen
... or go to the cinema
Lev1a
> go to the cinema
- to watch things I don't wanna watch,
- while being gouged for double the BR-retail price PER person PLUS overpriced amenities,
- with no option for original audio but only trash-tier dubs (in Germany you'd have to go to one the bigger cities like Berlin for the option)
- while sitting together in a hot and stuffy room with a bunch of other (noisy) people
- not to mention the time investment of going to the city, standing in line for tickets, waiting for the movie to start and going back home, not even being able to have a beer unless you can/want to take the bus (slightly more money if it's even still running at that time) or a taxi home (considerably more money).
In all this makes it:
- ~5-15€ per BR, rip it to external drive, watch what I want when I want anywhere in my local network with Jellyfin or on that connected computer with mpv in full quality, with any of the available audio tracks (though usually original audio), in multiple different playback speeds with no extra time and/or money investment
OR
- 15-20€ per cinema ticket, for any of the small collection of German dubbed they have at what times they decide to show them, ~30-45 minutes of going to the cinema (plus costs thereof), ~20 minutes wait till the ads stop and the movie starts, "enjoy" the full length of poorly dubbed movie in an uncomfortable environment, ~30-45 minutes of going back home (plus costs thereof).
So WHY would I EVER choose to go to the cinema?
benjamir
To get tinnitus?
The last time we tried (again), the sound was overdriven (again) to the point we had all go to the toilet and muffle our ears with toilet paper.
Except for small, independent cinemas it has been the same crappy experience for me: expensive, bad sound quality
genghizkhan
To rewatch Lord of the Rings? I think not.
mherdeg
For the first time in about 10 years, I recently found myself with some physical DVDs I wanted to format-shift (show the kids some old movies on an iPad).
It was surprisingly hard to do the homework on the "best" way to do this on a Mac -- I ended up using MakeMKV to rip + Handbrake to encode, but it was hard to find a robust recent technical discussion of what the pros do.
At one point in this process I was looking at the Internet Archive's copy of http://thelittleappfactory.com/ripit/ which has just quietly disappeared from the Web? It was a bizarre experience.
LeoPanthera
For what it's worth, MakeMKV+Handbrake is still the best way to do it.
RealStickman_
I'll second the recommendation for MakeMKV.
No annoying upsells, no subscriptions and you can use the officially provided beta key (valid until the end of a month, a new key gets released every month) to check it out.
smoyer
This is also the *secure* way to continue playing Ultra HD Blu-ray movies - run away from anyone's advice when they include the phrase "don't update Windows" (paraphrased). Haven't we learned to patch our system yet?
nebula8804
Anyone reading this, I'd recommend the Pioneer Drive if you can swing it. It does not support UHD decryption (yet) but the reliability is so much better than the LG drives and the other drives (which I think are just rebadged LG). I got a LG drive manufactured in June 2021 and by September it was dead. Got a second drive from a different vendor (mfg July 2021) and it also started to falter. (returned it while I still could). There are tons of complaints on the makemkv forums but it is still a popular drive for the price(if you wanna risk it).
knaik94
My flashed LG drive, the slim laptop case size one, had been working fine for me. I sometimes don't feel like streaming or want storage space temporarily and playback using VLC. Mine is an older manufacturing date though.
nebula8804
Agreed. I also got the Laptop drive and the Laptop one works better than the desktop ones and supports 4K UHD, however it is slow and the Pioneer is even more reliable (again does not support 4K yet)
renzo88
This is illegal in the US, which means it's rad as hell.
LeoPanthera
It is not necessarily illegal in the USA. It's not necessarily legal either. Pasted from Wikipedia:
U.S. copyright law (Title 17 of the United States Code) generally says that making a copy of an original work, if conducted without the consent of the copyright owner, is infringement. The law makes no explicit grant or denial of a right to make a "personal use" copy of another's copyrighted content on one's own digital media and devices. For example, space shifting, by making a copy of a personally owned audio CD for transfer to an MP3 player for that person's personal use, is not explicitly allowed or forbidden.
Existing copyright statutes may apply to specific acts of personal copying, as determined in cases in the civil or criminal court systems, building up a body of case law. Consumer copyright infringement cases in this area, to date, have only focused on issues related to consumer rights and the applicability of the law to the sharing of ripped files, not to the act of ripping, per se.
bubblethink
Isn't the act of bypassing DRM itself some violation of DMCA and related laws (however unlikely any enforcement may be) ? Which is also why you can't play commercial DVDs and blu-rays out of the box on Fedora because they won't ship any code that can circumvent DRM.
pmontra
Everything that is not explicitly forbidden is allowed, right? At worst some of it is murky waters.
gsich
Who cares. If it's your stuff, do whatever you want with it.
TazeTSchnitzel
MakeMKV even has an integration with VLC that lets you just play Blu-ray discs without ripping them first. I don't know if that works for the UHD ones.
knaik94
It works well but the more annoying issue is that UHD has hdr built in and tone mapping is still very much under development. It looks fine but, for example, can't use Dolby Vision directly. To get a complete experience, you need to rip first.
wing-_-nuts
dang now that's a selling point!
user_7832
> For users who use an older compatible platform and want to keep the Ultra HD Blu-ray playback compatibility on the PC and with PowerDVD, we suggest you continue using the 7th - 10th generation Core i series of Intel CPUs and motherboards that support the Intel SGX feature. You should also consider not updating the OS (e.g., upgrading to Windows 11) and related Intel drivers to the latest versions in order to keep the Intel SGX feature from being removed from your PC. You should also ensure your platform meets all the other playback requirements of Ultra HD Blu-ray as the playback solution: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/faq-content.do?id=19144
Wow, the official solution is to use old hardware and software. I'm sure that's a great idea :)
Sarcasm aside, I wonder when corporations will realize that until they offer proper easy and affordable solutions, people have little incentives to actually jump through the official loops and simply not pirate content. I hope to see this realization sometime in my life, but maybe I'm too optimistic.
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Well, Gabe Newell at least already realized it:
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."
judge2020
Exactly; Steam is so successful because they make it easier and quicker to buy games than it is to pirate them, and reward you with features for doing so (achievements, playtime on your profile, screenshot storage). Also, piracy of games specifically is less appealing when you might just download a free crypto miner or custom RAT on the side (remote administration tool).
matheusmoreira
Indeed. It's a great service even though it suffers from the same problems as everything based on licensing. People who don't like it must not remember the days where you had to download and apply 5 incremental patches to video games before you could play online. I would buy games on Steam just to get the library management and automatic updates.
The truth is most copyright holders offer absolute garbage service to consumers and the only reason they're still in the market is it's illegal to compete with them.
sebazzz
Streaming services, especially in Europe, have already shown this.
First there was Netflix, and everything was on Netflix. Then a few publishers decided they didn't want to share their pie with Netflix, so they started their own streaming service and pulled their content from Netflix.
Next, you have multiple streaming services and surely, piracy goes up and the pirate just throws the pie out the window. Nobody wins.
pea
The most insane strategy (which got everyone I know pirating content) is:
1. Create incredibly addictive tv shows
2. Release episodes once a week, with a huge cliffhanger
3. Release in Europe/UK one week behind the US
A growth hacker couldn't create a better incentive for piracy if they tried. Anyone know why this is a thing?
user_7832
You know, I've heard Gabe's comment several times and part of my earlier comment was based off it. But I actually disagree with the > not a pricing problem part. Probably because I come from a third world country (India), I am extremely sensitive to avoidable costs. If you can get something for free, you can be sure that the average Indian is going to spend effort for it, me included. (This makes more sense in context to how weak the rupee is which can likely be extended to other 3rd world countries but that's another topic.)
For example - I have never purchased a music subscription even though I spend a much larger amount on food/rent and could comfortably afford one. Why? Because YouTube is free.
LeoNatan25
As long as people reward these ridiculous solutions by paying for them, the corporations will continue deploying them.
Enginerrrd
I think the big problem is that there are so many different forms of DRM, content media/formats, and playback devices that even a fairly educated and highly technically literate user can't be sure when they buy something about exactly when or how the DRM will rear its ugly head and bite them.
matheusmoreira
Yes! A friend of mine has an HDTV that simply won't work with any newer device. When I investigated the issue, I found out it was due to HDCP! Infuriating.
Cort3z
Isn't this move by Intel almost a counter attack on this drm situation. Essentially bricking all drm software.
colonwqbang
If they had wanted to show to everyone how futile the whole idea of DRM is, this would have been a great way to do it. However, I don't think Intel management is quite so self-aware.
saxonww
Honestly no, the official solution is to buy a dedicated UHD Blu-ray player. I think that's what they really want.
ethbr0
Make general purpose computing illegal, and only pirates will have general purpose computers...
saxonww
IDK about that. They were certainly upset about VCRs back in the day.
It's been covered ad nauseam at this point: content owners want to be able to dictate the who, what, when, where, and how of content consumption. They have enough money to get taken seriously, and know how to use it; ideally, consumers would push back by not watching movies, but that isn't happening. So here we are. It's disappointing.
joshstrange
I'll never understand the stupidity of studios/streaming platforms (DRM/Widevine). DRM only hurts legit customers, period. Any TV Show or Movie you want to watch is going to be on Torrents/Usenet within hours at most of release, their DRM has completely and utterly failed to stop piracy, instead it punishes paying users.
I still remember a good decade ago getting a DVD from Redbox and trying to watch it with some friends. Tons of unskippable ads, FBI warnings, etc. Partway through the hell of enforced watching I started a torrent, before we got to the title screen it was done and we watched the downloaded version instead.
Furthermore, look at the state of TV today with all the streaming platforms. I'm excluding "live" TV because I can't imagine why anyone would subject themselves to that cesspool. Having to jump between streaming services/UIs/UX/etc is terrible. "What platform was that show on?", "Wait, weren't we watching this on service X? That's why it lost our place in the season", "Oh, did they remove Y show?", and the list goes on.
It's incredibly sad the the best TV experience is some combo of Plex/Jellyfin+*arr-type software. Music piracy is practically non-existent in my friend groups (the same could not be said 10+ years ago), Spotify and friends did that. Not any laws, not any enforcement, not any crackdowns, etc, no a /paid/ service beat music piracy. Why? Because it was better, it was easier, and it had everything. As long as we only have a choice of disjointed services and platforms TV/Movies will never be better than piracy.
Things like Amazon Channels and Apple TV (yes the app, not the device, not the service, come on Apple...) are somewhat of a step in a better direction but Plex is still bar none. No ads, instant playback, no BS.
AlwaysRock
Sometimes it really is easier to torrent a show and know you will see it ad free and without buffering than to find it on any given streaming service and suffer the ads.
Recently I've seen even ad free, paid or unpaid, streaming options that still force ads into their shows at the beginning or the end. There is a new Nerdwallet ad that says, "Enjoy this ad free break before getting back to your show - brought to you by nerdwallet" I almost screamed at my tv when I saw that. If your name is plastered on the screen and the show/movie I'm watching is disputed to display it its an ad...
joshstrange
I literally took a screenshot of the top banner of Imgur the other day (I tried turning off all my blockers because it kept failing to upload images in an album, it didn't end up helping) that said "Enjoy an Ad Free Day brought to you by the Toyota Corolla Cross". Similarly I wanted to scream "That's not what that means!". Not that I'd be caught dead listening to the radio but from other's or from a long time ago I remember "enjoy this ad-free hour provided by X", if I have to hear your name then it's not ad-free.
AlwaysRock
Anti ads must be the new ads. At least its better than my TV screaming at me about competing car insurance ads for minutes at a time.
nihilist_t21
> I'm excluding "live" TV because I can't imagine why anyone would subject themselves to that cesspool.
Live sports.
kstrauser
Even that might not be worth it. Most major league sports in the US are subject to blackouts (which I think is utterly ridiculous when the venues were closed due to COVID: it's not like I could go see the game live if I wanted to). Worse, and insanely, the major league sports apps I've used enforce blackouts even when you're streaming over the Internet.[0] That's right: for $122 per season, you can't watch all your own baseball team's home games. I can imagine the content licensing contracts they have which prevent them from allowing it, but as an end user, I couldn't care less. The outcome is that it's a terrible deal for the people who'd otherwise be their best customers.
[0] https://www.mlb.com/live-stream-games/subscribe/offseason
joshstrange
Sports are conundrum for sure and one of the only valid reasons to watch "live tv". Personally I don't care for sports but my parents do. The landscape there is pretty terrible as well IMHO. Cable or Satellite are probably the best picture while something like YouTubeTV is probably the best experience (but damn that picture is not good, at least to me it looks blocky often and there are a ton of artifacts on the picture). Game blackouts are something that I just don't understand to this day, like I understand them but how are we still living in the dark ages (pun intended)? IPTV is another option but it's temperamental and has similar picture issues to YTTV in my experience.
TV/Movies can be solved with piracy. Sports can't be solved with money or piracy.
op00to
Cable and Satellite really don't have better picture than YouTube TV, in my unscientific yet somewhat curious opinion. I compared YouTube TV to DirecTV as well as FIOS. I felt FIOS had the best picture quality out of all the services prior to YouTube TV, but YouTube TV seemed "crisper", even for sports and other high motion content.
nihilist_t21
I just watch the NFL, but I get the majority of games each season for free over-the-air in HD with a $20 antenna.
halo
I'm convinced the inability to easily play Blu-Rays and similar on computers is a major contributor as to why the format hasn't had the same traction as DVDs and may have accelerated the removal of disc drives from devices. Such a self-defeating move.
ChuckNorris89
And I'm convinced the hassle of Blu-Ray DRM or any kind of modern DRM is why I, and many others, still pirate movies and TV shows despite being able to afford to pay for them.
CraneWorm
DRM and the unskippable ads that make you aware that you payed to've become a product.
The pirates offer superior product, every time.
ballenf
And Blu-Ray Live which makes your player yet another surveillance tool, if it has internet access. And if it doesn't you lose some of the features of the disc advertised on the box.
lowbloodsugar
Well, except for bitrate. I like my audio lossless 7.1 24/96 or better. I'm seriously thinking about a https://www.kaleidescape.com so I don't have to buy disks, but get the full bitrate.
clintonb
I disagree. Streaming killed the disc. High speed internet facilitating digital downloads, alongside a desire to make laptops smaller and lighter, killed the disc drive.
I own a 3D Blu-ray player. I haven’t used it in about two years, since the nearest Redbox went away. I only used Redbox because it was cheap and more convenient than waiting for streaming releases. Now that many movies are released in theaters and on streaming at the same time, I don’t know if I’ll ever use it again.
Physical media is on the way out. Records continue to be manufactured for nostalgia (and better audio quality, for those that care), but that’s about it.
dehrmann
Back during the HDDVD/Bluray battle, I remember it being called the battle for the last physical medium.
skhr0680
In 2003 I had a 40GB hard drive and dialup. The 4GB of a DVD was nothing to sneeze at.
In 2010 I had several 1TB HDDs, fast broadband, and a 32GB USB stick. Getting a blue ray drive for my PC wasn’t worth the hassle.
wldcordeiro
They were also stupidly priced in 2010 still. The cheapest drives that could do blu-ray were still $100+ and a CD/DVD was maybe $30.
jcpham2
I can say that I have never bought into BluRay, I don’t own a BluRay compatible optical drive to play them, and as far as I know we do not own any BluRay discs. I have mountains of DVDs and still prefer it in terms of purchasing movies. Bandwidth and access to other forms of digital media has allowed me to skip BluRay. I understand the resolution is better but it’s not a strong selling point for me.
As a side note with the original DeCSS DVD code now considered a virus by many antivirus vendors I basically reject DRM technology everywhere I can.
I pay for Netflix, but that’s a recent thing. The kids watch YouTube. That’s it for my household. No local news, no over the air free HD TV. We cut the cord and never looked back. If its not on Netflix I guess we just wait or go to a theater (rarely) or don’t watch it.
I ripped my first DVD in college approximately two decades ago. I’m not oblivious to new technology nor am I some type of techno-Luddite; the selling points of BluRay are just weak imho.
rixrax
I buy BDs so that kids can watch long form kids movies without needing to know about YouTube or Netflix or Prime (I mean they do, but they are now allowed there yet). I understand this will not last, but as far as I am concerned, longer they are away from total junk that Youtube offers, and from curated crap available via Netflix and such - the better.
If someone from netflix is reading: I would very much like to self curate (e.g. whitelist) which movies are are available when signed in via kids profile. Not blacklist, whitelist. Only show series and movies that are allowed.
ericd
We basically fill a NAS running Plex with stuff we like for the kids, YouTube-dl helps a lot with this. You can access that via a raspi or similar running a Plex client. Big fan of this approach, there’s a lot of great educational stuff on YouTube.
digisign
I wanted that very much when the kid was younger. However it took them ten years to add profiles so wouldn't hold your breath.
whizzter
Yeah, Blu-Ray is pretty much PS3-PS5 and XboxOne/Series or you're old/"untechnical" enough to think that you need a standalone disc player to watch movies (but heck I've overheard grannies talk about Netflix,etc so even the old gen is starting to catch on).
That said, I'm not entirely sure that cord-cutting overall is a good thing. For my kids we've practically always had Netflix (and Youtube) and almost ignored regular channels with me consuming news mostly via online newspaper articles.
This really hit me when I separated and ended up living at my brothers for a short while a couple of years ago. Their family had a far bigger presence of news in their house due to watching linear TV news every day.
See here in Sweden we have fairly decent tax-funded public broadcast news (even if it's under attack and hated on by some parties), while much of it is fluff (and most of which I'd personally grasp with reading a couple of articles far quicker) it did strike me as something that I might leave as a dis-service to my kids in not providing an environment of learning about the outside world.
lotsofpulp
Cord cutting refers to removing the tv channel provider middleman from the equation, such as the company that owns the coaxial cable going into your home or satellite TV providers.
I do not see why the Swedish public broadcast news could not be available via a website and app, nor why the internet would not be able to offer far more access to information about the outside world than Swedish broadcast news.
mensetmanusman
Don’t feel bad, we don’t show fluff news in our house and clearly the kids are better for it since they aren’t fed a background of fear daily.
It does however take some effort to say, ‘okay let us learn about this topic now’ and then put in a documentary note and then.
Aloha
I buy blue ray discs, when they're in the discount bin at the drug store. 5.99 for a movie I own and can watch when the bet is down isn't a bad deal.
nightski
Sort of. Xbox One X has Dolby Atmos/Vision but the PS5 does not. The highest quality players are still stand alone and have all the features if you are into that. But for most people you are absolutely right.
KennyBlanken
No?
Most people don't watch TV or movies on their computers. They watch them on big-screen TVs with streaming built-in (or attached to streaming devices like Rokus, Fire Sticks, or Apple TVs) in their living rooms, or on mobile devices like tablets and phones.
My guess is that the movie industry is purposefully killing off PC viewing. Bluray players and TVs are much easier to assure content control on. I'd also guess that in general they don't care about bluray, period. They want everyone to stream, where there's no "ownership."
atrus
It's difficult to even play on your TV at times. I had rented a Blu-Ray from the library, popped it into my standalone player, connected to my TV, and recieved a message that my player wouldn't play it because it was out of date. What.
petee
I can agree with this. I got a bluray burner and I could rarely get blurays to actually play properly or at all. Somewhere between software, licensing and drm , I now have basically a paperweight. An old ps3 does the trick though
jbluepolarbear
I only buy Blu-ray that come with a digital code. I activate the code, it shows up in iTunes, and I give or throw away the Blu-ray. Although this is usually around Black Friday where you can get Blu-ray for $5-$10.
dTal
It's same reason you don't see DVD-A or SACD discs around. Who would buy such things when you need an expensive standalone player, especially in the age of streaming? They didn't learn.
Nextgrid
As usual, legitimate customers get shafted while piracy thrives.
sersi
I honestly don't get it, everyone knows that this will not stop piracy, there's no benefit whatsoever to it yet it has significant disadvantages for paying customers.
hyperman1
That's because piracy is the excuse, not the reason. DRM is very successful at what it should do: Protect the content middleman from the device makers (not the end users).
They can, for example, enforce market segmentation: You bought the DVD in the USA and play it in the EU. Legal, but DRM stops you. Wait for the EU release and pay the different price.
If the content middleman screams piracy, react as if a politician screams child porn. They want something else, but cant' get it without invoking the bogeyman. Hordes of (starving artists/concerned parents) will provide the necessary rope to hang themselves on command.
matheusmoreira
> If the content middleman screams piracy, react as if a politician screams child porn. They want something else, but cant' get it without invoking the bogeyman. Hordes of (starving artists/concerned parents) will provide the necessary rope to hang themselves on command.
I never made the connection between these two ideas before. Now I am wiser. Thanks for this.
bambax
> They can, for example, enforce market segmentation: You bought the DVD in the USA and play it in the EU. Legal, but DRM stops you. Wait for the EU release and pay the different price.
Ok, but don't they risk discouraging people from buying disks? Who buys disks nowadays anyway?
michaelt
> everyone knows that this will not stop piracy
Disney CEO: "We want a DRM system that will make piracy impossible. Can you do it?"
Developer: "That's impossible, it can't be done."
Disney CEO: "My son is constantly asking for $70 games for his playstation/xbox, so I'm not convinced DRM is impossible. Could you do it if we paid you $300,000 per year? Or do you have nothing to offer the company?"
Developer: "Well, when you put it like that, I'm happy to try. We can certainly make something that doesn't have the holes previous systems had, and that will slow down piracy, initially."
Disney CEO: "Ah, so it might be possible after all...."
SkeuomorphicBee
There are two benefits in DRM:
1. Stopping "casual" piracy, that is, stopping a tech illiterate person (most of the population) from simply copying it to another tech illiterate friend (they don't want a repetition of the K7 mixtape era).
2. Create a walled garden were you have a monopoly that you can abuse to extract better deals from other stakeholders.
activitypea
Widespread piracy is a function of access to user-friendly pirating services like torrents or warez sites, not the ability to generate a pirated copy. I'd wager that the number of people in the world who bypass Bluray DRM for non-personal use is in the hunderds, maybe thousands.
iSnow
It doesn't outright stop piracy, but making it more uncomfortable to play back on PC means people would either switch to streaming or buy set-top players.
Big tech long ago decided that the PC is a problem to them and they want to move to locked-down gadgets.
SXX
As was said by other smart person who is not me:
DRM has nothing to do with piracy of even control over end-user. It's all about media companies having leverage over hardware manufacturers of TVs, computers, game consoles, etc.
So media companies want extort money from hardware manufacturers. Manufacturer might choose not to pay, but then most of movies and Netflix (FullHD, 4K) wouldn't play on their devices.
pradn
Once in a while, some DRM does work in buying some time for the copyright holder. Denuvo has sometimes led to games taking longer to be cracked, in some cases for a few weeks or even months, enough to perhaps capture some of the initial rush of purchases for a video game. Of course, there will be consumers who don't want to buy games with DRM as well.
scotty79
The benefit is that pirates won't buy the content either way, but legit uses locked out of the content they bought might buy it the second time.
deepstack
The currently model for digital media (film, music, etc) just doesn't work. Instead of preventing piracy, figure out a new way of making money for artists (not the organisations and administrators). Artists ought to be rewarded not the organisation and admin.
rocqua
Thing is the organizations and administrators around artists are huge.
In the current world, they are no longer needed, and they know it. But they still have power. So they are doing everything they can to keep up their revenue streams. If they admit to progress, if they try and make a working ecosystems, they are working on something which, at best, requires massive downsizing for them.
So instead they are flailing about looking to construct ecosystems that still have a place for them.
gedy
I think they don't want people buying movies at all anymore, just to subscribe forever
ttyprintk
To prove you wrong, one would have to take the position that those industries are making more and better content.
henryackerman
"Piracy will continue as scheduled."
theplumber
I believe it's a good thing considering that "ligitimate customers" means customes supporting DRM.
Nextgrid
Most customers don't know what DRM is, how it works and how/when it fails.
It's reasonable for a non-technical person to agree with a solution that claims to prevent piracy because they have no idea how these things work and their trade-offs. They don't mind it because they don't see themselves as pirates given that they just bought the media and are unaware of how the DRM scheme can backfire on them despite not being a pirate.
Very few people would agree to DRM if the DRM scheme explicitly had a disclaimer "we can, for any reason, prevent you from playing this in the future even on the same hardware that successfully plays it today".
theplumber
As can be seen in this case ignorace does not help much. It's a lesseon that all of us have to learn from time to time.
hlandau
Good.
The desire to support the unreasonable demands of the film industry here has led to the perversion of the x86 architecture to add all sorts of peculiar DRM functionalities, and has precluded firmware components from being made open source; as I have previously written about here [1], which links to forum posts by an AMD engineer:
I'm sure I don't have to explain to you that the essense of DRM requirements in the OEM PC market is that the owner must NOT have full control of the machine if that includes being able to tamper with or disable any of the DRM mechanisms.
DrBazza
Don't forget about this abomination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinavia
"Why has my playback gone silent?"
elzbardico
Film Industry => in about half the time, Sony Entertainment, by far the most aggressive company when it comes to copyrights.
BoxOfRain
I wonder what can be done to reduce their negative influence on the tech world? Ideally I'd like to see reform of copyright law to favour corporate giants a bit less, but given how much of a hand those same giants seem to have in the laws that get written I'm not hopeful of that any time soon.
I think a more realistic scenario is rather than a top-down change in the law, a bottom-up approach with a culture change in the general public towards favouring independent content creators who don't employ DRM and other harmful measures and don't stifle creativity with overzealous IP lawsuits is encouraged. I'm still a believer at heart that the internet can be a great democratiser of content, that it can bring down the barriers and middlemen between artists and their audience. Art on the internet should be a participatory thing too in my opinion, not the mindless content consumption that the media companies of yesteryear see it as.
mschuster91
> I think a more realistic scenario is rather than a top-down change in the law, a bottom-up approach with a culture change in the general public towards favouring independent content creators who don't employ DRM and other harmful measures and don't stifle creativity with overzealous IP lawsuits is encouraged.
In the end, people want high quality entertainment, and it's hard to compete as an independent against sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in budget (and that's excluding advertising).
Which also explains why the studios insist on ridiculously bullshit in terms of DRM - the banks backing these enormous loans want their money back.
With music, the situation is different. You can get high quality recording equipment for well under 10K $ these days or rent a studio for a couple of days for cheap and release on Soundcloud, which means the barrier to entry is ridiculously low and so there is no incentive for studios to invest in DRM, it's simply not worth it any more. The real money for musicians is tour tickets and merch... CD/vinyl sales and streaming income isn't much.
oarsinsync
> I wonder what can be done to reduce their negative influence on the tech world?
It's worth considering there's one tech company that makes its own chips, integrated hardware, operating system, software, and is now also a media studio.
As owners of the content, and the entire tech stack, they don't appear to be opposed to DRM.
alliao
increased vertical integration should be taken into account together with market share
because ultimately it destroys competition by holding vantage points to suffocate competition
in this instance, producers of distribution should not be content holders let creative be creative, let supply chains be supply chains etc etc
i guess one can always add a clause, exemption applies below a certain size etc.
flyinghamster
And to think that Sony was once on the good side, even going to the Supreme Court to defend the VCR. But once they bought a studio, the Hollywood goons took over.
lou1306
They were always on their own side, not the "good" one. They defended VCRs because they were a major producer of VHS home equipment, and the ability to record TV shows helped selling said equipment. The fact that they also held the moral high ground is little more than a happy accident.
In general, for corporations of then & now, "being good" only matters as long as it aligns, or at least does not interfere with, their sources of income.
ticklemyelmo
Here's a friendly reminder that Sony put a rootkit on their audio CDs to enforce copyright. They brought the term "rootkit" into public awareness.
tjoff
Strongly disagree with the quote.
The owner should still have full control and be able to disable DRM support. If that means you can't play certain movies afterwards that is fine, but the control should be there.
MereInterest
Having full control means that you could also partially disable DRM support. Say, perhaps, by enabling the part that determines an encryption key and decrypts the video, but disabling the part that checks whether the video is being sent to a compliant display rather than to an unencrypted file.
You cannot have effective DRM without taking away full control from the user.
ballenf
Being willing and able to lie for the owner is the ultimate test of ownership.
tjoff
Of course it would be possible for the application to verify that and disable decryption.
azalemeth
If you're interested, the original forum post (2018) is here: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/hardware/processors-me...
I totally agree with you, for what it is worth.
matheusmoreira
That quote is amazing. An AMD engineer publicly stating that our machines are owned.
BlueTemplar
It doesn't make sense though, unless Intel is replacing its SGX feature by a similar one (that new Microsoft chip ??).
Also I don't think that this has an effect on Intel's Management Engine ?
BTW, older AMD CPUs (of the Bulldozer line) are still performant enough, and don't come with a likely backdoor in the form of IME / AMD PSP.
P.S.: It does really suck the effect that this has on GPU's openness... (and so performance for very specific use cases)
hulitu
IMHO blaming the film industry is a bit much. Intel has the ME since some time and coupled with secure boot is a MPAA or RIAA manager's wet dream.
BlueTemplar
"Film industry" stands here for "Hollywood" ?
And isn't the IME only a few decades old ?
(Of course Microsoft with its "trusted computing" and the NSA with its job to backdoor everything that can be likely had a hand in that too...)
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jankal
It's the same problem I was facing trying to play Netflix Ultra HD on my AMD CPU. Fortunately Netflix now also works without Intel SGX so I can watch my stuff on my PCs now.
On the other hand: It is still not possible to play Amazon Prime Ultra HD on AMD CPUs and probably also on the new Intel 12th gen as of now.
The one thing I hate about these limitations is the amount of detailed knowledge that is required to know what is happening. As an average consumer I would have never thought of such bullshit. I only read about the problem wehn I had already bought my CPU...
sneak
If you torrent the content directly, it plays on all hardware and can be used offline or easily shared to friends via USB/AirDrop/etc. You also get a wide choice of players.
Everything good on the streaming sites is quickly available via torrent, and VPNs are like $5. Don't continue paying the media cartels for abuse.
whywhywhywhy
> Everything good on the streaming sites is quickly available via torrent
This isn’t as true as it used to be. The torrent scene seems a fraction of what it used to be.
Presumably it’s still fine in private sites but I wouldn’t know.
gruez
I don't have any trouble finding 4K remixes of movies, even ones from a decade ago. This is on public trackers.
xtracto
WebTorrent + RarBg is where things are at now. Hopefully we will see more and more descentralized or anonymous search databases with Tor, Freenet, IPFS or similar technology to finally end the "Piracy Wars".
trissylegs
For a while I was running my second monitor over DVI. And putting Amazon prime on it cause the video to go blank.
I know why (I think there's some bs about not running HDCP over DVI even though it's basically HDMI in most Configs) But it was bizzare to actually see it.
wodenokoto
You can play Netflix in HD on a computer? I’m watching animated gif video quality on safari, and how do I change it?
michaelt
According to [1] Netflix supports "Safari up to 4K on macOS 11.0 or later"
Of course, you also need to be on the 'premium' plan, have a fast-enough internet connection, be watching 4K content, have the T2 security chip, have an HDCP display, and so on.
[1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
mmis1000
On Windows, you can, with a giant gotcha. Netflix need you to have all connect screen 4k to play ultra hd on Windows. I don't know if it is different if the screen is buildin.
omegalulw
On windows, I can play Netflix in 4K with HDCP 2.2, Windows 10/11 and the HEVC plugin from Microsoft.
Interestingly, if any montior you connect is not HDCP 2.2 you don't get 4K.
GeForce Stuff like Nvidia instant replay gets disabled if you have Netflix up in a tab - so close those before you game.
hnlmorg
I've said it before and I'll say it again: DRM only hurts your legitimate customers. Anyone who had any interest in pirating your content will find a way around DRM -- whether that's a technical solution or whether it's just downloading a copy from someone else who has the technical knowhow to bypass DRM.
However it's your legitimate customers, the ones who actually paid for your product, who suffer.
mrweasel
Can someone explain why PowerDVD needs the SGX feature? Intel clearly doesn't see it as being useful, or did they replace it with something better and Cyberlink just doesn't want to upgrade?
I mean it's reasonable that Cyberlink shaw the SGX as a way of implementing DRM, but I don't believe it's the only way they could possibly do so.
zuminator
beemeup5 at ghacks.net wrote [0]:
Slight clarification. This is primarily a limitation specifically for software
like Cyberlink’s PowerDVD because Cyberlink is one of the very few officially
authorized software vendors for encrypted UHD disc playback.
Intel SGX is not a requirement for playback in the UHD Blu-ray spec. PowerDVD
just happens to make use of Intel SGX for their decryption implementation /
HDCP handshake enforcement. Other software players that don’t make use of Intel
SGX can play UHD discs just fine, so AMD CPU owners need not worry.
Just use MPC-HC or JRiver Media Center, etc. Of course, you may need to use
“alternate” decryption options like AnyDVD or DVDFab, and naturally you also
need a UHD capable disc drive with compatible firmware. like the Asus BC-
12D2HT. Many sellers will flash the stock firmware with UHD-capable firmware
for drives sold as “UHD ready”.
heisenbit
> Cyberlink’s PowerDVD because Cyberlink is one of the very few officially authorized software vendors for encrypted UHD disc playback
The only way to win in this game is not to play it.
hlandau
When Blu-ray came out, it came with all sorts of DRM madness (AACS, BD+, etc.) which persists to this day. However playback on PCs still ultimately involved some kind of proprietary player software which contains keys to decrypt the content. Obviously, these keys could be extracted from the player software to decrypt DVDs. In other words, it's the flaw with all DRM schemes.
For UHD/4K Blu-rays, the DRM scheme was renewed (AACSv2). As far as I can tell, studios seemed to decide that the above model was too insecure and to require something more for PC playback of UHD Blu-rays. The requirement seems to basically be that some kind of platform-integrated hardware DRM is involved so that the CPU never sees the decrypted video (or equivalent; presumably SGX is used to lock the decrypted content inside an enclave which is remotely attested and then securely transported to the GPU somehow. GPUs also have had this kind of hardware DRM functionality added to support this use case but I don't have the details to hand as they're not to my knowledge public.)
bubblethink
Cyberlink doesn't control anything in this. Studios, Microsoft, Intel, etc. decided all this. Cyberlink was just providing a service atop all this nonsense.
sundvor
"Dear latest gen Intel users, please upgrade from Cyberlink to BitTorrent".
LeoNatan25
Similar thing happened with DVDs long time ago, when newer DVD drives could not be used to decode older DVD disks, due to incompatibility with early CSS systems.
Meanwhile, the torrents, with Dolby Vision or HDR10, play just fine everywhere, without any hardware restrictions, any software arbitrary nonsense restrictions, etc. I’ll continue buying those at the torrent tracker shop.
josephcsible
Remember how Stallman et al complained loudly about "Trusted Computing" technology like SGX, and everyone ignored them and accepted it anyway?
matheusmoreira
Yeah. Stallman is absolutely right about everything concerning computer freedom. He saw pretty far into the future.
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MakeMKV (US$60 for Windows, Mac, or Linux) can rip UHD Blu-Ray discs with the appropriate drive, removing the encryption in the process:
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