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Hardware

Add-On Shows DVD As It Should Be 181

Posted by emmett from the i-got-yer-serial-digital-interface-right-here-pal dept.
pgrote writes "The New Scientist is reporting about a pretty cool device you can add to your DVD for digital output to a Serial Digital Interface. As someone who didn't know the ins and outs of DVD signals and how restricted they were, this article opened my eyes."
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Add-On Shows DVD As It Should Be More

Add-On Shows DVD As It Should Be

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  • Apple ships a DVD player (app) with their OS... Apple has probably known this for quite some time..

    The real question is: How is this different than watching a DVD at 1024x768 on my PowerBook? Last I checked there was no need to pass the signal through a D/A prior to displaying it on the flat screen..


    That's WHY apple should sue them. It's anti-competitive.

    The difference is quality. Believe it or not as pretty as DVD is on your powerbook it would be even prettier if it were running at full bandwidth.

    Kintanon
  • I thought that the (uh-hum) *official* reason for region codes was to control theatrical releases. i.e. the movie cannot afford to do a global theatrical release of a movie, so they want to stagger it. That wouldn't too well if a movie is coming out on home video (DVD) in N. America at the same time it's being released in the Cinemas in Europe and Japan. In this situation, they fear people would sooner buy imports from abroad rather than go to the cinema, thus diluting their (disgustingly huge) profits.

  • the picture started getting darker, and lighter, darker and lighter, darker and lighter, darker and lighter... ;p

    Yes - that's the railgun on your Starwars Defence Initiative (SDI) charging up :-p

  • I think the New Scientist article is less than meets the eye. It would be helpful if someone would volunteer to verify the details with the manufacturer.

    My take: what I think is really going on is that the 'hack' probably picks off the decompressed YUV4:2:2 digital stream before the composite encoder and sends it over the SDI (otherwise known as serial D1) at 270 MBit/sec. This is pretty easy to do actually - much easier than dealing with the compressed stream and its attendant CSS issues. It also short-circuits Macrovision.

    He may also have a way to combine compressed streams over the same cable for a different application, but I doubt that's what was being shown. This type of system would be better suited to transport stream anyway (you have to recover the clock somehow.)

    Also, CSS still gets in the way. The DVD MPEG-2 system stream that gets sent to the MPEG decoder is CSS-scrambled. The descrambled (i.e., CSS decrypt) stream isn't visible in a DVD player: decryption is done inside the decoder, away from prying logic analyzer probes and such. So you still have to deal with CSS even if you pick off the raw 10.08 MBps stream from the DVD front-end.

    There is more bogus stuff there. The article states that:

    "All the manufacturers of DVD players have signed an agreement not to provide a Firewire digital output. But there is no mention of SDI."

    In reality there's no mention of Firewire in the CSS procedural spec, either. In players, digital interfaces of any kind are not allowed by CSS.

    Specifically, CSS-compliant, i.e., 'Protected' DVD players are allowed to have analog outputs only. Further, those analog outputs must include Macrovision. This is yet another reason CSS is evil - by contract, it also lines Macrovision's pockets.

    Does CSS stop someone other than CSS licensee from 'jeeping' their player with SDI, as the article shows? Probably not. CSS applies to the player manufacturer: you have to have the license before you can buy the chips or access the key exchange method.

    -dvd_tude
    "Excuse me, but didn't I tell you there's NO HOPE for the survival of OFFSET PRINTING?" - Zippy
  • The New Scientist article doesn't seem to know what it's talking about.

    It mentions SDI which is *uncompressed* digital video. Then it goes on to mention 10 Mbits/sec which can *only* be compressed video.

    I imagine what they really mean is that it is outputting compressed 10 Mbits/sec digital video in DVB-ASI format which is electrically equivalent to SDI (but the "protocol" is different).

  • Seamless branching is really neat. On the Abyss SE, there's the theatrical version and the director's cut (which is full of crappy looking 'tv' clips the characters are watching and extra water ;)

    Since it's already a jumungous movie, the method used to get it all on the disc was more or less this: If the theatrical release has (say) tracks 1,2 and 3, but the director's cut has an extra scene between 2 and 3 it can either play 1,2,3 or 1,2,2.5,3 depending on what version of the movie you want to watch.

    Additionally, if there are two versions of 3, it could play 1,2,3 or 1,2,2.5,3a.

    Of course, the infamous Apex player tends to choke on the seamless branching. While it's probably fixable, it's just about certain that getting that fixed would result in the secret menu going away. So I can live without seamless branching for now, I hope.
  • Even better some real encription could be used, then the pirated disks would be non-playable outside of pirates hands. (the software would probally get around, damn script kiddies)
  • most mainstream, big studio movies that I have seen usually have Pan&Scan on one side and Widescreen on the other. This can be very useful when the rental copy is scratched and you have to flip it over to Pan&Scan to watch that one scene that gets screwed up! (very annoying, but at least I can watch it)

    Oh yeah, can I just take a second to say that rental DVDs SUCK! Unless you can get them right away before every joe schmoe rents them and uses them to clean grout out of the shower tiles or toss as frisbees to their dogs or whatever it is that people do to scratch these things.

    At least they are (somewhat) reasonably priced so I can hold on to a few favorites.

    -------
  • Yes, you see, I'm for democracy, not moneycracy.

    The problem is, "one person one vote" is the equivalent of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

    There are always going to be more poor than rich. The system the way it's set up now rewards the poor with the rich's money.

    No system in nature does this -- the weak are culled, not coddled.

    What's my solution? I'd allow one vote per dollar in taxes paid. Note that this does not mean the rich get all the votes, as it's not based on your net worth -- he who puts more resources into the government has a larger say in how those resources are distributed. This is similar to shareholders in private companies, but with the provision that the shares you "purchase" in government disappear after you vote with them.

    A wealthy individual or corporation may be able to sway policy for a while, but will soon run out of money if what they're trying to do runs against the natural order of things.

    --
  • Much respect to the engineers that kept a straight face during that one...;)

  • This subject brings to mind a question I have been debating lately. I have a Toshiba SD2109 DVD player that has the Color-Stream outputs, as well as a Super-VHS output. I am going to buy a new tv, probably 32 inch and I was wondering if I should spend more to get a Toshiba tv with the Color-Stream inputs? Is there an appreciable difference in quality between S-VHs and color-stream?
  • Not so loud...they'll here you.
  • It's nice when the DVD has both pan-'n-scan and widescreen versions on the same disc. But it's kind of silly to use up so much storage space with two copies of the same movie. This makes me wonder why auto pan-'n-scan isn't implemented on very many DVDs

    In the case of "A Bugs Life" they have two copies but with good reason - in the fullscreen format they actually altered much of the movie to fit better in the full frame. For some of the scenes they have the normal pan & scan, but in other parts they simply generated the tob and bottom of the normal movie frame to fill the whole screen, and in other parts they simply moved "actors" around in the shot to all fit in the screen!

    Obviosuly you can't do all those things unless your movie was entirely digital and 3D to begin with, but it still brings up an interesting case that might be emulated to some extent in re-doing a pan & scan version of any movie.
  • There's a freeware extension that prevents MacsBug from being disabled at http://www.barebones.com/free/free.html. Works great on my G4.

  • As a result, people could ultimately get the firewire outputs, which the MPAA tried to eliminate, on their DVD players despite the manufacturers contractual agreement!

    The subversion of the agreement is a pretty minor point nowdays, though, since you can now make a DVD player without signing any contractual agreement. [linuxvideo.org] :-)


    ---

  • Re: HDTV, "Widescreen", and FireWire... (Score:3)

    by Pope ( 17780 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @06:43AM (#1046640)
    I have a regular ol' 25" TV, and I try to buy ONLY letterboxed movies (VHS or Laserdisc) because otherwise the nice framing that most directors use is LOST. Even Star Wars and other 2.35 movies are better than on pan&scan, cuz otherwise you miss most of the damn picture!

    DVD sales aren't slow! It's the fastest-ever rollout of any new consumer medium ever! CD's took forever to gain this kind of momentum, and the big shift there didn't start until LPs were discontinued by the big labels.

    Incidentally, the big push for "Widescreen" format comes from people like me, who'd much rather watch it. Did you actually LOOK at the packaging to see whether both Pan&Scan and Letterbox ratios were available?

    P&S sucks, period, IMO.

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

  • Re: HDTV, "Widescreen", and FireWire... (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @06:45AM (#1046641)
    Do you own a DVD player? I don't mean that as a flame, but I have found in every case that when I show people who say they hate letterbox movies a movie on DVD in letterbox (even the non anamorphic DVD's) that they end up loving watching the movie in that format and do not complain after that!

    I think that partly it is because of the increased resolution over VHS (I have to say that the letterbox VHS tapes of Star Wars seem to loose a lot of detail and looks kind of fuzzy) as well as simply having a large enough TV (I only have a 27" but find it sufficient).

    I really think it is BECAUSE of the widescreen format that DVD's have become so popular - it is now in vogue to like Widescreen which I think also helps convert a lot of people over.

  • Imagine a world where Lawn Boy figured out a way to control a lawnmower engine so that it'd only mow a particular type of grass. Got St. Augustine in the front yard and Bermuda out back? Fine, just buy the St. Augustine lawnmower for the front yard and the Bermuda mower for the back. Lawn Boy would of course license the technology to every other lawn mower manufacturer, all of whom would be ecstatic to have such a sales-boosting technology at their disposal. Then, of course, they'd all get together and tell the government that people who tinker with their lawnmowers to disable the "Grass Security System" are just doing it because they want to kidnap children and use the modified mowers for terrorist acts and drug-related murders. As a society, we must stand up to the criminal element and outlaw illegal mower mutilation.

    substitute "soya" for "grass" and "herbicide" for "lawnmower".

    Now imagine a world in which a manufacturer had devised a way of making a particular strain of soya resistant to a particular herbicide

    And that way, not only can't we watch DVD's in an unauthorised fashion, or mow one company's grass with another's mower. That way, the manufacturer of the herbicide can get a stranglehold on the whole agriculture game.

    Nice planet we're heading for, isn't it?

    TomV

  • DVDs clearly will have a longer shelf life than games, so that comparison isn't really valid.

    The DVD market is completely different than the VHS market. DVDs are purchased, not rented, and therefore it makes a lot more sense to make them futureproof.

    DVD players are also wildly different in quality, manufacturors have been doing about a good of a job of implementing the complete dvd spec as MS does implemented RFC's (I am a MCSE, so this isn't a troll). Some players even have trouble keeping audio and video in sync, others have trouble with layer changes. Pan n Scan on the fly would probably be a mess.

    matt
  • >It's like buying a Formula 10 car with all the engine power in there, but with an additional device that restricts the horsepower that can be output, in the name of "driving safety".

    Like the Corvette Z1 did. The lock on the engine shuts out 2 cylinders if I remember correctly. This effectively limits the horsepower, in case you let someone else drive. They also gave you the key though.. if you want to run the thing up to about 250 km/h you can. Now if only the MPAA would give us the key. Instead we have to buy a key seperately from a locksmith.

    //rdj
  • there is no violation of DMCA

    from the article:

    ...David Garrett, who was formerly an engineer with Britain's Ministry of Defence, [...] Garrett's company, Function Communications of Chelsea, ...

    Darned right there isn't.

    BTW, does that mean we've got 'freedeom to innovate' over here ;) ?

    TomV

  • Actually, about NASCAR... Yes, NASCAR uses restrictor plates. That is because most cars can breach 220 easily on tracks such as Talladega. If an accident occurs, that extra speed can very much kill someone that goes nose-first into the wall.
    However, on the smaller tracks, they go without plates, because they need all the acceleration that an engine can get them.
    Race on!

  • As far as I know, Macrovision is a strictly analogue copy-protection system. So the video would be processed in this order: MPEG-2 (digital)-> Analogue-> Analogue+Macrovision.

    Because this device keeps the video signal digital all the way thru, Macrovision is irrelevant.

  • Look at all the other "protection methods" that the entertainment industry has - SCMS is a perfect example. With consumer grade equipment, I am not allowed to duplicate MiniDiscs that I personally made. I am not talking about making copies of the latest Metallica album - I am talking about making a MD from a cassette tape of my grandmother from 1980. Yeah, I can make the original, and I can make a copy of the original. But that is it. Why? So the RIAA can collect their "he might copy the spice girls" fee and force me to upgrade to a Prosumer level machine (which the price difference is my paying the "he might copy the spice girls" tax). If I give this MD to my uncle, for instance, he can't make copies of it.

    Granted, the SCMS protection is a total joke and can be removed very easily.

    I really want to see more people put up or shut up on this issue. It takes like 3 minutes to write your congressperson. It takes a total of 30 minutes to email every one of the senators and house memebers and demand something be done about this lunacy.

    So do it! :)

  • What if those "consumers" actually considered themselves as citizens, and, for example, got a law passed by the means of a referendum? Say, 60% of the citizens of a country vote "yes" to ban GM foods from their countries. Does this hold less than if they "boycott" products? Does this mean that only the rich, who are able to actually choose what they buy, as opposed to just merely buying what they can, have a say?

    And more indirectly, what if instead of a poll on this issue, the parties supporting GM food get wiped out of office at the next elections, and the anti-GM food get massive support from the voters, is it still eeeevil politicians manipulation?

    Yes, you see, I'm for democracy, not moneycracy.

  • Isn't this already available for software players? For example, doesn't the Microsoft DirectShow DVD-Navigator talk to the manufacturer's DVD decoder driver (though a common API presumably)? It would seem to me that if you can implement a software DVD navigator, you can do what you want - including making your own navigator that spits out a digital stream.
  • This is for HDTVs with serial digital interface capability. The difference would be seeing a DVD on a 30" digital TV rather than on a laptop screen, so that folks who don't have PCs can properly watch DVDs.

    Of course, all this begs the question of "Who the hell can afford an HDTV with SDI but can't afford a PC". My guess is that this is *exactly* what the DVD cartel was planning on.
  • Well, this pretty much cinches it, the recording industry is practically clueless.

    They keep trying to restrict what you can do with digital media that you legally purchase. Never mind that there are perfectly legitimate uses for digital output. And, all of their protections didn't keep DeCSS from being written (the cat's kinda outta the bag now). So what I find really interesting is that now I can decode a DVD and convert it into any format I want, but I can't have a firewire output.

    Next time one of these copyright laws comes before congress, maybe we should really make a push for users rights.

  • Although I had not heard of that site before, that is exactly what I was imagining in my head might be possible for film if you applied some digital editing...

    I have to admit that looks rather disurbing. I think I was hoping that what you'd see more of would be digitally created additions to the top and bottoms of a letterbox frame to bring you a full screen without loss of information.

    The people movment in the website you linked was a bit extreme - they did the same thing but more tastful and subtle in A Bugs Life, so it could be a useful tool for a pan and scan translation providing that they didn't overdo things!

    Even with all those improvments though, in the end I have to imagine that some scenes simply need to be seen in the original format to really carry across a directors vision. I can't think of any concrete examples now, but there are many times I recall seeing wide sweeping vistas in a letterbox frame and the format itself really adding to the feeling of vastness in the shot. Fullscreen on shots like that could really detract.
  • Most of the resistance to widescreen nowadays is coming from North America, where there's an almost irrational resistance to change.

    I blame the marketing people at the TV manufacturers. I would love to have a wide screen TV. The European and Japanese web sites of the TV manufacturers show a nice selection of wide screen TVs. The problem is that none of them are available in the USA. I've looked in the local electronics stores and the only wide screen models are the super-expensive HDTV receivers.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • One simple answer: vote with your wallet. Don't buy DVD.

    Now before you all put me on the griddle and call me a Luddite, figure this: nobody forces you to buy DVD-players, discs, etc. They `only' outlaw every other means of distribution using their armada of lawyers and lobbyists. Now of course this implies that you will not be able to access recent `entertainment' products. Personally I couldn't care less, but if you're into that kind of stuff (watching product placement, being submitted to all kinds of subversive `buy me' tricks, etc.) you've got a problem. This problem can be solved if you are rich (by buying the gadgets mentioned in this article, or getting your own lawyer to tee off with the MPAA's lawyers, etc), clever (have a peek at the miserable excuse they use for content obfuscation, reverse engineer it, use it) or from a jurisdiction which does not give a rats ass about US law (by just stealing and copying the lot).

    But I still think the best solution is to give up on the instant-spam-in-a-can entertainment from those shiny platters and get a book, go out, meet people, whatever. And if you *really* want to see that latest movie, go to the cinema. You'll get all the widescreen and panscanless imagery you can swallow...

    Now you may ignite your flamethrowers... :-)
  • If you have a normal DVD player, go out and rent the movie "The Sixth Sense". Slap it in the player. Watch as previews for other movies come up on the screen. Reach for your remote and push the "DVD Menu" button. Watch as your DVD player says "no".

    And for that I'm glad.

    Why?!?

    Because they (MPAA and DVDCCA) gave us a real good argument we can use with "normal" (non-geek) people about why the DVD restrictions are bad. They might think any protection system is good and we are pirates for trying to bypass it. They probably don't know or care about Linux or, worse, think it is a hacker (as in criminal) tool.

    But if we hammer home that a lot of the protection system is so they are forced to watch ads, that will (seriously) get them pissed. Thanks MPAA! Most people don't care about regions (if it ain't in Blockbuster, it doesn't exist), but don't like when they can't use their technology in the way they want to. Which isn't watching DVD on Linux or making a VCD or whatnot.

    But, imagine how annoyed the average person would be if they couldn't use the MUTE button on TV when an ad came on.

    The MPAA, over this seemingly minor detail in their control scheme, has generously given us something we can argue our case with when it comes to convincing "average people". Such as those who can support our cause, or who serve on juries.

  • Personally, I'd rather waste some of my screen space and see the movie the way it was filmed... Pan-and-scan tends to distract me too much. And apparently, many people agree, because it seems like most of the DVDs are coming out in widescreen.

    Hmm... Well, you've got a point there. I think the reason videotapes were almost universally done in pan-'n-scan and DVDs are almost universally done in widescreen is because of:

    • resolution -- the letterboxed picture will look very sharp on DVD, but less detailed on videotape
    • TV size -- people today have much bigger TVs (except me, I guess) than they did when movies started coming out on videotape

    Some of them are crappy and do the letterboxing on the print of the DVD, and it actually plays in 4:3 mode. That's just wrong.

    Ecch. That's got to suck.

    I was thinking about this once... If you play a letterboxed VHS movie on a widescreen TV, the VCR will output a 1.33:1 picture. The TV will add black bars on the left and right sides, and since the movie is letterboxed, black bars will also appear on the top and bottom. The result is a small widescreen picture inside a thick black frame. The same would be true of letterboxed (not widescreen/anamorphic) DVDs.

    When HDTV becomes commonplace, though, pan-'n-scan will disappear pretty quickly. People will demand widescreen DVDs so they don't have the, um..."damn black bars"...on the sides!

    There are a good number of DVDs that are only available as pan-'n-scan [dvddemystified.com]. I'm sure Hollywood is already taking some heat for this... Just wait until people try to watch them on their widescreen TVs...

    As for "extreme widescreen" (2.35:1 or greater), I'm not sure what the consensus will be about letterboxing on a widescreen TV (1.78:1). Maybe it won't be as noticeable due to the already-prominent horizontal orientation of the screen. Or maybe it will?

    Does anyone know if there are any formats wider than 2.35:1 in common use? I know Ben-Hur was filmed with 2.66:1. I thought I heard 3:1 mentioned once. Anything else?

  • I can't imagine The Powers That Be allowing DVD-R to even be marketed on a mass consumer level. I can see them being priced out of the common person's hands. Not saying they won't come around, but expect a long arduous fight when they do.

  • I can't believe that they had to sign a contract agreeing not to make a FIREWARE DVD player! Apple should sue the hell out of them.

    No, what Apple should do is invest some money or a few full-time employees into the LiViD project [linuxvideo.org], and then bundle that player with their next OS release, instead of bundling their licensed player.


    ---
  • The copy-protection mess is so bad that the new generation of cable set-top boxes won't talk properly to digital TV monitors.

    I just picked up my new digital cable box yesterday (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000) and it has not one, but two Firewire ports. But they're both covered up with metal tabs. Now I guess I know why.

    And it has a USB port, too. That one I haven't figured out. And apparently later models have an Ethernet port. What on earth for...?
    ---

  • The Playstation 2 ships with a Firewire port - I imagine that you can't shift DVD output through it with the built in DVD driver, but it would still seem to violate the contract...

    Unless Sony (being Sony) negotiated that part out of THIER contract to build DVD players. It makes you wonder.
  • Bob Auger of Electric Switch, a DVD production company, says: "This is the first time DVD is being seen as it is meant to be seen."

    A PowerMac G4 with the Apple Cinema Display is completely digital from the DVD drive to the display. In fact they had a demo with A Bugs Life at the Cinema Display's release.

  • I used to be pro GM until I realized that most of the purposes they were put to use were just plain stupid. They make mainly herbicide resisting cereals for instance. Great: so you just kill everything else and pollute some more. Great TWO: it's been proven without a doubt that those genes are likely to spread to other vegetal species, rendering the specific herbicide useless, thus leading to use alternative herbicides which are likely to be even less environmentally friendly.
  • For those of you who haven't read it.. this is a passage from "Beowulf", I personally think its too clever to be marked as a mere troll... is there a "grendel's mother" setting?
  • Why, the nerve of those people at Apple! To imagine that Pixar would stand for such a flagrant abuse of their intellectual property!

    ;-)
  • Money, money, money ... so it's all just about money. Hell I guess that by your standards Bill Gates should have more moral stature than any Nobel Prize around. That just does'nt make sense.
  • Yeah, here in the UK, I'd say around 90% of TVs in the showroom are Widescreen. Also, more and more TV shows are being broadcast in a wider format.

    Most of the resistance to widescreen nowadays is coming from North America, where there's an
    almost irrational resistance to change.

    -Ciaran

  • the picture started getting darker, and lighter, darker and lighter, darker and lighter, darker and lighter... ;p
  • The device described in the article takes an undecoded MPEG-2 and converts it into high transfer rate SDI signal. So what is illigal about that? I don't believe there can be an injunction ruling against such a micro processor at all. There is no violation of copyright, there is no violation of DMCA, he does not DeCSS the signal, he just changes the undecoded signal. This is what we all have being doing for years while writing the signal onto our VCRs. I think those movie stars and highly paid actors can sleep tight knowing that they are not violators of any applicable laws :)
  • So, are you still running a CGA card in your PC?

    --

  • This has NOTHING do to with the /. holy crusade against the MPAA. Most DVD players don't have a digital out, because simply put, there are practically NO TVs or monitors that can accept a direct digital stream. DVD is a consumer technology, and an SDI interface would cost more than the rest of the DVD player combined, and is useless for almost everyone at this point. Once we have affordable display technology that can handle SDI, *THEN* we'll see DVD players with this capability as well.

    --

  • Good grief. Not everything is a conspiracy! You people watch far too much X-Files. OK, so they put an SDI interface on every DVD player, jacking up the price at least 100%. Now what? How many TV sets can handle a digital input? Next to none. Use a little common sense.

    --

  • In addition, most people do not even have HDTVs yet.

    This first bit is slightly off-topic, so I'll keep it short.

    Am I the only one who thinks it's a little silly that so many DVDs are only being made in the "widescreen" format? I mean, I see a DVD box on a shelf in a store, and it has a gold band along the top with the words "widescreen edition."

    Now, if you have a normal TV (as most people do), you get a letterboxed picture. Sure, the picture is really sharp, but it's letterboxed! They say DVDs are designed for "TVs of the future." Well, until we get to the future (when HDTV is ubiquitous), DVD sales will be slow because not everyone likes those damn black bars.

    If you're a widescreen advocate, reply to this and I'll be happy to discuss it with you. But first I'd like to say that my beef is with letterboxing, not widescreen.

    ObOntopic:

    By the way, isn't it strange that the DVD manufacturers' contract stipulates that a DVD player may not have a FireWire output? Doesn't FireWire have copy-protection built into it? Or does the movie industry not think FireWire's copy-protection is strong enough?

  • What if those "consumers" actually considered themselves as citizens, and, for example, got a law passed by the means of a referendum? Say, 60% of the citizens of a country vote "yes" to ban GM foods from their countries

    Then, as the WTO stands at the moment, the country will be penalised, fines will be imposed, the country trying to export the GM will be entitled to punitive countermeasures, it's just crazy...

    The WTO is about as profoundly antidemocratic an institution as money can buy. It's an abomination, no question, but until we're shot of it, all we can do is exploit the way it works. As a savagely rightwing prime minister of the UK once said, "you can't buck the market". And I for one would like to see her choke on those words.

    TomV

  • How do we get the message to the movie/entertainment industry that they are not the only producers of material for recording/playback devices? If I remember correctly, when DAT recorders first became available there was some hardware/software device which prevented the re-recording of recordings. This was, of course, intended to prevent the piracy of pre-recorded music. However, the birdwatchers, train spotters, amateur musicians etc, who wanted to distribute their own recordings were very angry at this.

    For DVD etc, there is considerable potential (probably even bigger than that for playback of entertainment material) for use in software archiving and distribution. Should we allow the entertainment industry to make the technology unusable by others, simply for their own selfish motives?

  • Re: HDTV, "Widescreen", and FireWire... (Score:3)

    by ostiguy ( 63618 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @05:01AM (#1046679)
    If it isn't letterboxed, you lose 43% of the picture when films are panned and scanned.

    Properly made DVD's (anamorphic letterboxed) are future proofed for HDTV, which *will* become ubiquitous (thank you FCC). Most movies are shot at 1.85, so they will look just nifty at 1.78 (16/9, current tvs are 4/3 (1.33).

    Even with HDTV, some classics like Chinatown (2.35) and Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia ( both 2.66 or so) will still be letterboxed because they were shot for the 70mm and other wider ratio formats.

    If you want to see the whole picture, you need leterboxing. Or, accept 43% less film, and watch cable.

    Matt
  • The 'PC World' will not prevail. There's no market incentive for it to prevail. [...] Businesses are tired of writing off entire fleets of PC hardware at the half point in the depreciation cycle

    Wait a minute -- you just gave the reason that the PC model will prevail. "Open" hardware standards have led to a situation where the obsolesce cycle is 18 months and dropping. Businesses might not like it, but they do like the fact that only one tenth of their IT budgets are end user hardware (the rest being labor, software, networks, and servers), and new machines are just a drop in the leaking bucket for them.

    Trust me, the DVD Forum would love to have a situation where you go out and buy new hardware and media every two years. Their turnover is barely around 10 years now. But they'll never get their -- and if the PC Industry buys into their closed hardware model, their revenues are going to go through the floor.

    PS - With a PC Junior from 1983 you can surf the web and can still write your great american novel. If the PC Junior would have shipped with a 386, I'm positive that Linux would be running on it right now.
    --
  • The TV will add black bars on the left and right sides, and since the movie is letterboxed, black bars will also appear on the top and bottom.

    Perhapse they will implement something my little portable DVD player does, and expand the image so the sides fit and the top and bottom are cut off. That would let you see it in widescreen even if it was encoded wrong, and would give better widescreen viewing of old VHS letterboxed stuff as well.

    :wq!

  • Redundant comment:

    I don't think it's only me thinking that if the MPAA wasn't making such a big fuss about piracy, people wouldn't have bothered that much to research into ways of how to pirate movies.

    The MPAA being all that frantic about piracy, it is really ASKING for piracy.

    So, to me that was a bit of a thing I was expecting sooner or later. I just expected it to be a bit more underground. And I will agree with the various posters who commented on the movie industry's greed. It makes me sick to think what else goes on their minds in the meantime and makes me VERY worried to think that if NOW they are THAT bad, what will they be like in 10-20 years or something...

    It's a bit ironic/twisted to think about it, but in the end movies like Mad Max and the Matrix (etc.) seem more and more of the foreseeable future rather than science fiction (if you get my gist)...

    anyway... lets hope they don't get their way on these things... :-/

    Trian
  • I love being able to choose whether I want subtitles or not as well as the spoken language (really loved watching Das Boot Director's Cut in German and in English). Commentary tracks are also great.

    Fortunately I got myself an RFC-1 DVD-ROM before they became extinct, so region coding really doesn't pose such a problem.

  • ...but it still brings up an interesting case that might be emulated to some extent in re-doing a pan & scan version of any movie.

    I sure hope you're not referring to using FlikFX [simplecom.net], which I hope to God really is a joke...

  • I've heard that if you enable the parent locks on the DVD player, American Pie will skip about 10 secs of footage (the bit involving the pie).
    And if you enable the "unfunny" lock it skips all the scenes with the father...
  • my little portable DVD player
    Are there any portable DVD players, with the little screen and the video out and the IR remote that can also be connected to a notebook via a PCMCIA connection to be used as a data drive for reading DVDs and CDs? I've got a little Ultralight PC that already has an external CD drive - if I could upgrade to a DVD drive that's also a standalone player and something I could hook into my TV/hifi that would be worth buying.
  • Yes, but remember, we're talking about a country that still hasn't managed to adopt the Metric system.

    --GnrcMan--
  • Thank you.

    With all the spiteful comments about the draconian crap being forced into DVDs you'd think that it was a life or death situation. While I understand that it's the thin edge of the wedge, it's really thin - they're just movies. I hope that a large percentage of the irate posts are from people trying to make a point while realising that this battle is but a trivial opening salvo in a war that might not even get started. There have been some good comparisons to GM foods, and I've read some stuff about AIDS treatments in Africa that also show this level of mindless, souless, corporate greed - but as far as DVDs go who cares?

  • You people watch far too much X-Files. OK, so they put an SDI interface on every DVD player,

    An Strategic Defense Initiative interface in every DVD player? Now we know what the lasers are really for. This will destabilize the peace that resulted from Mutually Assured Destruction! MPAA is trying to start a nuclear war!

    (Sorry, just having some harmless fun with your typo... But it really does sound like a pretty good X-Files plot idea.)


    ---

  • What if 60% of the citizens vote "yes" to kill all of the jewish citizens?

    What is the difference between "democracy" and "mob rule"?

    Regarding your .sig, as long as the luser is not a criminal then yes I would allow him/her to have a gun. Root access and the right to be able to defend oneself with a handgun are two very different things.

  • The point is: DVD players should have firewire output but don't. Most HDTVs and other consumer level digital video devices have firewire (my Sony camcorder does) so it would be natural to put it in DVD players. Unfortanely, the the MPAA and DVD consortium have blocked that from hapenning. If it is not conspiracy, why do the license contracts explicitly forbid firewire!?!?

    If history shows us anything, it is that technology will do an end-around marketing idiocy. This SDI hack is just an example of that.

    Thad

  • The problematic title of DMCA simply adopts unchanged a ban on circumenting TPMs that is part of an international treaty on copyrights, to which, I assume Britain is a signatory.

    So, yes, technically you are right that you don't have DMCA, but you still have the restrictions.

    In any case, since what this guy is doing is simply transforming the legally decoded signal, the anti TPM measures (whether DMCA or the European equivalent) do not apply.
  • I can certainly believe it.

    What I can't believe is that the DVD association lawyers would draft an agreement which forbade Firewire, but did not specifically require that players have exclusively analog outputs.
  • I've never quite understood people who don't like letterboxing. With Pan & Scan you loose like 40% of the picture. I'd much rather see movies the way they were filmed than have the edges chopped off. I personally don't buy DVD's that are not animorphic. Right now I watch them letterboxed, because I want to see the whole picture.

    If you have beef with those black bars "stealing" your TV's screen real-estate, try this as an alternative to those expensive HDTV's:

    1: Buy a bigger TV exclusively for watching widescreen films
    2: Cover the top and bottom portions of your screen with something to make it look like your screen has a 16/9 aspect ratio. Something matching the casing of your TV would be ideal.

    Voila! Instant Widescreen TV! :) Now, let's be honest here. As elegant as it seems at first glance, there are problems with this. Example: DVD menus are (for obvious reasons) not in widescreen format. Also, Galaxy Quest uses no less than 3 different aspect ratios at various points in the movie.

    --GnrcMan--

  • MPEG-2 recording? (Score:4)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Friday May 26, 2000 @05:18AM (#1046720) Homepage
    This device, as far as I can see from the New Scientist article, outputs _uncompressed_ digital data. That's fine if it's going straight to a screen, but would chew up enormous amounts of space to record.

    If you wanted to record from a DVD or from an MPEG-2 based digital TV transmission, you'd probably also use MPEG-2 or some other lossy compression to save on space. Certainly this is what the new digital VCRs (using a hard disk) do. And if you wanted to make a bootleg copy of a DVD, again you'd need to MPEG-2 compress the signal.

    But decompressing the disc's contents (even to a digital signal) and then recompressing them using a lossy algorithm will mean that the copy has reduced quality. So this is not a way to make perfect copies of DVDs, which supposedly is what the movie industry is scared of.

    It's also a rather inelegant solution to get MPEG-2 data from a disc, TV aerial or satellite dish, decompress it with a set-top-box, output it as an uncompressed video signal, and then recompress it again. Life will be much simpler once you can directly access the original MPEG-2 data. With DVDs this is via DeCSS (I think), and with digital television you would need the receiver part of an STB, without the part that turns the MPEG-2 into a video signal.

    Then you will be able to record directly from DVDs or TV transmissions onto your PC's hard disk, or onto a digital VCR. And you will then be able to make perfect copies (which you can do already with DVDs just by copying the disc, DeCSS and SDI outputs are red herrings for large-scale piracy). But you can't make perfect copies using this device, just pretty good copies.

  • "Piracy" is a canard (Score:5)

    by pointym5 ( 128908 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @05:47AM (#1046721)
    If you have a normal DVD player, go out and rent the movie "The Sixth Sense". Slap it in the player. Watch as previews for other movies come up on the screen. Reach for your remote and push the "DVD Menu" button. Watch as your DVD player says "no".

    That's what the MPAA wants the DVDCCA to protect: the "right" for them to control how you use the intellectual property they've sold you; or, as they'd have it, the intellectual property that they've given you precisely constrained access to. That's why DVD player manufacturers have to sign away their souls, and that's the real threat of DeCSS: if it's an open-source project, then somebody will port it to a mainstream platform like Windows, and then Mom and Dad can play DVD's without any manufacturer controls.

    Imagine a world where Lawn Boy figured out a way to control a lawnmower engine so that it'd only mow a particular type of grass. Got St. Augustine in the front yard and Bermuda out back? Fine, just buy the St. Augustine lawnmower for the front yard and the Bermuda mower for the back. Lawn Boy would of course license the technology to every other lawn mower manufacturer, all of whom would be ecstatic to have such a sales-boosting technology at their disposal. Then, of course, they'd all get together and tell the government that people who tinker with their lawnmowers to disable the "Grass Security System" are just doing it because they want to kidnap children and use the modified mowers for terrorist acts and drug-related murders. As a society, we must stand up to the criminal element and outlaw illegal mower mutilation.

    Nobody would willingly put up with a world like that except the people who'd stand to reap windfall profits. But that's really exactly what the MPAA wants.
  • the region code idea is monopolistic,


    And it is encouraged by law in some countries.

    and now we find out that the video signal is messed up in some way "to prevent copying," making the picture quality way less than what it should be.


    Uhm, I think we already knew that it was crippled. This article was just telling us that someone had a solution to the crippling problem.

    i've stuck with my trusty VCR for 10 years now, and it looks like i will not touch DVD unless one lands on my lap.


    The problem is that VCRs suck. The only reason that I don't have a collection of movies is because I refuse to invest money in video tapes other than for blanks to record TV shows I can't watch live. I'd buy DVDs, but I have no reasonable way to play them.

    this is a key example of a technology that could have revolutionized at least something, but instead being held back to its toddler years by greedy corporate-types. blah.


    Welcome to America. Enjoy the American dream as exercised by the DVD manufactors.
  • "Another claim was that DVD included some sort of on-the-fly editing feature that would use a cut list on the disk to do [...] other crazy tricks such as editing a R movie down to PG.

    [...]

    And the on-the-fly editing stuff appears to be complete vapor"

    I've heard that if you enable the parent locks on the DVD player, American Pie will skip about 10 secs of footage (the bit involving the pie).

  • Here's a simplified DVD player block diagram:

    Disc read electronics
    |
    v
    Decryption (CSS - heh)
    |
    | (Compressed MPEG2 format)
    v
    MPEG2 decoder
    |
    | (Uncompressed digital video)
    v
    NTSC encoder
    |
    | (Analog video with macrovision)
    v
    Output to TV
    The macrovision signal corruption is inserted by the NTSC encoder, which converts digital video to analog. Thus there are two places where you can pick up pristine digital video - the compressed MPEG2 stream and the uncompressed digital video.

    This article seems to be a bit confused as to which digital signal is being output. It mentions SDI which is uncompressed video, but then talks about 10 Mbits/s which is certainly compressed.

    The modification mentioned in the article isn't terribly challenging or exciting. The compressed MPEG2 stream is carried on the DVD's circuit board by (usually) 12 wires (8 data + 4 control) just waiting to be picked off by anyone competent in high-end electronics. The uncompressed video is even easier to get at. The major part needed is a high-speed parallel-to-serial converter [cypress.com]. SMPTE-259M refers to uncompressed SDI and DVB-ASI refers to compressed MPEG2.

  • Digital VCRs do exist. See a Slashdot story on digital VCRs [slashdot.org].

  • Apple can't sue them. Apple is as much a whore as anyone else. Apple has to do whatever the dvd consortum wants them to for the simple reason they need all those new imacs to be able to play dvds. The dvd consortum has _complete_ control-- if apple DARES defy them in the slightest way, apple is screwed. And if ANYONE, especially APPLE (with their lowly market share) would even CONSIDER the INSOLENCE of **SUING** the dvd consortum-- well then, let's just say some nasty things would happen to that person's dvd liscensing and css key. I doubt they'd still have any.

    "whatever the dvd consortum wants them to" is a pretty large number of things. The "apple dvd player" software disables screen captures [something which as far as i can gather would have to be done in the OS, NOT the player itself-- implying the restrictions of the dvd consortum extend to ALL apple's operations, not just the isolated dvd decoder app], refuses to run at the same time as macsbug*, and refuses to play MPEG-2 off the disk [although hacks exist to make it]

    *something which is TOTALLY rediculous if you know what that macsbug is, something which prevents anyone who is halfway to a programmer (including me) from using the apple DVD player without a horribly inconvenient restart first, but something which is totally neccicary when you consider macsbug will let you *gasp* take screen captures without the OS's consent!! ..as well as about, well, ANYTHING else you want. of course it's also futile, since if you REALLY wanted to you there IS some way to run macsbug anyway. you just have to try. as always, this doesn't injure any actual PIRATES since THEY will simply take whatever means neccicary and cannot be stopped. It only injures random people who use Macsbug so they can recover work after a crash, or because they write software, and suddenly have to turn it off if they want to watch DVDs.

    Oh, and did it ever occur to you to wonder why Quicktime does not have an MPEG-2 decoder? It isn't because apple doesn't have one written, i'll tell you that. The ONLY conceivable reason for the lack of MPEG-2 video codecs in quicktime 4 is that the dvd forum is preventing it. Here I am being directly hurt, because a technology apple could have provided to me, as a mac user, is being denied me because of something i have no use for. I am sitting here typing on a G4. It has a DVD. It wasn't that i wanted a dvd drive, just that by the time i bought this thing apple was no longer selling g4s WITHOUT a DVD drive, so i had no choice. I still own no dvds and have no real plan to buy any in the near future. I do, however, have great interest in MPEG-2, and would very much like to play m2vs i download off the internet (NO, these are NOT of pirated content). Yet the dvd forum attempts to prevent me from doing this even though they themselves are not the ones who created or own MPEG-2.

    At first, the reason i thought dvd would be cool was that i _could_ open the movies in quicktime, and do cool things, things like watch parts of the movies backward, or clip bits of sound and export them as AIFF to use as system sounds, or take screenshots and use them as my desktop pattern. These things seem COMPLETELY "fair use" to me, and seem to me to cause no damage the movie companies. However if i owned any dvds, i would be prevented from doing these perfectly ethical things, because the dvd forum commands it is so and apple obeys their every whim. Meanwhile the piracy continues unabated, because there is ALWAYS a way to pirate. If the 31337 W4R3Z3RZ can make vcds of movies _still in the theaters_, they can make vcds of dvds. This isn't what the MPAA cares about. The restrictions they force on apple are not to prevent me from pirating dvds; it's to prevent me from doing exactly the things i described above, like screenshots for desktop patterns. This is content control to prevent USAGE of the content by people who legally paid for the content in any way the dvd forum does not specifically allow, NOT to prevent piracy by other persons.
  • I've said it before and I'll say it again. Sneakers -- one of the most underappreciated movies of the 1990s -- said it best, through the character of Cosmo:
    The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data. It's all just electrons.
    and my favorite,
    There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think...
    it's all about the information!

  • Problem With Digital Interface (Score:5)

    by LaNMaN2000 ( 173615 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:08AM (#1046752) Homepage
    The problem with the digital interface that they are using is that it is only found on *very* high-end home theater equiptment. Most HDTVs (even high end ones) use the standard Firewire input to receive data from an external decoder or other digital video source. As a result, the DVD players that will ultimately come with this output will be priced to compete only in the high-end market (for the near future).

    In addition, most people do not even have HDTVs yet. As a result, their TVs cannot receive a digital input. Even if standard TV manufacturers built D/A converters into their sets, the signal wouuld have to undergo the same D/A conversion that currently takes place within the player, anyway.

    Since their is nothing preventing somebody from developing a device that will let this digital output connect to a firewire device, that should be the next product offering. As a result, people could ultimately get the firewire outputs, which the MPAA tried to eliminate, on their DVD players despite the manufacturers contractual agreement!

  • Can you BELIEVE this?! (Score:3)

    by Kintanon ( 65528 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:08AM (#1046753) Homepage Journal
    Garrett admits that his technology has been made possible by loopholes in Hollywood's contracts with DVD makers. "All the manufacturers of DVD players have signed an agreement not to provide a Firewire digital output. But there is no mention of SDI," he says. Firewire feeds high-quality video into computers.

    I can't believe that they had to sign a contract agreeing not to make a FIREWARE DVD player! Apple should sue the hell out of them.

    Kintanon

  • OK so it may not be an even battle, but the last paragraph in the article talked about actors, producers, etc wanting this, and having the money for it. Yet the studios don't want it. Well at least the actors have the money to fight for it. Maybe someday we'll see it.
    -cpd
  • This is somewhat off-topic, but I thought you might like to know. Somebody hacked the Apple DVD player so that it will run even with MacsBug installed. I don't recall where to get it, but try searching on versiontracker or MacNN. I think I read about it on MacNN. Anyway, I hear it works fine, and gets rid of those annoying restarts.
  • The chip itself is nothing special. What this means politically to the industry is a different matter entirely, everything we have seen with DeCSS and such shows that the movie industry is seeking to control video distribution formats, the existence of a loss-less digital out on domestic DVD player will further take control from them. The MPAA's paranoia against piracy is based on an unproven premise, that's is if it is possible to pirate then people will pirate. I disagree with this premise, the vast majority of people are honest who simply want to be able to buy a recording and play it back at their convenience. The people out there who are intent on pirating will do so regardless of what the authorities say or do. The final element in this particular equation is the home cinema buffs, the people who will do and pay almost anything to have the highest quality sound and video in the home. This kind of system will be demanded by them, they will flash their American Express platinum cards until a hardware vendor caves and gives it to them, then it's the express elevator to the budget store on the high street for the technology.

  • It's all about control (Score:5)

    by Gurlia ( 110988 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:13AM (#1046758)

    *Sigh* It's just sad to see how corporations today cripple technological advancement just for the sake of their bottom-lines...

    But Hollywood studio bosses are worried. They see the new system as a pirate's charter, and have been fighting to keep the pristine digital signal out of consumers' hands for fear that people will make broadcast-quality copies.

    The technology is already there (ie. the high quality data). But they have to cripple the output in the name of "avoiding piracy"??? What kind of greedy, profit-hogging attitude is this? I am disgusted. If you don't want your consumers to get at the "pristine digital signal" then why put it there in the first place??? Perhaps Hollywood should go back to using VHS for movies. If they want the technology, what's the point of deliberately crippling it? It's like buying a Formula 10 car with all the engine power in there, but with an additional device that restricts the horsepower that can be output, in the name of "driving safety". I mean, why do you sell an engine with that much horsepower if it's never intended to be used anyway?!

    This whole thing just stinks of greed and power lust (in terms of controlling what your consumers can do). What use is advanced technology if nobody can use it? (OTOH, of course, they are just asking for trouble by doing this. Surely they'd have learned by now that deliberately crippling something that's already there is a sure incentive for pirates and crackers.)


    ---

  • Re:Who does the MPAA represent? (Score:4)

    by Mark Gordon ( 14545 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @05:38AM (#1046763) Homepage
    Remember: Jack Valenti tried his hardest to kill home video, which now represents a very large revenue stream for the film industry. He hasn't really learned from that mistake, either. The problem is that the MPAA sees its goals as "minimizing unauthorized copying", whereas the studios have a goal of "maximizing profits". Where the two collide, the MPAA fails to represent the film industry. In practice, the best way to minimize unauthorized copying is never to produce anything, but that doesn't generate any profit.

    Part of the problem is that Valenti is hostile to any new technology, and his knee-jerk reaction is to try his best to stifle it. For the MPAA to serve the film industry better, the film industry needs to get rid of Valenti and replace him with someone a bit more forward-thinking.

  • The DVD format is so advanced, it does not exit any player which uses all features (yet).
    Sorry to say it bud, but nearly all PLAYERS support these features. Lets go down your list:

    Over 2 hours of high-quality digital video - Every DVD I own has at least 2 hours of video

    Support for widescreen movies on standard or widescreen TVs (4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios). - Most DVD's I own come in both formats. Some require you to flip sides, some make it a menu option (Bug's Life - Menu, Devil's Advocate - Flip disc)

    Up to 8 tracks of digital audio - Every DVD I own has more than one track. Some have 4 or 5 tracks

    Up to 32 subtitle/karaoke tracks. - "The Wedding Singer" hase several Karaoke tracks

    Automatic "seamless" branching of video - not sure what this is exactly, but I know my Pioneer DVD player supports it (says so in the manual)

    Up to 9 camera angles - supported - Ghostbusters has this (as do a few pornos I have too... hehe)

    Menus and simple interactive features - Every DVD I own...

    Multilingual identifying text for title name - Haven't seen this one on any of my DVD's but don't think it would be that big a hit in Region One anyway

    Instant rewind and fast forward - Every DVD I own

    Instant search to title ... - Every DVD I own

    Durable - Every DVD I own

    Not susceptible to magnetic fields. - Every DVD I own

    Compact size - Every DVD I own

    Noncomedogenic - Is this even a word?

    It is the disc's themselves that do not necisarily HAVE the features. Some do, Some don't. As far as I know, most PLAYERS support ALL the features. Some players are skimpy on things like Dolby Digital optical outputs (my Pioneer has em, the Apex DVD player does not) but the "features" of the DVD format are pretty much ALL supported by MOST players. Going down your list, I know for a fact that my (ancient) Pioneer 500 DVD player supports every single one of the features you list.

    Also, SDI (as I read the article) does not seem to have any built in resolution limitations. If you convert the SDI signal to a PAL signal, then yes, you will once again be downgrading the data.

    Just my thoughts on your thoughts...

    -CZ

  • "Now, if you have a normal TV (as most people do)"

    You're applying biased N. American perceptions. I was in the UK at Christmas a couple of years ago. Digital wide-screen TV's were all the rage, and there were even wide-screen television broadcasts. It seemed that half the TV's on sale were wide-screen. I'm sure the premiums on them have dropped a bit by. Surely there are other countries in the world where wide-screen is popular.
  • Criterion's Last Temptation of Christ does Pan and Scan on the fly, but I beleive that the portion of the film you see is a fixed subset of the image, i.e. it doesn't change co-ordinates at all during the film. This feature is not widely implemented because in P & S the portion of the image that is shown changes during the movie (its not always cntered on the same point) many DVD players do not handle the changes well, the image is jerky when during the change from one position to another. If this can be fixed the P & S on the fly would be a perfect solution. Widescreen HDTVs can be had for under $2500. I have the Toshiba TW40X81 which retails for $2200-$2500 coupled with a porgressive output DVD player, the image on anamorphic DVD is nothing short of stunning. Plus digital cable is coming in my area which will include some limited HDTV prgramming. I hear Braveheart is amazing in HDTV, can't wait to see it!

  • Uh, hello people... wake up... (Score:3)

    by pkj ( 64294 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @06:11AM (#1046776)

    There is absolutely nothing different between the output of this system and what you get from using DeCSS or even just watching a DVD movie on your monitor

    In fact, one of the DVD FAQs describes very clearly how to build a very high end home theater system using a PC with line doubling and anamorphic decoding to drive a high quality 1600x1024, 90 or 120 hz refresh, signal through a high end projector or large format plasma/CRT.

    The real issue is the one the got mentioned only in passing in the article, and that is the fact that it is trivial (and cheap) to build a small-scale pay-per-view delivery system for an environment such as a hotel... or perhaps something just a bit larger like your local broadband cable modem net.

    -p.

  • This gadget is claimed to take an MPEG2 stream and convert it to a digital stream for a SDI port.

    Okay - that's a fairly nice conversion chip, but there really interesting question is where in the DVD player is it getting that MPEG2 stream? As has so often been pointed out here on /., any encrypted stream has to be decoded at some point - even the 'secure' digital video displays must decode the stream just before putting the images up. So, this gadget must sit right after the DSS decoding and pick it's data up from there. But if it is that simple to pick up the data stream, would a simple hardware hack allow you to pick this data up and feed it into the computer? No DeCSS needed anymore - we'd just need to fly a cable around inside our PC's off the DVD ROM to, say, a high speed serial or ethernet port and slurp away.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • we need someone with some power to stand up against the DVD "elite" (more likely, seeing the DeCSS code, the DVD l33t). After i read this article and the essays on OpenDVD.org [opendvd.org] i got sick to my stomach. We think Microsoft is screwing consumers (because they are), but look ot the MPAA and the DVD Consortium. they are terrible. the region code idea is monopolistic, the second-rate scrambling system sucks (but we're not allowed to do anything about it), and now we find out that the video signal is messed up in some way "to prevent copying," making the picture quality way less than what it should be. they are allowed to continue this reign of terror under the guise of *copyright*. give me a break. i've stuck with my trusty VCR for 10 years now, and it looks like i will not touch DVD unless one lands on my lap. thank God for LiViD. otherwise i would hate it even more than i do. this is a key example of a technology that could have revolutionized at least something, but instead being held back to its toddler years by greedy corporate-types. blah.

  • Wonderful! (Score:3)

    by Eccles ( 932 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @04:21AM (#1046781) Journal
    The more there are these uses for getting the raw DVD data, the harder it's going to be for the MPAA to get roadblacks enacted. This isn't a toy for a bunch of hackers (as important as you and I may see that to be), it's businesses with sound (and more understandable to the common man) justifications for bypassing anti-copying provisions. Hopefully its existence will even help the DeCSS case.

  • ITU-R-601 (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Friday May 26, 2000 @06:16AM (#1046786) Homepage
    Why don't we use the ITU-R-601 digital video format for everything? It is an uncompressed, digital form of PAL and NTSC. The data rate is 270 Mb/sec, which shouldn't be a problem over the short distances used for equipment interconnects. It would avoid the expense and artifacts introduced by multiple compression/decompression operations in the video path.
  • i think what he meant (or at least what i took it to mean) was Apple should sue them because they own the copyright/trademark/whatever it's called for the name "FireWire", and you *may not* use that term unless you pay apple. but i could be wrong.
  • The MPAA's plan is to allow encrypted digital video outputs, with decryption in the monitor. Decryption chips will be equipped with anti-tamper self-destruct features (an existing technology, but one previously seen only in military crypto gear.) This was all discussed on Slashdot about two months back in one of the DeCSS discussions. Intel will start shipping the support ICs for this around August.

    The copy-protection mess is so bad that the new generation of cable set-top boxes won't talk properly to digital TV monitors. The FCC is trying to get both sides together on this. [fcc.gov]

  • I would guess that up to a third of DVDs that the movie in widescreen also have it in pan & scan. Some are 2-sided, some are not. Early on DVDs were single layer. Now the manufacturing process for dual layer DVDs is commonplace many newer DVD use this format.

    P & S on the fly is not vapor, I know of at least one title that uses this, Last Temptation of Christ, the problem is with the players not showing a smooth images when the co-ordinates of the P& S images moves across the image. If/when this is rectified (bigger image buffers maybe) P& S on the fly will probably become more widespread.
  • Have a look at my other comment [slashdot.org]. It's not very hard to pick off the compressed MPEG2 stream, or the uncompressed digital video. The reason it's not more common is that building a converter to go from a byte-wide MPEG2 stream to anything your PC will like (say, 100M Ethernet, SCSI etc.) is non-trivial and out of the reach of the average person who wants to get the data from their DVD.

    If you're really interested in doing this, here's a DVB-ASI receiver for the PCI bus [compumodules.com]. Combine this with the HOTlink parallel-to-serial converter [cypress.com] that goes in your DVD player, and voila, compressed video comes out of the DVD and into your PC.

  • PAL has a resolution of 625x360 pixels. DVD is encoded with 720x480 pixels.

    Actually, PAL video has a pixelcount of 360x576 (the horizontal count is always quoted first, and a lot of scanlines are part of the vertical blank period, which is where the player inserts that Macrovision bullshit). And IIRC the digital standard oversamples by 2 anyway, giving a full 720x576 pixels.

  • The real interesting piracy hacks will start appearing when DVD-Rs hit the scene in a big way

    Not necessarily. DVD-R media costs more than the average stamped DVD; bootlegging is unprofitable.

  • FireWire(TM) is Apple's brand of IEEE 1394 high-speed serial connection. Contracts that I've read (IANAL, but I do read everything I sign, including EULAs) tend not to name a lot of brand names; if they do, they also have heavy generic equivalent language to keep exactly this from happening.

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