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The closure of SlySoft is having a chilling effect on another commercial provider of copy protection circumvention software:
The company behind the popular DVDFab software has announced it will not be supporting decryption of the enhanced Advanced Access Content System (AACS) that will be used to protect new Ultra HD (4K UHD) Blu-ray discs. The announcement comes just a day after rival copying software company SlySoft confirmed its closure.
[...] Under pressure from AACS LA, a decryption licensing outfit founded by a group of powerful Hollywood movie studios and various technology partners, SlySoft first went dark and then announced its closure this week. And now, in the space of just a couple of days, another DVD/Blu-ray copying software company also appears to be feeling the heat.
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Like SlySoft, China-based Fengtao Software has also been involved in a dispute with AACS LA and in 2014 was the subject of a preliminary injunction after a court found that DVDFab violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. In 2015 a federal court in New York extended the injunction, further pressuring the company. Then yesterday, just a day after the closure of SlySoft, Fengtao dropped a bombshell of its own. In a press release sent to Myce the company announced that DVDFab will not be updated to crack the Advanced Access Content System encryption that will be present in the next generation of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs.
"The next version of AACS Copy Protection accompanying those newly released Ultra HD Blu-ray titles is the version 2.0 of Advanced Access Content System. According to a document called AACS 2.0 Draft, the new copy protection requires the Ultra HD Blu-ray players to support two AACS 2.0 functionalities, one named 'basic' and the other referred as 'enhanced'," the company said in a statement. "Fengtao Software Inc. makes it clear that the company will not decrypt or circumvent AACS 2.0 in the days to come. This is in accordance with AACS-LA, (which has not made public the specifications for AACS 2.0), the BDA and the movie studios."
Noting that the debate over copying commercial movie discs for home use has "raged on for decades", Fengtao says that the practice of decrypting copy protection technology has done so too and is not likely to stop in the foreseeable future. Even the fact that AACS 2.0 requires an Internet connection for Ultra HD Blu-ray discs to be played back for the first time is unlikely to stop the problem. "Now here comes the question: will there be a solution to crack AACS 2.0? Likely, there will be, publicly or secretly," the company says. Nevertheless, Fengtao insists that it won't be behind the effort.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:06PM
Can anyone really say BR is much better? If I can rip BR to disk I might get them, but I feel there is no compelling reasons as long as they are
a) hard to rip
b) not much better
c) more expensive.
Beside I can rip and transcode a DVD in 5 minutes, not sure I need much more improvement!!!
It's a shame the big media corps screwed up BR-RW as that would have been a nice competitor to SSD maybe...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Celestial on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:19PM
I found the jump in quality from 480p DVDs to 1080p Blu-Ray substantial. However, the jump from 1080p to 4K resolution much less so. No, what makes 4K Ultra High Definition worth it (for me at least), is HDR (high dynamic range), and 10-bit color gamut. You can really notice the difference between the highlights and shadows. Not only that, but it goes from 16 million possible colors on DVDs and Blu-Rays to over a billion possible colors in 4K UHD.
So, IMO, yes, the jump in quality from DVDs to 4K UHD is quite a leap.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @02:23AM
It depends on the movie. For your standard comedy it does not matter much. But for some explosion fest like the avengers it ia noticeable.
I have found newer movies really take advantage of it. While older movies look much better but you do not really gain much. The older movies really benefit from the new scan they do and the 20 some years of advancement of digital scanning and cleanup they do. I would not mind for example getting a new copy of lethal weapon and mad max beyond thunderdome. Both being fairly poor transfers. The brightness is terrible and the telicline transfer is very noticeable. Both being a couple of the very first DVDs released ever.
Just watch out for some of the older blurays. The first ones that came out were little more than re-encodes of previous DVD scans. For example I bought commando when it first came out on bluray. The difference between it and the DVD version were unperceptible. Goonies was much the same way.
I buy bluray for movies I know I really like. But for 'hm not sure' I get a DVD.
At this point though the price difference is getting smaller and smaller in some cases in favor of the bluray. My wife bought me a bunch of movies for Christmas. I specified DVD for many of them. For a few though she got bluray anyway. She flatout told me they were priced better. Even then they usually came with both.
Out of my 2200 dvd collection I have *maybe* a couple dozen or so that I would actually upgrade.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tempest on Monday February 29 2016, @01:36PM
Subtitles are substantially cleaner.
(Score: 2) by rob_on_earth on Monday February 29 2016, @02:24PM
Bought my first BluRay disk last week "Pixels".
It was the same price as some other DVDs and I expected it to have a ton of extras. The movie was fun, nothing special, but it did look better than DVD but there were only a collection of 5min specials that did not offer anything.
The BluRay adverts in the past were punting interactive games, multiple commentaries, PIP interviews, on screen facts and links, multiple viewing angles etc.
I think I have been mislead.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kazzie on Monday February 29 2016, @05:22PM
What you're forgetting is that they needed all these extra features to tempt the first wave of adopters to buy Blue Ray instead of DVD.
Now that many* people own Blue Ray players and have started their library, they've already been hooked.
I'm sure the likes of Peter Jackson crammed their discs with all the bells and whistles you mentioned, but I'm still playing the DVD game here.
*not all, I know