An alleged copy of an Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc has appeared online, leading to speculation that AACS 2.0 has been cracked:
While there is no shortage of pirated films on the Internet, Ultra-high-definition content is often hard to find. Not only are the file sizes enormous, but the protection is better than that deployed to regular content. UHD Blu-Ray Discs, for example, are protected with AACS 2.0 encryption which was long believed to unbreakable.
A few hours ago, however, this claim was put in doubt. Out of nowhere, a cracked copy of a UHD Blu-Ray Disc surfaced on the HD-focused BitTorrent tracker UltraHDclub. The torrent in question is a copy of the Smurfs 2 film and is tagged "The Smurfs 2 (2013) 2160p UHD Blu-ray HEVC Atmos 7.1-THRONE." This suggests that AACS 2.0 may have been "cracked" although there are no further technical details provided at this point. UltraHDclub is proud of the release, though, and boasts of having the "First Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc in the NET!"
[...] If the encryption has indeed been broken it will be bad news for AACS, the decryption licensing outfit that controls it. The company, founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel, has put a lot of effort into making the technology secure.
"Atmos" refers to Dolby Atmos (see PDF list).
[Update: It is fitting to note that one of our most prolific story submitters happened to garner submission number 20,000! Congrats and many thanks to Takyon, and to all the rest of the SoylentNews community who have made this achievement possible. --martyb]
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:24PM (3 children)
The annoying part of these content wars is that there seem to be no really good sources for streaming recent movies outside of pay TV subscriptions. I record HD off an antenna with MythTV and will NEVER have any interest in any pay TV. However I very much would be glad to pay even the price of a movie ticket to stream HD movies. From what I see however options like Netflix and Amazon quite simply suck balls, with mostly a bunch of B-movie crap, and they go out of their way to keep the degree to which they suck a deep dark secret.
I can't be alone with that one. My guess is that this, to a large extent, is because of the movie industry being afraid of anything that might cut into Blu-ray sales. They may be creating a situation where the only ones who can afford to offer that are the players who are already billing you $100+ a month.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @09:32PM
https://hdonline.to/ [hdonline.to]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @10:20PM
netflix and amazon are only crap if you have to watch brand new blockbuster type releases
their back catalog is pretty good
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday May 05 2017, @02:26AM
If you're willing to pay movie ticket prices, you can rent through iTunes.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?