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Pirates have apparently found a way to bypass the High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) v2.2 DRM used on Netflix's Ultra HD (UHD = 3840×2160 resolution) content. The release group iON has uploaded a 17.73 gigabyte, 2160p/UHD copy of Breaking Bad's first episode:
The media info for the release shows that the episode has a bit rate of 41.3 Mbps and overall the video specs make it hard to play the file smoothly on the average computer. At the time of writing the 4K leak is only available on private torrent trackers but it's expected to eventually leak to public sites as well. It's currently unknown if the release group broke HDCP 2.2 or if they found another way to capture the stream.
Leaked drafts of the 4K copy protection agreement between Sony and Netflix reveals that the streams are generally well-protected. They also include a watermark so that leaks can be traced back to the source. "The watermark must contain sufficient information such that forensic analysis of unauthorized recorded video clips of the output video shall uniquely determine the account to which the output video was delivered," the document reads.
Netflix informs TF [Torrent Freak] that they are looking into the reported leak and the company will do its best to prevent similar breaches in the future. "Piracy is a global problem. We, like others[sic] content providers, are actively working on ways to protect content featured on our site," a Netflix spokesperson told us.
The torrent description mentions that the file is an "HDMI cap of UHD Netflix with a lossless capture card, encoded with x264." The use of H.264 encoding accounts for the relatively massive file size and bit rate, since Netflix uses H.265/HEVC to encode and deliver UHD streams at a bit rate of about 15.6 Mbps, far less than the 41.3 Mbps seen here.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:28PM
If you go by the numbers I put in the summary, Netflix's H.265 storage of a 4K Breaking Bad episode is probably closer to 6.7 gigabytes. That brings the total down to 415 gigabytes.
4K early adopters are likely to have the money to grab a 5 or 8 terabyte drive for throwing content onto. After years of drives being stuck at $30-33/TB, it seems 5 TB drives have dipped down to $22-24/TB [slickdeals.net]. As for 4K equipment, the $1000 and $700 price points for cheap 4K monitors are now old news. You can get one for as low as $350 [tomshardware.com] to $400 [tomshardware.com].
4K is an interesting novelty, but the H.265 Netflix is using to stream it is a much bigger deal. x265 encoded 720p and 1080p rips are very small. If you ignore 4K and even 1080p and use 720p as your quality target, file sizes are dropping. That's the opposite of "size is the new DRM". Hardware decoding typically isn't needed for H.265 720p (it may be needed for 1080p and higher).
Finally, there are number of successors to H.264/H.265 appearing that could lower filesizes even further:
Google Claims VP9 Success as New Video Codecs Appear [soylentnews.org]
Since we ran that story, this appeared: Cisco Working On Next-Generation Royalty-Free 'Thor' Video Codec [tomshardware.com]
Google says the release schedule for successors to VP9 will be accelerated to 18 months. Given the above contenders continuing to work on new codecs, it's probable that H.266 and comparable codecs will appear sooner rather than later. There was a 10 year gap between H.264 (2003) and H.265 (2013). Since the humble days of 2003, video consumption has exploded, video streaming has displaced fixed optical disc schemes, global Internet access has increased, and the use of power/bandwidth constrained mobile phones has increased. There's much more need and competition for newer codecs, even ignoring the adoption of 4K/8K display resolutions. Hardware support for new codecs is an issue, but that will happen faster too.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:58PM
Going by the summary. It's in the first row, iON released ... The file we are talking about here is "Breaking.Bad.S01E01.Pilot.2160p.NF.WEBRip.DTS.x264-iON.mkv" and that was just shy of 18 gigs in size; 17.73 it says when I look at it without downloading. That is the only numbers that are interesting or even in the summary.
The other numbers are from the mediainfo of the file and some hypothetical assumption that someone would want to re-encode the episode in some other way or fashion. A H265 re-encode of that would slash the size of the file radically, no doubt about that, but that isn't what they released. One reason for that could be that H265 just isn't "scene standard" as of yet. But with that in mind there already are re-encodings of it at H265 and it sized in at 4.66 Gb.
All I noted was that as an 18 gig episode that is more or less it's own DRM by size alone. It's a novelty release at best. It might be interesting to see how many times that gets downloaded but I doubt it will be all that many - that might not be all about size tho but more about the fact that it's an old episode and people that wanted to see BB has probably seen it by now and the repeat viewing value is not that high. From the comments I have seen so far about the file the visual result was not all that impressive either even if you had all the right equipment. Clearly not worth an 18 gig download.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:38PM
Sure it's a novelty release. It's basically a proof of concept. But it is something that could become routine and a sign of an increasing amount of 4K content available in general and on torrent sites.
There's nothing hypothetical about it. Netflix uses H.265 for all 4K streaming... so it is content that was served up as H.265, captured "losslessly" using a capture card, and re-encoded as H.264. If the group had used H.265 instead, maybe the initial filesize would have been closer to 4 or 7 GB. The 17 GB filesize isn't the point. Cracking the DRM could lead to sudden growth of available 2160p content. Now that 4K displays have dropped from over $1000 to as low as $350 (for an admittedly mediocre spec 4K display), 4K viewing could become more mainstream.
As for the scene and H.265, it is becoming more common, as I've noted. There will be H.264 releases for years to come, but it's not hard for the scene or others to upload both versions for each resolution. Especially when the file sizes are so low. H.265: 150-250 MB for 45-minute 720p, and maybe 500 MB for 1080p. You could basically fit 3-4 720p episodes of a show onto a CD, where DVD used to be necessary for under 720p.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:38PM
> From the comments I have seen so far about the file the visual result was not all that impressive either even if you had all the right equipment.
Source material is pretty shitty. Breaking Bad was a sleeper hit, not a marquee production so they didn't have much budget for the first couple of seasons. A 4K rip of House of Cards is also floating around out there and is reported to look fantastic. HoC was also shot on digital which tends to make compression more efficient too.