Of course consumers can already do this. Have been since DeCSS was invented. Just not with brand-name software, is all.

“The potential audience is huge, the Warner executive said, given that about 10 billion DVDs have been sold in the U.S. and another 10 billion overseas.”

I don’t know about you, but 20 billion of anything seems like a lot of something. Especially when you consider that is over a 14 year period(ish). The way they spin it, they make it sounds like they never sell any DVDs at all these days.

Also no one seemed to spot the big problem here. What shops are going to do this? Electronic Stores? Doubtful, they would rather sell you an extra disc. Grocery/Convience(sp?) stores? Oh yeah because every one there is versed in technology.

This also forgets to mention the fact that a hacker could just embed the meta data the machine gives to any copy they make. Rip it your self, add a modified signature, BAM, all your DVD transcribed from a Disc to your Hard Drive.

Just ignore the fact that it is already in a digital format, and you are paying for some one else to do the copy for you.

“have always failed and will always fail, because of the mentality of maintaining control.”

You are wrong here, they fail because the standards that allow for the disc to be played are based on the chips that can be gotten for cheap. So you can just use a more powerful computer to do it for you. Also to maintain usability across the board, newer players must use the same instruction set.

They would be better off giving the customers an h264 mp4 of the movie unlocked with the audio/subtitle sub tracks. Just make sure it is just the movie portion. No need to have special features. If i want to watch those i am going to grab the disc anyway. Ripping a DVD takes a fair amount of time. Copying from a DVD to drive is a lot easier and would increase my willingness to buy a DVD instead of renting/getting it mailed to me.

Also since we are using the standard mp4 format, we can fit it nicely on a standard size DVD. We can also convert it to other formats that suit individual devices easily using Handbrake. Alas this would only add the customer experience and we can not let that happen.

Darth Lamar: *bows* What is thy bidding, my master?
Emperor Dodd: There is a great disturbance in the world.
Darth Lamar: I have felt it.
Emperor Dodd: We have a new enemy. Digital technology.
Darth Lamar: Yes, my master.
Emperor Dodd: It could destroy us.
Darth Lamar: It’s just a format. Megaupload can no longer help it.
Emperor Dodd: The people are strong with it. Our content must not escape our control.
Darth Lamar: If it could be locked down, it can be controlled.
Emperor Dodd: Yes, yes, it could be so secured. Can it be done?
Darth Lamar: Content will be ours or die, master.

“And unfortunately I’m sure there are people who would use it too.”

If you change “I’m sure” to “I know without a doubt”, that statement would be more accurate.

Every time I run into people who tell me oh I took my computer to Geek Squad I just inwardly groan, then explain to them (before they have a chance to tell me what was done or how much they paid) that they got ripped off and that for maybe a fifth of whatever they did get charged, I would’ve done the same work in less time.

Then again, I actually make it a point to find out what Geek Squad charges for what services. That way I can then tell people who come to me those prices for said services and point out that I am the better choice. I’m a one man operation, but I guarantee my work no matter what. Unless you f*ck something up after the fact, no free fixes for your own mistakes/stupdity. That’s my rule.

Well its 39.99 to install RAM at best buy. A new dvd with a digital copy is about 29.99. So I am guessing this will be a mere 19.99 per disc.

Just rip your damned DVDs yourself. I garantee you they wouldnt even come after you if they found out about it. They are too afraid of what will happen if they try to prosecute people for making backup copies or moving their content to other platforms they will never prosecute it. The ruling would come down that it is perfectly acceptable to make backup copies, and then they would be screwed.

(1976) VHS released to the public. Not without a battle of course Sony has gained through legislative means the power to have a monopoly on Japan using the Betamax format JVC fought back.

(1996) DVD is introduced to the market.

(2001) HD DVD/Blu-ray Disc.

But note that, those are not the only formats launched, there is a trail of failures before each new standard starts to get some traction in the market, with the exception of the Bluray which was not something decided by the market but by a coalition of companies and still didn’t catch up with the DVD.

Leaving the conspiracy theories behind of why people keep putting out formats and trying to make those the dominant one, here is the thing, because there are so many formats today, if people were to fallow the law to the letter, they would need to buy on machine for each format available and have many devices to play each format, that obviously isn’t going to happen people either will buy at most one or two or use one device that can play them all.

The Irony in this jungle of formats is that it motivated people to find a common solution that could attend to that need, people found a universal player and that is a computer and with smartphones becoming ubiquitous and Raspberry PI costing only $35 one can see what is happening.

People are no longer limited by one device they can have it all in one, what most people doesn’t know is that there is no difference between hardware and software aside that one is implemented physically and the other is in code, it took decades for people to realize what computer and engineers already knew. You can build your on VCR or DVD or Bluray or whatever device you want in software, there is no going back to physical stores anymore that need was killed off by the very industry that wanted to capitalize on new formats and slashed the release cycle to do so.

Explain to people why they should pay for a Bluray player when they can just dump the data and play it with a $35 dollar costing device?

That is why digital files are so popular that is why nobody is going back to single user devices.

Now there is a catch, every time you encode something it loses quality do it enough times and it will be as bad as a damaged VHS tape, but people don’t realize that formats fade away and could be unreadable in a few years so they don’t have a need today to find a lossless video format, for music that already happened FLAC will encode the sounds losslessly and everybody can just use “select a folder for conversion” and it will do it for you in minutes because music take so much less space.

Another problem is how do you store that data safely, if it is all in one HDD if it breaks you lose everything, but if you use something like a Drobo it becomes less but it is expensive, so there is RAID + Virtual Filesystems that can do something similar but they are still complicated and buying 2 drives to make a backup copy seems expensive, so what people do? They rely on others to have the same things and trade between them since 80% of the people are in the low wage section of the societal pyramid one can be sure that this behavior is wide spread because it saves financial resources, but some have noticed that those people can pay for it and capture a lot of pennies from a lot of people and more importantly in a way that encourages reoccurring expending by using ultra low prices and supplementing that income with ad revenue, that is exactly what the entertainment industry and artists in general will never understand but will be forced to accept sometime in the future no matter how much they complain, is not about one or two songs, is about setting the price at $0.001 so the people can enjoy more media then never before, spend money without noticing how much they spend and don’t getting afraid of “bill shock” kind of things and becoming comfortable in using a cloud storage to backup their own collections, which already can be done on the cheap with things like GmailFS which is a virtual filesystem that uses Gmail accounts to store data. You can do that to any webmail service out there is like writing an email manager (aka: Outlook, Thunderbid, Evolution, etc), but instead of sending mail you are sending encrypted chunks of data that are parts of your filesystem. So there is window here a very brief one, if the entertainment industry doesn’t start offering those things quickly people will figure it out how to do it on their own and inertia will work against them again just like it is working against them with the “piracy” fantasy they created which is the market telling them you forgot about a large segment of the population and let them on their own and they found a way now they teach other how it is done and they are not going to comeback to do it in a more difficult way just because you want them too, that ain’t happening.

Copyright sure is confusing.

Well, they can get permission to copy the disc, but then they still can’t copy it because it is illegal to “break the lock”.

Also, what happens when they authorize it, and don’t even realize it, and take it down!

Myself and Karl were just discussing them the other day in I forget which article. It was that lawsuit, which was heavily stacked against mp3.com who was already being labeled as expressly contributing and allowing copyright infringement, that can be directly pointed to as the event that set cloud computing and storage behind by over a decade. We’re just now catching up to where we should’ve been a little over a decade ago, if things had been allowed to progress naturally that is. And once again, cloud storage is being attacked, this time more directly (as was the case with Megaupload) as opposed to letigiously (as was the case with mp3.com).

indeed, it take my server atleast that long to convert something to proper format for my roku. Couple hour home videos can take upwards of an hour if it is doing other things. I would gladly trade 10 minutes for a copy that i have to do nothign with then spend the time ripping it/converting it.

After lets go throw puppies in the river.

Yes, they want you to pay them that a feature they removed from your original purchase. They also expect you to be happy and excited by this.

These people get laws written for them….

And the answer always is? No, they wouldn’t. Not at all, in the worst world you can imagine.

Slysoft is hiding in the Carribean.

Also, their solution isn’t terribly n00b friendly. It certainly doesn’t raise to the level of something like iTunes or Kaledescape.

Why bother degrading the original audio? Just keep it and use a player that actually knows what to do with it.

Because you can maintain both sets of audio at once, and not waste extra processing power to take a 6 channel discrete and force it back to stereo.