Techdirt. Stories filed under "hd"

Indie Film Maker Is Creating A DRM-Free Open HD Video Format

Zachary Knight — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:27:00 PDT

In most areas of entertainment, DRM is an option. If you want to publish an ebook, you don't have to use DRM. Same for video games and music. While these others areas of entertainment are moving away from DRM, there is one prominent holdout on the DRM front: movies. Every official distribution and streaming service for the movie industry has some form of required DRM. This includes streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix, download services like Amazon and iTunes, and even the physical media such as DVD and Blu-ray. According to the larger studios, DRM is a necessity, even though its effectiveness is questionable at best and customers hate it. But what about those studios that want to deliver a High Definition experience without the burden of DRM? What choices do they have? If all they want to do is allow people to stream or download the movie, they have plenty of options, but what if they want to include the full feature list available via Blu-ray?

This is one quandary that Terry Hancock of Free Software Magazine found himself facing a little over a year ago. He had been working on two films and wanted a High Definition feature rich experience without the hassle of Blu-ray DRM. He had looked at multiple options, many of which fell a little flat in the end. However, one stood out as the most reasonable option for what he wanted to do. He had to write his own open, DRM-free, HD video standard.

Thanks to Nina Paley, we learn that Terry has started a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund the creation of this open HD video standard called, Lib-ray. Terry describes the motivation behind this campaign as follows:

This may sound like a quixotic goal for a lone individual without corporate backing to develop, but most of the money spent on developing Blu-Ray was spent on the DRM technology -- meaning the technology to make it not play under certain circumstances. The actual business of getting menus and video to work is much simpler, and a lot of the work has already been done. So a format without DRM, based on open standards is intrinsically more attainable.

Think about that. Designing DRM is designing ways in which your movie will not play. Why would anyone want to waste time and money on such an idiotic goal? You would think that movie producers would want people to watch their movies. This idea is what pushed Terry to this point. Why waste time and money on using a DRM'ed media like Blu-ray to release what he wants to be a free culture movie? Even if he tried to work around the DRM of Blu-ray, there is no guarantee that the movies would play in standard Blu-ray players and he would still have to deal with licensing issues.

Terry has not set himself up for disappointment with this standard. He recognizes that it will not unseat Blu-ray as the mass market standard but rather is looking at this for use as a promotional format for those who want to distribute physical media. His examples include using the standard for films as Kickstarter rewards or to distribute films at conventions. There are a lot of opportunities for this to be successful in the indie scene.

On top of this, Terry plans to make the standard completely open and open source. While he does not have an open source web destination yet, he plans to have one ready soon. This choice is probably the key to gaining a more wide spread adoption. If he had tried to keep it locked up in the same way as Blu-ray or DVD, it would never take off.

I applaud the effort Terry is putting into this project. However, it is frustrating that such a project needs to exist. The insistence of the movie studios that all distribution of their films be burdened with DRM is not only ineffective, but it is also harming indie artists who would love to access the features without the restrictions and massive licensing fees. Hopefully, this project will succeed and give those artists the control (or lack of control) they want over their work.

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UK Regulators Allow BBC To DRM Its Content

Mike Masnick — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:04:44 PDT

Following on the US FCC's decision to let Hollywood add some DRM to movies it broadcasts to television, it looks like UK regulators Ofcom have gone even further in allowing the BBC to similarly use a form of DRM to try to stop copying of HD programming. Not surprisingly, this also came at the request of the entertainment industry. But, again, this seems to be about breaking what your technology allows, just so that the entertainment industry can have the illusion of control. The reports all say things like "This will allow broadcasters to stop piracy of shows," but that's patently ridiculous. There are always ways around these blocks for those who really want to get there -- and those shows will still end up online just as quickly (or maybe a few seconds later). And at that point, the locks are meaningless... except to folks who didn't want to have to buy an expensive locked down settop box that is required to view this kind of content. It's an incredibly anti-consumer move that has little to no benefit to the entertainment industry, other than in their minds.

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Dish Network Lies About Having 200 HD Channels, Hopes Nobody Notices

Karl Bode — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:50:30 PDT

For several years TV carriers have enjoyed bickering over which company has the most HD channels, in part because it creates a debate focused on perceived value -- and steers the conversation away from who offers the lowest prices (or the fact that companies seem to impose annual or bi-annual TV hikes in unison). Carriers only just recently surpassed the 100 HD channel count, so it was surprising this week when Dish Network suddenly and proudly announced that the company was the first to pass the 200 HD channel mark -- insisting "only DISH Network has delivered" on this supposedly-epic promise. Except amusingly, Dish Network didn't bother to include a full list of the channels they added, and when reporters and bloggers on the TV/telecom beat started asking Dish questions, the company started getting a little bit uncomfortable:

"I asked Dish Network's PR department for a list of the 200 HD channels, numbered from 1 to 200. Not too surprising, the company was evasive, saying the 200 HD channels could be found at its web site. However, when I told them I could not locate more than around 130 HD channels listed at DishNetwork.com, the company's PR department got even more evasive -- and started to act a bit strange. At one point, a company spokeswoman said she could give me a breakdown of the 200 HD channels on "background only," meaning I couldn't attribute the information to Dish Network."

As it turns out, Dish's marketing department had gotten creative -- and was suddenly counting 57 different On Demand movie titles as"channels" (the Alvin & The Chipmunks 2 channel, anyone?) and just hoped that nobody would notice. So instead of being seen as the TV operator that offers the most HD channels, Dish Network is now being seen as the TV operator who assumes everybody is stupid, which we'll assume wasn't what the company's PR department was aiming for.

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