Why Warner’s Blu-ray decision hurts pirates, regular consumers
- January 8th, 2008
- Read 5549 times
- 13 Comments
Thanks, AP
Warner’s decision to exclusively back Blu-ray definitely hurts pirates and could, in the long run, hurt regular consumers, too.
By all indications, right now, Blu-ray has the momentum to “win” the format war, especially if the reports suggesting Paramount will switch to it turn out to be true. That would leave Universal as the only major studio exclusively in the HD DVD camp. You can bet that won’t last long.
Pirates should care about this because Blu-ray disc is harder to crack than HD DVD; BD+, the new copy protection that even gave dedicated Blu-ray players problems a few months ago, hasn’t been cracked yet. (Even if it were cracked, new discs would ship with another copy protection mechanism and the appropriate firmware to decode it on stand-alone players.) That means no more high-def rips of movies. That’s not good for pirates like me. Pay for a movie? Yeah, OK.
Regular, law-abiding consumers could be bitten, too. Literally days after Warner’s announcement, Sony raised the price of its BDP-S300 player from $299 to $399, or by 33 percent. Thanks, Sony.
In any event, it’s still unknown whether or not high-def discs will catch on in the same way that DVDs did. DVDs look “good enough” you here from the non-technologically inclined people. Why upgrade to a multi-hundred dollar player and then have to pay $30+ for new movies when DVDs cost half that?
I’m pretty much just rambling, but I think people would be well advised to look at this Blu-ray/HD DVD development a little more closely. One thing’s for sure: PS3 now looks a little more attractive, being that it’ll play the now de-facto high-def discs and video games, whenever companies get around to releasing decent ones for the system.
BD+ has been cracked btw
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/22/bd-crack-released
BD+ has been cracked
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/22/bd-crack-released
That doesn’t actually *crack* BD+ but allows it to be played on a specific piece of software. You can’t actually futz around with the files on the discs, like, say, ripping it and then burning it onto a separate blank disc.
-nd
Yep it hurts me..Them bastards Sony already raising the prices of there crappy players. I will safely say i will never ever own a blu ray disk player or crapstation 3. I think there is room for both formats and a hybrid disk player. I wonder how many millions of $$ Sony bribed Warner with to breach HD-DVD contract and switch to blu-ray. Hopefully the other HD-DVD companies will stand there ground and stick with HD-DVD. As far as downloading and burning movies to disk soon we will need to buy an $500+ blu-ray burner and pay $30 a disk for Sony’s invention. That just blows big time. Sony’s copy protection :( We didnt learn our lesson with there copy protected music they was selling? A sad day indeed all hopes and best wishes to HD-DVD and Sony can suck it..
You forgot the real reason Blu-ray winning over HD-DVD hurts consumers:
Region coding.
PS: You guys know all the comments on CrunchGear are showing up blank in Firefox, right?
stop being a douche and pay for your content. If you cant afford to buy the disc then save up. If you where never going to buy it you just want to download it then you will just have to sacrifice your resolution. as my gran says ‘beggars cant be choosers’.
BD+ was cracked a long time ago,
Here are a few old storys explaining:
http://www.floppyhead.com/2007/10/29/4th-generation-aacs-and-bd-cracked/
http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/bd-plus-cracked
http://fanpotai.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/blu-rays-special-drm-bd-cracked/
and neither is harder, apparently you just buy the program and can make your legal backup copy of either format, THAT WAS EASY.
You *are* rambling. Did somebody hack into your account? Or do tech blogs regularly announce they pirate movies. Sony never raised the price. The MSRP has been $399 for a while, it was on sale at different places for $299 during the holidays.
Phh… in Canada the Sony BDP-S300 is $499!
Nicholas Deleon, are you seriously one of those A-holes who pirate movies and condone that illegal behavior? Are you that cheap or that poor? You sir sicken me. Get a real job if you don’t have the money or just don’t buy movies.
hd files are to big download anyway iam really not that intrested in blue ray at all i ve found it quite easy to down load a good quality dvix dvd rip code then simple uprate the original code to hd dvix watch the thing declare the movie crap ie waste harddrive room delete the crap,but from my point view the whole blue ray hdd disc dedate is really big corprates pushing oslolete technolgy as a consumer i pefer to download and they are way outstep with how i view and watch media
Considering that movies have been recorded in what we consider High Definition for quite some time, the advent of HD technology in the home is really, at it’s core, just an increase of resolution on televisions and their counterpart video sources. Granted, the increased storage space on 2-layer bluray discs isn’t anything to scoff at, that’s some sweet technology. But the increase in space was mandatory, the increase in security was not. The security does not help the average consumer in any way. So it is there for one purpose, to keep gains in the video industry booming.
So, in response to those claiming that it’s cheap of a person to pirate these high definition films, I ask you, why should we, as consumers of these already expensive hardware upgrades, have to pay more for a technology that would have been simple to release in the first place without the copy protections? In fact, the idea that companies like Sony(with it’s history of pandering to the dollar) spend and ungodly sum of money to protect the dvd format almost begs for a counter-culture to undo it.
Why should I spend any more money making someone else rich? Surely, the actors in movies making millions, the studios making millions, the producers making millions, the distribution and technical companies making millions, and me not making millions couldn’t possibly drive me to become a smarter consumer and start my search for a way to entertain myself for as cheaply as possible. I know my wages aren’t increasing due to the creation of BD+. So, what reason do I have to not pirate? Who, exactly, am I stealing money from? Is it a faceless corporation(which, in itself, due to a heinous twist of laws, has more rights than I do) that is losing out? If so then I say cheers to that! Because I see my face every day, and I certainly wouldn’t sell myself short to put a few more dollars in the pocket of somebody who already has more than I.
There is no reason other than greed for movies not being dirt cheap.