In article <jt5n85-1jt.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx>, "[H]omer" <spam@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> You're also conveniently forgetting that Blu-Ray is about more than just
> DRM'ed videos. It's also (I would argue, more importantly) about:
>
> . 50GB optical media
Which makes it better as a data backup media. (Except writable media,
for both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is half the pressed capacity). I'd like
that--but on the other hand, it is hideously expensive (something like
$15 for a single rewritable disc). Sure, prices will come down, but by
then, disks will have gotten even bigger, and a 25 gig Blu-Ray disc will
such as much for backups then as a 4.7 gig DVD does now. So, I'm not
all that excited about the new optical formats, from a data point of
view.
> . It isn't a Microsoft product
Neither is HD-DVD.
> . It further undermines Microsoft's hideously broken exBorks
Nope. XBox uses DVD. They offer an add-on external HD-DVD drive,
purely for movies. They can switch to Blu-Ray trivially. (And you
don't even need the add-on drive to watch HD movies on XBox, because
they have a download service).
> . It's yet another brutal humiliation for Microsoft
> . Microsoft takes one more small step towards the grave
Nope. See above. They kept their options open.
> And as for "protected" content, what commercially released video content
> is /not/ protected by some mechanism or another? How is supporting one
> commercial film format over another the same as being "happy" about DRM?
>
> If (as is the case) I have to choose between one protected format over
> another, then naturally I'm going to choose the superior format, which
> in this case is clearly Blu-Ray ... by a mile. The industry agrees.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD both have AACS. In addition, Blu-Ray supports region
code, and it has a nice little thing called BD+.
Essentially, BD+ is a virtual machine in the player. The disc can
contain executable code for that virtual machine. Some things that code
can do:
* Check your player to detect tampering (such as hacks to bypass DRM).
* Run native code to do things like apply firmware patches to close
holes.
* Filter the audio and video data, to allow them to come up with
additional restrictions in the future.
So, given a choice between two formats that perform equally well for
movie delivery, and both have AACS, but one also has region codes, and
includes what amounts to an auto-run back-door that the movie studios
can use to patch your hardware without permission, you pick the later?
(In addition to that, HD-DVD discs cost a lot less to make, and the
Toshiba players ran Linux).
--
--Tim Smith
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