Blu-ray Tips

In an effort to compete with HD-DVD players, Sony announced that their BDP-S3000 Blu-ray player will be priced at $599, a $400 drop from the BDP-S1.

Their current price is not more in line with HD-DVD players.

However, the PS3 is already priced at $599 for the premium version, and $499 for the 20gb version, meaning that customers can already get a Blu-ray player and a game system for the price of the BDP-S3000.  And all reports are that the PS3’s Blu-ray player is just as good as the standalone players, so why not get a game system with your player if you’re going to spend that much?

The hacker arnezami has cracked the DRM (digital rights management) for both Blu-ray AND HD-DVD. He found the processing key that allowed them to be decrypted.

At some point you’d think the companies would stop spending billions of dollars trying to figure out how to prevent people from making a copy of a movie and start worrying about producing better content.

All DRM really does is prevent legitimate consumers from being able to conveniently user the product.
People who really want to make a copy of something are going to find a way to make a copy of it - period.

For example, let’s take copying a DVD, for example. I know how to make a copy of a DVD. I know what software I need to download, and I have the hardware I need to do it. However, since it takes time to make all that stuff work, I’d much rather just buy the movie, and I’ve never made a copy of a DVD. The majority of people are just like me, they don’t have any interest in making illegal copies of movies. A small minority, however, does. So the movie companies, rather than worrying about making better movies, instead focuses on cracking down on illegal copying.

With Blu-ray, they’ve been so overzealous with their DRM that regular people who buy computers with have sometimes had trouble getting their Blu-ray movies to play because their computer doesn’t have the right security settings or some other nonsense.
I, for one, am thrilled to see that the DRM has been cracked on Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Not because I’m in favor of piracy, but because I think that if you buy a movie, it should just work. You shouldn’t need to make sure you all the exact equipment just to make your movie play.