Ever since the Blu-Ray video format was first announced, it has been claimed that the copy-protection on the system was uncrackable.  This is because is uses technology in your HDMI port to determine the authenticity of the video source.  Without this technology built into the port’s circuitry Blu-Ray video simply won’t work, which caused problems with some [...]

Categories: Hacking

I still have CDs lying around that I have created more than ten years ago. Some of them are still working fine while others have unreadable sectors or files. I’m not sure if the type and manufacturer of each individual recordable CD has something to do with that, or if it is more a storage [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

HDCP is a security encryption key for copy-protecting Hi-Def video content, most notable Blu-Ray players and set-top boxes.  Now a story has appeared that a master key has been found to permanently unlock the security. Engadget reported the news shortly after it first appeared in Twitter.  HDCP is configured in such a way that should any [...]

Categories: Hacking

The next monster disc is just around the corner but possibly bad news for PC users who have upgraded their machine with a blu-ray writer.  The Blu-ray Disc Association have now published the final specifications for the new BDXL standard. The new discs will come as either triple-layer 100Gb re-writable, write-once or whopping 128Gb quad-layer [...]

Categories: Hardware

DVD regions are an annoyance from an end user’s standpoint as they make it impossible to view movies from different regions regularly. A limit of five region code changes is usually permitted after which it becomes impossible to switch to another region which ultimately means that DVDs and Blu-Rays from those other regions cannot be [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

Many video DVDs and Blu-Ray discs use protections to prevent the reproduction of the movies. This often prevents creating a copy of a movie even if it has been purchased legally. Users often face two different protections. The first is a copy protection that has been added to the disc to prevent that its contents [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

HD video authoring software multiAVCHD has been designed to author AVCHD, Blu-Ray, HD DVD, SD-Video, to transfer DVD backups without re-encoding into Blu-Ray or AVCHD format, to watch Blu-Ray disk backups without re-encoding in their Playstation 3 or to create a 1080p menu for up to 252 different files of various formats including MPEG2, Quicktime [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

Blu-Ray has won the high definition wars against HD-DVD. Everyone thought that consumers would start buying Blu-Ray players and DVDs like crazy once that happens but this is apparently not the case. Blu-Ray is struggling, most users seem to be quite happy with their DVD players and computers and cannot see a reason to invest [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

At the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Digital Entertainment Group released its figures for DVD spending in the United States in 2008. The results were a 5.5% decrease from the previous year. DEG’s figures aren’t just for outright sales of DVDs, but also include DVD rentals and Blu-Ray disc sales. Rental revenue stayed [...]

Categories: ask the readers, Entertainment, Music and Video