Even when the HDCP (High bandwidth Digital Content Protection) master key, which is a core element of the encrytion, was leaked last year the standard has still not been cracked because using it to build an decryption chip is very difficult and costly.

Any technology saying something is uncrackable however is just an invitation for most people to try, and not professor Tim Güneysu and Benno Lomb, a PhD student from the Ruhr University in Germany have used a “man in the middle” approach to crack the encryption for just $350.

Instead of designing and creating an HDCP-capable chip, the two men built a standalone hardware solution that is based on an inexpensive FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) board that contains an HDMI port and an RS232 Serial port.  These boards are programmable and designed to be configured by the user.

The purpose of the research was not to crack the HDCP encryption they said.

“Our intention was rather to investigate the fundamental security of HDCP systems and to measure the actual financial outlay for a complete knockout. The fact that we were able to achieve this in the context of a PhD thesis and using materials costing just €200 is not a ringing endorsement of the security of the current HDCP system”

The board modifies all the communications between the Blu-Ray player and a flat screen TV without the interruption being detected.  This is something that some set-top-boxes are already able to do and some boxes that can remove HDCP data from HD video have been available since shortly after the HDMI standard was introduced.  These boxes allow otherwise encrypted high-definition content that is broadcast to be compressed and recorded to disc or a hard drive.

At the moment pirates are using these boxes to copy high-definition content, admittedly in a compressed form.  But there is currently no way for them to intercept the uncompressed raw data from a Blu-Ray disc.

This solution then isn’t much use for pirates at the moment then as what would really be required is a software solution, much in the way DVD John did in 1999 when he and two friends released the DeCSS software that decrypted DVDs.  This hardware solution doesn’t offer anything that’s really useful for pirates, especially as the researchers aren’t saying how they did it.

It does prove though that with some know how and determination anything is crackable, and with a software emulated version of the hardware board a possibility in the future, encrypted Blu-Ray discs could still come under attack from pirates, not to mention the threat this poses to encrypted high-definition digital video downloads in the future.

Where this is of interest is the ease with which the researchers were able to do this and the affordability of the overall parts involved.  To claim something is uncrackable unless significant volumes of money are spent designing a new silicon chip overlooks the fact that much existing technology can emulate this process, providing anybody with full and unfettered access to unencrypted video.

CD/DVD/Blu-Ray Recovery is a free recovery software for Windows that can do exactly that. Don’t expect the program to do wonders though. It tries to copy all files located on an optical drive like a CD or DVD drive to the computer system. Only one source folder and multiple file names can be added to the recovery queue. Files and folders are displayed under the source folder or file name listing at the top of the program interface.

The program itself is pretty easy to use. You need to install it after you have downloaded the setup file. Skip the request to (freely) register the program. A click on Add Folder and the selection of a connected optical drive adds this drive to the recovery queue.

You can furthermore change the output folder or copying speed. Copying speed ranges from fastest, with less chances to recover unreadable or partially readable files, to slowest, which offers the best chance of recovering the selected contents.

A click on Start begins the recovery process. CD DVD Blu-Ray Recovery tries to read and copy all contents to the local hard drive. A log next to the start button indicates the process. Files that have been copied successfully are displayed as OK next to their file name.

The program is not as sophisticated as comparable recovery solutions. There is for instance no option to set the number of read retries, or to compare files on CD, DVD or Blu-Ray with the files copied to the hard drive. It is possible to use third party tools like File Check MD5 for that purpose.

Still, CD/DVD/BlueRay Recovery is easy to use and worth a try. Users who need more configuration options should look under related articles where additional recovery programs are linked.

Instructions and downloads are provided at the developer website. The program worked fine under Windows 7. It should run fine on other Microsoft operating systems.

Update:

I have been notified that Martik does not appear to be the rightful owner of the program. As a consequence, I have removed the link to the program from the article. The issue can be further discussed on the Portable Freeware website or here in the comments.

I suggest you take a look at our CD DVD Data Recovery Software Overview for alternatives to recover data from optical discs.

Engadget reported the news shortly after it first appeared in Twitter.  HDCP is configured in such a way that should any particular key be cracked it can be wiped and replaced.  What’s now been discovered apparently is a master key that can permanently unlock the content.

The key is described as being a  ”a forty times forty element matrix of fifty-six bit hexadecimal numbers” and so far, and quite understandably, nobody knows who has created the crack or how effective it will be, even if it works at all.

No doubt this will generate enormous interest over the next few weeks and caus great concern for the movie companies, who were banking on the enhanced security of Blu-Ray after the encryption of HD-DVD was cracked.

The upshot is that if the key is made public, and works, there will be little to stop people copying high definition content to play anywhere, and little to stop them except another costly format change the public might not accept so recently after Blu-Ray’s introduction.

That said there can be no doubt that with higher capacity Blu-Ray discs already on the way, the movie studios and technology companies behind the format will already be looking at ways of beefing up the security, and will no doubt have anticipated this news.

The race is now on as to who succeeds first.

The new discs will come as either triple-layer 100Gb re-writable, write-once or whopping 128Gb quad-layer write-once discs.

In their press release, published today on Engadget, they state…

“The BDA worked diligently to create an extension of the Blu-ray Disc™ format that leverages the physical structure of the design of the disc to create even more storage capacity,” said Victor Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee chair. “By using the existing Blu-ray™ technologies, we have created a long-term and stable solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive data, video and graphic images. We expect further growth of the Blu-ray Disc™ market as the introduction of 100GB/128GB discs will expand the application of Blu-ray Disc™ technologies.”

The sad news is that this enormous storage, enough for even the largest photo or music library on a single disc, will not work with existing drives, so we’d all better start saving up for the new drives.

This does call into question the validity of any optical disc backup solution for Macs and PCs as technology is moving so quickly now in this area, and the prices of external hard disks and SSDs now falling so rapidly, that there’s a real danger BDXL might not be picked up at all by the bulk of users who will either fear that it will simply be obsolete before it’s paid for itself, or that other solutions might work out more cost-effective for them.

It’s definitely a push further in HD video and 3D markets though and we ought to expect so see the first players supporting the new standard appearing on the high street in a year or two.

Software players such as PowerDVD or WinDVD impose the same restrictions as standalone players. Some standalone players can be manipulated with codes so that they become region free (see Enable region free mode on your DVD player for more information about that)

Software players on the other hand can be manipulated with unlock or reset software.

DVDFab Region Reset is one of the tools that can be used to unlock the DVD and Blu-Ray regions in popular software players.

region reset

The program will automatically recognize supported software video players and display instructions on how to reset or unlock the region code. The supported video players are PowerDVD 10, 9 and 8, PowerDVD 7.3, WinDVD 10 and 9 as well as the TMT video player 2 and 3.

The instructions differ depending on the installed video player. The region code limit of PowerDVD 10 can for instance be reset to 5 regardless of the actual limit. A new region can be selected in the same menu.

WinDVD on the other hand can only be manipulated in safe mode which means that the computer has to be restarted into safe mode where the DVDFab Region Reset software needs to be executed again to make the changes to the region code.

DVDFab Region Reset can be downloaded directly from the DVDFab homepage. Blu-Ray users can look at Blu-Ray Region Code Remover for an alternative.

DVDFab Passkey is a beta software that runs as a Windows driver in the background. It will automatically remove protections from DVDs and Blu-Rays so that these discs can be copied and played regardless of their protection or regional restrictions.

This approach ensures that all programs can access the contents on the DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Here are the core features and benefits of DVDFab Passkey:

1. Removes all DVD copy protections, like CSS, CPPM, RC, RCE, APS, UOPs, ARccOS, RipGuard, FluxDVD, CORE X2, etc.
2. Removes all Blu-ray known AACS and BD+ copy protections, Region Code, BD-Live and UOPs.
3. Allows you to watch any region DVD on your region specific DVD drive and player software.
4. Allows you to watch Blu-ray disc without HDCP-compliant graphics card and without HDCP-compliant display.
5. Allows you to use any software to access unencrypted DVD and Blu-ray disc content.

DVDFab Passkey is currently offered as a free beta version. The final version of the program will be commercial. The software program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of most Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Output can be created for various devices including Blu-Ray players employing Secure Digital High Capacity capabilities (SD/SDHC cards), Blu-Ray players compatible with the AVCHD format written on DVD-R media or BD-R discs, USB / MS (MemoryStick) / SD / SDHC equipped Blu-ray disc players (like the Sony Playstation 3, HD DVD players that support DVD-R (3xDVD). It is furthermore possible to output directly into BDMV format.

One interesting usage example for multiAVCHD is the following: Creating a menu for up to 252 video files (e.g. tv series, youtube clips), putting them all on a USB drive to watch these videos on the Sony Playstation 3. A good start to get acquainted with the program is the excellent tutorial that is available at the developer’s website. The developer’s website itself is linking to Rapidshare for program downloads. A superior option is to visit download portals like Softpedia to download the HD video authoring software from there.

Still, it is only a matter of time until Blu-Ray (or the next-HD generation) becomes the standard. Users who already have a Blu-Ray player in their computer might want to transfer the movies to their computer system to mount or burn them again.

Enter Blu-Ray & DVD Decrypter. A free software suite that can be used to rip, mount and burn Blu-Ray DVDs.

The main interface provides easy access to rip, burn and emulate Blu-Ray DVDs. Blu-Ray DVDs can be ripped as ISO images or as m2ts files. Please note that a connected Blu-Ray player is required for the process. To burn Blu-Ray images a Blu-Ray recorder is required.

Images that reside on the hard drive can be mounted by the application which is basically a Blu-Ray player emulation on the computer system to be able to watch the movie if the right player is installed on the system.

The Blu-Ray & DVD Decrypter software is easy to use in most cases. It usually takes only a few clicks to rip and burn a Blu-Ray DVD with this software.

Update: The developer website and the development of the program have been discontinued. You can download the latest version of the program from Softpedia. A better solution is the actively developed Blu-Ray ripper Ripbot 264.

DEG’s figures aren’t just for outright sales of DVDs, but also include DVD rentals and Blu-Ray disc sales. Rental revenue stayed nearly constant from previous year’s figures but sales pretty much took a nosedive. While it’s easy to blame dismal sales on the old monster of piracy, I personally think there are a lot of factors for this loss. Here are some of them.

Economics: There’s no denying that DVD sales have in part been affected by the recession. With money starting to get tight, fun spending is the first to be cut and DVDs are definitely not ‘essential’.

Content: For me, barring 2-3 flicks, I can’t think of many movies that I found memorable this year. So I don’t see the point of owning them on DVD because I certainly don’t want to watch them over and over.

Digital Downloads: Nowadays, plenty of TV shows and movies can be legally purchased in a digital format of your choice. In the case of TV shows, consumers have the option of purchasing only the episodes they want. This is a definite advantage over buying an entire season on DVD for a few episodes.

Transition to High Definition: Falling prices of HDTVs, Blu-Ray players, and discs means that a lot of people no longer prefer to invest in standard-definition media like DVDs. It’s similar to tapes dying out once CDs became more affordable.

I’m not much of a DVD person myself. If a movie catches my fancy, I’ll watch it in a theatre. If not, I can just wait a few months and catch it when it’s broadcast on cable. What about you? Have you bought less DVDs this year? Why do you think sales are down? Let me know.

It was created as a reference tool and will display results seconds after execution. The results are divided into two categories. Basic Playback will check if the hardware of the computer is able to play Blu-Ray movies. The diagnostic tool will analyze the cpu, system memory, video card, disc drives but also the software players and video connection types available.

The detection is not overly accurate but should be sufficient on most occasions. It did detect 2 Gigabytes of computer memory on a system with 4 gigabytes installed. The Blu-Ray Disc Advisor will show if the items are Blu-Ray ready. A green icon means the hardware or software component can playback Blu-Ray movies while red means it is not capable of, yellow means an upgrade is required and brown means that the software cannot rate that item.

The second tab analyses the advanced Blu-Ray playback capabilities of the computer hardware. This includes special features that are included in some Blu-Ray movie titles like Internet interaction or picture-in-picture.

Items will be tested for dual-video decoding capabilities, network capabilities and player capabilities. It is possible to save the information in a log file and visit the Cyberlink website for additional information about items that are not Blu-Ray capable.

DVD Identifier is a software program that can identify and display the information that is recorded on the blank media. The main interface of DVD Identifier will display various information about the default writer – be it DVD, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Some of the information provided include the write capabilities of the drive which gives the user an understanding of the support media types.

The Identify button becomes active after putting a blank disk into the drive. A click on the button will start the identification which consults a manufacturer database that gets updated regularly.

Information provided include the manufacturer name, ID and the blank disk capacity. DVD Identifier is also providing in depth information about the drive capabilities on the disk inserted and the media code block.

Blu-Ray Disc Ripper is the perfect complement for the Blu-Ray Region Code Remover that we introduced yesterday. The process would therefor start be started by running the Blu-Ray Disk Ripper to rip the Blu-Ray movie to the hard drive and start the Blu-Ray Region Code Remover afterwards to get rid of the region code protection if that is of concern.

The Blu-Ray Disk Ripper requires a unique volume key which the user has to supply. The software developer suggests to either search the Doom9 forum for the movie title or use the applications DumpVID and AACS Keys to find them. The program will check the key if it can be used to decrypt the Blu-Ray movie.

The software provides access to four actions.

• Copy the contents and decrypt the .m2ts files
• Copy the contents and do not decrypt the .m2ts files
• Decrypt BD-Live files related to the movie for a specific software player
• Sync modified dates between source and destination folder

The program is available at the Doom 9 forum. The current version can be downloaded at Sendspace directly.

There have not been many releases on Blu-Ray disks though except for movies. Blu-Ray disks can have a region protection which means that it can be that a movie won’t play on a Blu-Ray player if the disk and the player have been purchased in different regions.

The world is divided into three regions: Region A spans across most of Asia, region B includes Europe, Africa and Australia while region C includes North- and South-America and Japan.

Not all Blu-Ray movies are region encoded though. The decision is made by the motion picture studio releasing the movie.

The Blu-Ray Region Code Remover removes the region code of Blu-Ray disk rips on a computer’s hard drive so that these rips can be played regardless of the user’s region. It furthermore supports removing of region code from Blu-ray titles and Java-enabled titles. It can also remove Prohibited User Operations for a better user experience.

The software program requires Windows XP or Windows Vista and the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

Coollector tries to help by providing an interface to organize and manage movie collections. The program is aimed at English movies only but can be used to include foreign releases as well. It requires more manual work though to add those. Each of the more than 43000 movies is listed with information about actors, plot, genre, directors and release versions and it only takes a click to add one of the movies to a movie collection.

Each aspect of the movie can be edited before it is added to the collection. The main way of finding movies is by using the build in search which can find movies and people.

Movies and Persons are always clickable which leads to the movie’s main page or the movies that the person was part of. The database is in no way as comprehensive as that of IMDB for example but it does find most movies.

Filters can be added to exclude certain formats from being included in search results. A user could for instance exclude Blu-Ray and UMD results if he does not own a player for these.

Movies can be rated and added to a wish, loaned and ordered list. The Piclens extension is required to view movie covers or previews at Youtube.

Roughly 300.000 HD DVD player add-ons have been sold for the XBOX 360 and the owners find themselves in an awkward position although the HD DVD player was never needed for gaming purposes and won’t have an impact on that.

Microsoft does have two options at the moment. They could create a Blu-Ray add-on for the XBOX 360 which I think is unlikely or they could push digital downloads which is the most likely scenario. The major problem in my opinion is the size of the hard drive which seems way to small for huge digital downloads.

I’m not a huge fan of Sony and have still hopes but it looks pretty sad for the HD DVD supporters. Those consumers who have bought a HD DVD player will face a huge problem much like the Betamax users faced back in the days when VHS did win that race. It occured to me that the consumer is always loosing in this kind of wars.

If you pick the wrong player you will have to purchase another one to be able to view high definition videos, if you pick the right player you contributed to a monopoly, and it’s Sony this time – it will be awful, it’s a Sony after all.

Two studios, Paramount and Universal are still backing up HD DVD and press releases suggest that they have no intention to change their stance in the near future. Movie fans are still facing the problem that a choice can’t be made if they wanted to watch movies from all studios unless they would purchase a more expensive dual player that would play Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies.

Many Blu-Ray and HD DVD movies are currently offered at Amazon for 50% off and player prices have been reduced as well. You can purchase a HD DVD player for $149.99 and get five HD DVDs free as a bonus which is an attractive offer.

My stance on this matter remains unchanged. I will boycott both formats and won’t purchase a remaining format as well if there should be a winning format in the near future. I do so mainly because of DRM and all the crap that is loaded into those players. I also have no intention to update my player’s firmware regularly because the manufacturer published a new firmware to fix some security holes.

That’s not what I want and I’m pretty confident that this is something that most consumers do not want as well – if they would know that is.

“Sony cautions that additional software and hardware is required for playback of commercial movies on Blu-ray Disc (BD-ROM) but the company didn’t specify exactly what is required.”

No one was sure what that ment at that time – until today. Cdfreaks report that Sony’s BWU-100A Blu-ray drive will not play Blu-ray movies which is exactly what Sony ment when they gave this statement to PC World.

“While the drive would be more than capable of reading Blu-ray discs for the playback of HD video content, the problem is due to the main issue that plagues all next generation formats for movies: The Infamous Copy protection. With the lack of PCs available that have HDCP enabled graphics cards and playback software still in its development, Sony has decided to leave out support for commercial BD movies altogether. However, the drive will still be able to play back user-created HD content, such as from a high definition camcorder, where no copy protection is required.“

PC World Australia asked Sony’s product manager Vincent Bautista for data storage about this matter, he explained..

“..that due to copy protection issues and lagging software development, the drive will only play user-recorded high-definition content from a digital camcorder, and not commercial movies released under the BD format.

Bautista says that one of two reasons for this is the fact that commercial content is encrypted with High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), which can only be decrypted using a HDCP-compliant graphics card that offers DVI or HDMI connections. Since there are currently no PCs for sale offering graphics chips that support HDCP, this isn’t yet possible.

The second reason, according to Bautista, is that BD playback software that can decrypt HDCP isn’t “released as a saleable item yet“.

This means in other words that people who are actually buying this Blue-Ray drive are not getting what they bargained for. A Blue-Ray drive that is not playing copy-protected movies ? C’mon who needs such a drive ? It is capable of writing disks which could be a good argument for a purchase.

Looking at the prices for Blue-Ray discs makes me wonder how many users will use this feature instead of using a different method to backup their data. The price of ten Blue-Ray discs is greater than that of a large external hard drive for example. Oh, I forgot, the Blue-Ray drive itself will cost around 750$. Pretty expensive for something that has a limited functionality, don’t you think ?

]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2006/08/11/sonys-first-pc-blue-ray-drive-wont-play-blue-ray-movies/feed/ 2 http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/08/howto-copy-blue-ray-and-hd-dvd-movies/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/08/howto-copy-blue-ray-and-hd-dvd-movies/#comments Sat, 08 Jul 2006 10:31:17 +0000 Martin Brinkmann http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/08/howto-copy-blue-ray-and-hd-dvd-movies/ Well well well. The industry tried their best to make the new competing high definition formats blue-ray and hd-dvd as secure as possible so that no one would be able to view them with insecure hardware or would be able to copy the movies. The files themselves are protected by AACS which stands for Advanced Access Content System. HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) makes sure that high definition playback is only available if the output device (television, monitor) is HDCP capable, if not the movie will be downsampled to 960x540p.

The german computer magazine CT apparently found a way to copy Blue-Ray and HD-DVD movies. The first movie players on Windows XP that are capable of running those protected movies allow the print screen key to work which saves a hd image of the current frame to the computer. Automating that screenshot function to take 24 / 25 / 30 was the logical next step.

The mag calculated that it would not be a problem for todays high end computers to save all images in real time. All that was left to do is join all images. The result ? A high definition movie of course.

The mag tested this exploit with Sonys first Blue-Ray Pc Vaio VGC-RC 204 and with Toshibas HD-DVD-Notebook Qosmio G30. Both were running a special OEM version of WinDVD.

Upcoming versions of WinDVD will most likely be patched.

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