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Blu-ray player firmware update required to view Avatar

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23 pointsbensummers21 comments

I'd love to know what drives the decision making when it comes to adding DRM to media. The people who buy DVDs/Blu-ray/Games wouldn't pirate the stuff even if it had no protection. Those that do pirate find a way around the DRM, if it isn't there that's just a bonus. This is my opinion.

Is it the fact some department or person at a media company is tasked with deciding how to protect the content and all they have is a DRM solution? Would coming up with an alternative that's classed as thinking outside the box make them fear for their job?

I'd also like to say I'm getting pretty tired of every device I own needing an update. If I don't boot up my PS3/360 for a week I can't play a new game without having to wait for some update to install, reboot the machine, and test it has fixed some obscure vulnerability.

The ostensible reason is to prevent casual piracy. DRM needs to be just hard enough to get around that those who can't bittorrent also can't copy a DVD.

But you don't need to be constantly updating DRM to meet this level of difficulty.

Well... you kind-of do. Once something like DVD-Decrypter or Handbrake comes out for your format (making ripping a one click affair) then the casuals might start figuring it out... that's why they adapt.

The media producers care about the new release window, where they capture a disproportionate share of the revenue for each title. The new release window is measured in days, not weeks. If DRM spares 50% of the new release window from readily-available high-fidelity copies, they've potentially saved significant revenue.

All this boils down to a simple point: the goal of DRM isn't to protect titles from being copied. It's to make copies more expensive, which in turn makes it take longer for copies to spread.

Isn't that argument counteracted somewhat by the distribution of camcorder copies? And pre-release leaks where someone at a distribution center managed to take a disc home, burn it, and upload it. When a film is officially out I think you see a copy appear online day one regardless of the DRM being used.

Have you ever watched a cam (or even a TS) version of a movie? I wonder whether the studios put them there on purpose.

Especially in the case of Avatar, did anyone really watch a cam and thought of it as a substitute for seeing it at the cinemas?

I think they view the music industry as a cautionary tale. The start of their big decline coincided with the rise of Napster. Rightly or wrongly, movie people drew the conclusion that music was killed by piracy and they would be next.

DRM strikes again, punishing the people who paid for the product while those who got it off a torrent don't have to deal with this crap.

Contrary to the opinions on this message board thread, Blu-ray BD+ DRM has not been a technical failure; follow the SlySoft forums to see BD+ disk updates reliably monkeywrenching that product. I haven't followed this closely in many months, but it was a regular occurance.

Maybe not a technical failure, but I can hardly see events like this sitting well with consumers. (Although the problems associated with the Matrix's DVD release seemed to do little harm.)

We might be jumping the gun calling it a DRM problem. I don't think there's any proof of that yet. It could be a good old fashion incompatibility problem. The era of "easy" consumer firmware updating has been a mess over the last few years. Companies ship beta quality software with the knowledge they can fix things later. Maybe they will -- maybe they won't. What happens if the company goes out of business? What if the model just doesn't sell well enough to justify further firmware development? Everyone knows DRM is bad but I don't think we spend enough time knocking companies for this horrible practice of making consumers chase the carrot of firmware upgrades. It's not a trivial task for most people especially if it requires downloading files and USB memory sticks which is the case with many older BR players.

Does anyone know technical details about why it requires a firmware upgrade?

It worked on my PS3 and I don't recall having to install any updates. The DVD that cam bundled with the Blu-ray didn't work on my PC DVD drive, though.

Can anyone confirm this behavior?

It works on my PS3 but then again, I just had to do a software update for the PS3 a few weeks ago, so they might have updated the Blu-ray firmware then.

Another nail for the coffin of physical media

I don't see anything in the original Yahoo article that mentions DRM is the culprit. I think the change in manufacturing from "when we ship hardware, it's permanent" to "everything can be updated over the Internet" leads to more bugs in 1.0 devices and thus more frequent updates.

Best part is that you can't even take the Blu-ray back for a refund if it doesn't work: most stores only have a same-title policy for movies/software.

worked for me on my nearly year-old Samsung Blu-ray. i haven't updated the firmware yet

My Linux box plays it just fine.

Oh... you mean for people that actually buy the movie.

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