A Case for Protecting Computer Games with SGX (2016) | Hacker News Reader

A Case for Protecting Computer Games with SGX (2016)

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11 pointsturrini7 comments

I think it's interesting how much Intel threw a wrench in the works by killing SGX on the consumer chips. Official UHD blu-ray playback software was required to use SGX, so now no modern consumer machine can officially playback UHD blu-rays. I think all the payback software eventually deprecated UHD blu-ray support altogether due to this.

And any developments like the one detailed here also ended up being moot (at least in the consumer space).

Although, I'm not likely to cry over lost DRM schemes anyway, especially since games makers can't manage to preserve their games and have for years been relying on piracy for preservation.

Don't you mean the Blu-ray Disk Association threw a wrench in the works by requiring a poorly designed, tested and implemented technology? It wasn't ever supported on AMD CPUs AFAIK, and viable attacks started 2017/18, just a bit more than a year into UHD BD availability…

Yeah, that's fair. It was a completely stupid requirement from the association, even when SGX was available in consumer chips. And it was made even stupider by the fact that they seem to just be content to leave UHD blu-rays in limbo instead of coming up with an alternative that allows them to be played on newer hardware.

Hell, the people working on disc ripping software have been working harder to find ways to play the discs on modern hardware than the Blu-ray Disc Association has. The only option is to use unauthorized software to play the discs on modern AMD and Intel boxes, and that's the solution I guess?

I think the biggest wrench in the works was just that UHD BD was effectively a dud due to streaming https://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/be/uploads/Screenshot_from_2025_0.... I think I hear/see more about it from pirating communities and notes about the death of SGX than actual players and disc in stores or friend's houses.

I'm sure that's part of it, but, anecdotally, I've been finding more and more people lately that have started wanting movies and TV shows on physical media, including UHD. I think the market might actually be growing right now.

I can't find anything newer than https://www.tomsguide.com/tvs/4k-blu-ray-sales-are-in-free-f..., which says such sales are not only in free fall but major stores are no longer planning on selling them and no new Blu-ray players at all were announced at CES for the first time.

I'd like to believe enough people are changing their minds (nothing is higher quality), but it's likely already accounted for in the $293 M and continuing declines. The one bump seemed to be 2022 UHD BD outselling 2020/2021 numbers, but that's probably more an artifact of COVID 19 drop and slight rebound given the following years dropped quicker than ever.

Isn't this the same story as Intel TSX? I remember looking at it when announced thinking it was amazing. As it turns out, it probably never worked anyways because the implementation was too buggy. It was later removed from CPUs that had already been sold via a microcode update ostensibly due to security. Then it was removed from most of Intel's product line entirely.

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