

Blu-ray player firmware update required to view Avatar - bensummers
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1871517#post1871517

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ukdm
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.

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tptacek
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.

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ukdm
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.

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

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robryan
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?

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MikeCapone
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.

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tptacek
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.

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seabee
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.)

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jsz0
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.

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

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jm4
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?

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chollida1
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.

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aidenn0
Another nail for the coffin of physical media

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NateLawson
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.

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ianium
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.

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

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jrockway
My Linux box plays it just fine.

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

