Blu-ray, HD DVD, DVD info and more at WesleyTech.com

After the recent news of Plextor scaling down optical disk drive manufacturing, we are now reading reports that LiteOn has received DVD burner orders from Plextor. Digitimes is reporting that “Lite-On IT has

also landed PC-use DVD burner orders from Japan-based Plextor, following Plextor’s plan to suspend its own PC-use DVD drive business, according to industry sources.” This is exactly what I had speculated earlier, that Plextor will begin selling drives that are rebranded or rebadged from another manufacturer. CDRLabs.com also posted this news.

The AACS (Advanced Access Content System) LA group responded to the recent BackupBluray and BackupHDDVD activity with the following press release.

RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON AACS TECHNOLOGY
January 24, 2007

AACS LA has confirmed that AACS Title Keys have appeared on public web sites without authorization. Such unauthorized disclosures indicate an attack on one or more players sold by AACS licensees. This development is limited to the compromise of specific implementations, and does not represent an attack on the AACS system itself, nor is it exclusive to any particular format. Instead it illustrates the need for all AACS licensees to follow the Compliance and Robustness Rules set forth in the AACS license agreements to help ensure that product implementations are not compromised. AACS LA employs both technical and legal measures to deal with attacks such as this one, and AACS LA is using all appropriate remedies at its disposal to address the attack.

The AACS group declares that it “does not represent an attack on the AACS system itself”, but we know the system was circumvented by obtaining encryption keys stored in memory by PC software players. It will be interesting to see what the HD DVD / Blu-ray software player developers will try in the future in an attempt to prevent this type of memory-held key discovery.

Everyone at the 2007 Consumers Electronics Show was wondering what happened to the exclusive HD DVD movie title announcements? During the show, the HD DVD camps’ only exclusive movie studio supporter (Universal Studios) kept suspiciously silent about its’ HD DVD movie release

plans for 2007. There was much speculation on why Universal was keeping silent and many HD DVD supporters even feared that Universal might discontinue its’ HD DVD exclusivity. Of course this also made Blu-ray supporters happy, with many declaring that this was the end of HD DVD. Well now Universal has struck back with full force, announcing over 100 HD DVD movie title releases for 2007. Here is the full press release:

LOS ANGELES (January 25, 2007) — Bringing further heat to the burgeoning HD DVD format, Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE) will release more than 100 new film and television titles in 2007. Perennial favorites such Scarface and instant classics like 40-Year-Old Virgin, Battlestar Galactica S1 and Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain will be joined by dozens of new titles released day and date with the DVD.

Since the format’s inception in April 2006, USHE has released 60 titles on HD DVD, and currently boasts four of the top 10 best-selling HD DVDs year-to-date, including Casino, Serenity, Fearless and Miami Vice.

Tapping into the studio’s vast library, the 2007 slate kicked off on January 18th with the release of The Mummy Returns, followed by Brokeback Mountain starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal on January 23, 2007. Following shortly thereafter will be such day-and-date new releases as Golden Globe-nominee Hollywoodland on February 6. More than 90 percent of the planned 2007 Universal titles will be released as combo discs — which feature an HD DVD version and a standard DVD version of the movie on the same disc.

“With more than two million HD DVD players expected in the market in North America by the end of 2007, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is committed to expanding its portfolio of compelling HD DVD content and further igniting consumer demand,” said Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. “By releasing most of our titles as combo discs we effectively satisfy consumers’ multi-viewing habits, providing them with the most cost-effective option to watch their favorite films in either their DVD or HD DVD players.”

Among the additional new titles to be released in 2007 are the Oscar-nominated Children of Men, the critically acclaimed epic drama The Good Shepherd, and the high-octane Smokin’ Aces. Also on deck for release this year are such highly-anticipated catalog favorites as Bruce Almighty, The Bourne Identity, Meet The Fockers, American Pie, Inside Man, Pride & Prejudice, The Big Lebowski, Liar Liar, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Brazil, Erin Brockovich, Shaun of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Slap Shot and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

About HD DVD

HD DVD is the only next generation, post-DVD standard for high capacity, high definition optical discs, approved and supported by the DVD Forum. The DVD Forum develops and defines DVD formats. Its more than 200 strong membership brings together leaders in movies and entertainment, computing, consumer electronics and software. HD DVD is fast becoming the primary visual medium for the age of high-definition TV. The North American HD DVD Promotional Group, Inc. is an organization established to promote the HD DVD format and educate consumers in North America. For more information and a complete listing of HD DVD launch titles please visit http://www.TheLookAndSoundOfPerfect.com.

About Universal Studios Home Entertainment

Universal Studios Home Entertainment is a unit of Universal Pictures, a division of Universal Studios (www.universalstudios.com). Universal Studios is a part of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. Formed in May 2004 through the combining of NBC and Vivendi Universal Entertainment, NBC Universal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. NBC Universal is 80%-owned by General Electric, with 20% owned by Vivendi.

End of Release

BackupBluray results video has been posted online. The Doom9 forum user Janvitos filmed a video of a BD-R Blu-ray backup disc playing on his LG Blu-ray PC drive. It appears to be a Sony BD-R disc, but I can not be certain due to the low resolution. He made the BD-R disc using files extracted with the BackupBluray utility. The “victim” movie that was backed up and played from a BD-R disc is “Corpse Bride” from the Warner Brothers studios. Software used for playback in this demo is InterVideo’s WinDVD. I have embedded the video below if you’re interested in viewing the PC playback session. Hopefully it does not get removed from YouTube.

[gv data=”http://www.youtube.com/v/pfzLVogXOpM”][/gv]

The PirateBay.org (one of the worlds’ largest torrent tracking websites) has moved to Pirate-plan B. Earlier we reported on the PirateBay’s plan to buy the micronation of Sealand and how their impending plans had been sunk. Well now it looks like they have officially announced a move to plan B. The owners of the Sealand micronation, which is located near the coast of England, have refused to do business with the PirateBay. The PirateBay is not very concerned though, as they already had a backup plan to pursue the purchase of a small island located elsewhere in the world. Over $20,000 (US) has been donated thus far by supporters of this PirateBay initiative. At this time, they have not announced the possible candidates for their new Plan B island home, but they did state that they will reveal the prospects in the near future. It will be interesting to see how their plans unfold and if they can find a haven that is free from international copyright law. The whole world is watching until then…

The ability to backup an HD DVD or a Blu-ray disc has been sought after by many consumers who have recently invested in one of the new blue laser formats. Recently their wishes came true. A member of the Doom9 forums who goes by the name muslix64 released a tool that helps people backup their HD DVD’s. Soon thereafter, ripped HD DVD movies started to appear on torrent tracking websites. A couple weeks go by and we now have been informed of a Blu-ray Disc backup utility, aptly named BackupBluray.

With the release of BackupHDDVD and BackupBluray, muslix64 has become a hero and an anti-DRM icon for the masses. Defenders of fair use and opponents of DRM everywhere are cheering for muslix64 and giving a thumbs up to his efforts. With all of this popularity, muslix64 has become somewhat of a celebrity. Today Slyck.com posted an excellent interview with muslix64 where he answers some very interesting questions about his AACS circumvention techniques. Here is an excerpt from the Slyck interview:

Q: There appears to be some confusion to the extent and specifics of your success. Explain what content protection has been compromised, and what content protection is still intact?
A: There is no easy answer but, IMHO, AACS is totally busted. The only thing I can see for now to prevent the attack I have described is to put different keys on every disc! It will cost a fortune for the manufacturing, so I’m not sure they will go that way… People say I have not broken AACS, but players. But players are part of this system! And a system is only as strong as his weakest link. Even if players become more secure, key extraction will always be possible. I know many people of the industry try to cover up this breach, by saying I have only poked a tiny hole in AACS, but it is more serious than that. Only the future will tell.
The AACS security layer is almost the same for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray, so they are both busted for good. The only extra security layer is for the Blu-ray format, and it’s called BD+. BD+ is not there yet, and I don’t know when it will be. May be my “exploits” will speed up the adoption of BD+, we will see…

Q: You’ve recently helped defeat Blu-Ray’s content protection as well. What were the similarities/differences in defeating this copy protection scheme?
A: Almost the same. I use the same known-plaintext attack for both formats. But media format and encryption are slightly different. Because I already had experience with the HD-DVD, it was really easy for Blu-Ray.

Q: What are your ultimate goals? Do you feel that most - if not all - of the content protect will be ultimately defeated?
A: If you can play it, you can decrypt it! There is nothing you can do about it. The only thing they can try is to slow people down.

muslix64 seems to have enormous confidence in the online communitys’ ability to defeat any new DRM measures thrown their way by the movie studios and blue laser disc formats. He is also very humble, stating that he is not the smartest guy around and that the blue laser disc formats were just careless with their security implementation. The big questions that everyone wants to know now are, how will the studios react to these backup capabilities and what does BD+ have in store for us?

Digg This has been updated to version 1.0.2! Digg This is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily embed a Digg.com button, link or other Digg function easily into a WordPress template. Hundreds (thousands?) of WordPress powered blogs already utilize this handy utility written by Aviran Mordo to help easily integrate Digg functionality. Here is the official description from the author.

Digg this wordpress plugin is a plugin that detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story.When a digg is first recognized an email is sent to the site’s admin The detection is based on the referrer URL, which has to come from digg. In case there is more than one digg posts to your page, only the first one will be displayed.

There were a few annoyances (bugs?) with the previous version of the Digg This v1.0.1 plugin that I recently reported to Aviran. Due to my reported problems, the author issued an update to the plugin a few days later. Thanks Aviran!

This latest release fixes the following issues:
Previously, if a Digg submission was linked to the root of your site (http://wesleytech.com), then all articles on your frontpage would incorrectly display their own Digg This button.
Also, if a link to your website was embedded within the comments of another Digg submission, your posts would incorrectly display its’ own Digg This button.

Get the latest update for Digg This at Aviran’s place.