HD Torrents courtesy of BitTorrent

HD Torrents on The PirateBay
The past few weeks, there have been multiple news reports, articles, online chit chat and hub-bub about a tool that has been released that is designed to rip HD DVD-ROM movies. Additional reports ensued, with some sites highlighting the subsequent appearance of ripped HD DVD movie files on bittorrent trackers.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, a Doom9.org user who goes by the name “muslix64” released a tool dubbed “BackupHDDVD” in late December. muslix64 even posted a video titled “AACS is unbreakable” on YouTube that shows his tool in action. The video was removed from YouTube, but can still be found on Google Video as of this posting.

Now that the HDDVDBackup utility has been released, HD DVD movies have started appearing on Torrent tracking websites. HDTVBlogger seems to be the first to have posted about a confirmed HD DVD rip appearing on a torrent tracking site. I did a quick search on the PirateBay, one of the most popular torrent tracking websites and found that many HD DVD rips are now readily available. I took a screenshot (image below) of a few of the HD DVD torrents that were currently available at the time of this post.

HD Torrents Screenshot
HDDVDTorrents

Do HD Torrents matter?
Ok, so now we know that it is indeed possible to backup and distribute your HD DVD videos (and Blu-ray Discs will probably soon follow suit). But does it matter? Is there actually a demand for HD DVD video files? Do pirates care about HD DVD rips or HD video files? Maybe… but maybe not. I will post more on these questions at a later time. Until then, let me know what you think!

Backup HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs Easier!

If you would like an easier method for ripping, copying or backing up HD DVD or Blu-ray Discs, you can use AnyDVD HD. AnyDVD HD allows you to copy HD video files off of your discs using Windows Explorer and has an easy to use interface with no command line complications. You can download a free 30 day trial of AnyDVD HD from here.

About Wes Novack

Wesley Novack is a Technologist working in the software industry, with extensive experience building and managing highly available applications, services, and systems in the public cloud. He has a breadth of experience in online publishing, the consumer electronics industry, and building internet communities. Wes enjoys hanging with his family, skateboarding, hiking, the vegan lifestyle, and a good cup of tea. You can find him on Twitter @WesleyTech.

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10 Comments on “HD Torrents courtesy of BitTorrent”

  1. Are you serious? You’re posting the image of the number of peers (in the hundreds for every file shown) and claiming that pirates don’t care? Well, sorry – but I can see 587 people trying to get the files on your own screenshot.

  2. OK so there’s ripped HD movies available for download. Most people won’t fork over the amount of money for a drive that can burn a movie that size, or even buy the hd media to burn it onto. Heck I still think DL DVDRs are more than they should be.

    Of course many will just be happy collecting these movies on their drives and watching it on their PCS, until they can actually afford the burning hardware.

    I suppose they could also re-encode it down to fit onto a DVDR or DL DVDR. If they go with this route, would the quality of the image suffer? May be someone has actually seen a HD movie about the size of DVDR, but if the movie is down to that size, is it still a HD movie that this point? Anyone have an idea how good the image is?

  3. My question would be, what is the file format of the HD back up? If it happened to be AVI, anyone with a high capacity jumpdrive and an xbox 360 could DL and watch without having to fork over the cash for the 360s HD DVD player.

  4. The file format for an HD DVD backup is .EVO, as shown in the torrent listing image above. I’m sure it could be converted to AVI or MPEG, but you would need additional software to do so.

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