[ModBreak] The contents of this site are somewhat outdated and it will no longer receive updates, but it was actual when it was written a year ago. The first HD-DVD and Blu-ray devices have now made it into some rich folks living rooms and there is little to be done about the DRM now but hack it. Though this site has not yielded any result, at least I know several thousand people a month have read it and may have become a little bit wiser or at least learned something new :)

I will continue using the DRMadness.com domain as a Dr. Madness blog (planned, anyways), but I will keep these pages on here for future reference. [/ModBreak]

HDCP - High Definition Content Protection

HDCP (created by Intel subsidiary Digital Content Protection LLC) is a security feature for HDMI. It provides for authorization of the connected devices and encryption of the video and audio streams. All HDCP enabled devices have their own set of secret keys. These keys can also be revoked. Therefor, a device will have an updateable list of 'blacklisted' keys. If the other device sends one of these keys as identifier it will not get authorized. If a device connected is not HDCP compliant or fails the authorization, you may get a low-quality version of the content or nothing at all, depending on the device and the content. HDCP blacklists can be stored on the discs themselves or can be transmitted over the internet if you have an internet-enabled player. Note that it is actually possibly to use HDCP over DVI, though it is not yet widespread. This will be the intermediate form found with PCs before the graphics cards all get HDMI outputs. - Related articles

AACS - Advanced Access Content System

AACS is the successor to CSS (Content Scrambling System), the encryption used on the DVD's of today. CSS was cracked in the late '90s by a 16 year old Norwegian high school student after which playing back DVD's on Linux and ripping them became possible. There are however several 'improvements' with AACS over CSS. For consumers, the only positive one is that AACS can theoretically allow you to copy the content to other authorized devices (your media center for example). It is however questionable if this feature will ever be used. Further more, with CSS there were different 40-bit decryption keys for every region, and every DVD player had those. With AACS, each title (movie, etc) has it's own 128-bit key for every player model. These keys are distributed on the disc itself, so the authority can revoke keys and newer discs will not be able to play on revoked players. - Related articles

PVP-OPM - Protected Video Path / Output Protection Management

PVP-OPM is a technology created by Microsoft for the PC which will ensure video can only travel through authorized channels to authorized devices. It will be implemented in Windows Vista (Longhorn). PVP-OPM will most likely be required if you want to play your HD-DVD or Blu-ray on your PC. A similar system for audio already exists in Windows XP and is called Secure Audio Path (which will be succeeded by Protected Autio Path in Vista). Note that we should not blame Microsoft for building such a system, we should thank them. Without this, playing back HD-DVD or Blu-ray discs would most likely be impossible to do on a PC. It is Microsoft who convinced the content providers to allow playback on the PC because Microsoft could provide a protected signal path. - Related articles

BD+ - BD+ Renewable Technology

BD+ is a Blu-ray only technology. It allows compromised code of a Blu-ray player to be overwritten with a new version, 'fixing' the player. - Related articles

ROM Mark

ROM Mark is also technology only used with Blu-ray. Essentially, a sort of watermark is placed on the disc. This is undetectable to the naked eye (it's just some bits on the discs, really) and prevents mass-production of illegal copies. Only licensed Blu-ray disc manufacturers can place this ROM Mark since you need special equipment to do so. - Related articles

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