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Internet First Pirated HD DVDs Released
Marcus Yam (Blog) - January 17, 2007 4:30 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 67 comment(s) - last by TheOneYouKNow.. on Jan 23 at 9:46 PM

The first HD DVD title to hit BitTorrent networks
The results of hacked HD DVD keys turn up as HD DVDs are released on the Internet

Late last year, a hacker claimed to have circumvented the copy protection scheme used to protect HD DVD and Blu-ray content. Just over two weeks after the news broke, the online pirate community is seeing the fruits of hacker labor with the first release of a full HD DVD available for download.

The first HD DVD movie released is Serenity, which weighs in at 19.6 GB. The file reportedly is available in EVO format and is playable with PC-based players such as PowerDVD at full 1080p resolution.

Other HD DVD movies have quickly followed with the release of Pitch Black at 21.37 GB, The Chronicles of Riddick at 24.94 GB and Batman Begins at 24.76 GB. All HD DVD movies released thus far appear to retain all aspects of the original discs, including various audio options and special features.

While PowerDVD is the software of choice to play the pirated releases, PowerDVD’s developer, Cyberlink, has publically stated that it believes that its software is secure and is not a part of the exploit in extracting the title keys used to decrypt HD DVDs.

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Pirated HD DVD
By restrada on 1/17/2007 4:44:47 PM , Rating: 2
So much for all that nice, will never crack encryption that was being boasted about.




RE: Pirated HD DVD
By Sahrin on 1/17/2007 4:55:52 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, the formats were created with the understanding that they WOULD break the copy protection. The keys for the films that have already been cracked will be black listed, so that no new films will be made that make use of them. The AACS standard was designed to respond to being cracked (as opposed to DVD's DeCSS).


RE: Pirated HD DVD
By Zurtex on 1/17/2007 5:03:31 PM , Rating: 2
I'm not sure how practical that is.

Firstly it's going to annoy consumers when they put their disks in and it doesn't work. Secondly the AACS specification only lists for up to 100 keys to be black listed, given how easy it turned out to find the keys that's not going to be hard to fill.


RE: Pirated HD DVD
By Furen on 1/17/2007 5:20:19 PM , Rating: 2
The format was designed so that the DEVICE keys could be revoked by simply not including them in future movies. Media keys, on the other hand, cannot be revoked unless the player's firmware is updated. Not to mention that revoking a media key would render a particular production run of a movie unplayable, which would be a very nice way to piss-off a lot of paying customers.


RE: Pirated HD DVD
By Hydrofirex on 1/17/2007 11:13:53 PM , Rating: 2
So that's what they meant when they claimed they could update them. I was thinking that didn't make much sense, but this way they at least cut their losses - and I would imagine they can update the key's on the new releases of cracked movies.

However, isn't this cat and mouse game just a stop gap to slow down piracy? In the end won't everything slowly be released? To the point though: this is nothing new and all their claims were hype.

HfX


Frank Costanza...
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 1/17/2007 4:43:21 PM , Rating: 5
"SERENITY NOW!!!"




RE: Frank Costanza...
By therealnickdanger on 1/17/2007 4:50:19 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I always say the same thing when I see that at the store. LOL!

This is good news, perhaps it will prompt the DVD Forum to hurry up with their "managed copy" feature. Call me lazy or crazy, but I just want all media stored on my RAID so I don't have to put in discs.


Going over the facts
By Nimbo on 1/17/2007 5:25:43 PM , Rating: 5
Actually it was not the original hacker (Muxlix64) who actually did this, he proofed the concept and implemented a java decrypting software useless without keys that he did not provide nor said were to find. After two weeks of the original release, the community was able to find the fist key confirming his claims.
Despite skepticism, 'muslix64' was the real deal. Starting from a riddle posted on pastebin.com (http://pastebin.com/853659), members on the doom9 forum identified the Title key for the HD-DVD release 'Serenity.' Volume Unique Keys and Title keys for other discs followed within hours, confirming that software HD-DVD players, like any common program, store important run-time data in memory.
What pushed him and others in the right direction was LordSloth who posted (on Jan 13th) the link to the Google scavenger hunt for half a title key based on the text posted on pastebin.com.
Where LordSloth found the pastebin.com link I don't know, and I don't know who started the scavenger hunt. The guy posting the scavenger hunt at pastebin.com must have found a title key on his own.
Read from this first post by LordSloth and on-wards: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...804#post932...
Now GUI for BackupHDDVD and automatic web retrieving for the keys found so far are being developed by de community. (http://www.hdkeys.com/)
Now I know what HD format to buy and with this "extra feature" of backing up HD DVDs other will follow. Will this give HDDVD the victory over BluRay? The answer is yes for me.




RE: Going over the facts
By willow01 on 1/23/2007 1:32:05 AM , Rating: 2
Except now the same or similar technique is now being used on Blu-Ray, so the answer is still unclear.


Help or Hurt HD-DVD Sales?
By CKDragon on 1/17/2007 5:22:52 PM , Rating: 2
So I wonder whether this will help or hurt HD-DVD sales...

On one hand, the movie studios are going to look at this and be seriously deterred from putting their films on a hacked format.

On the other hand, I bet HD-DVD just got a lot more interest from the legions of people that are used to pirating their DVDs through various nefarious means. This could mean a lot more HD-DVD players jumping off the shelves which would mean a big installed user base. I'm sure someone will respond "But these new users will only be pirates", but most of the swashbucklers that I know WILL PURCHASE good movies to show support. Just not the 3rd rate crap.

Anyway, just food for thought.

CK




RE: Help or Hurt HD-DVD Sales?
By Hydrofirex on 1/17/2007 11:16:22 PM , Rating: 2
Using Piracy as a subversive marketing strategy...

It's a good thing Microsoft has never thought about doing that...

HfX


RE: Help or Hurt HD-DVD Sales?
By Aikouka on 1/18/2007 8:12:35 AM , Rating: 2
I don't think it will hurt sales as the average user will not want to download 19GB+ of data. What does hurt sales (in my opinion) is the fact that the movies are sometimes twice as expensive as the DVDs! I have an HD-DVD player, but I'm quite skeptical about paying that much for a movie unless it's one of my favorite movies of all time. $20 seems to be the sweet spot for the movies, but I see quite a few placed around $30-35, which is just a bit ludicrous.


Software of Choice
By Zurtex on 1/17/2007 5:03:12 PM , Rating: 2
Software of choice for hacking I believe is WinDVD. Not that it matters, there would have been some software or some hardware somewhere that didn't store the volume licence keys securely, because it's not within the AACS specification to keep that key secure.




RE: Software of Choice
By Live on 1/17/2007 5:19:10 PM , Rating: 2
First keys where found trough WinDVD. But keys have been confirmed in memory with PowerDVD 7.2 as well.


By TedStriker on 1/17/2007 5:12:41 PM , Rating: 4
Guess someone was aiming to misbehave...




pirating
By Uncle C on 1/17/2007 6:03:59 PM , Rating: 4
As long as every format gets hacked, I'm pleased.
Without healthy competition the market gets stagnant.




OK, since it hasn't been said yet I'll say it...
By loomis2 on 1/17/2007 7:40:09 PM , Rating: 2


You can't stop the signal!




By rippleyaliens on 1/17/2007 10:13:03 PM , Rating: 2
The DARK SIDE commith. lol
These companies kill me. "This stuff will never get cracked"
MAn, dont they just understand. You cant underestimate the Power, of the Dark Side of the Force. IE Pirates, BUT more importantly, the people who are challenged every time some idiot CEO states the Never word...

Pirates, hackers, back-upers, whatever... I Salute You.


And the format winner is...
By Micronite on 1/17/2007 8:02:50 PM , Rating: 2
So that makes HD-DVD that much more appealing now.
Scrictly for ease of backup... naturally.




RE: And the format winner is...
By michal1980 on 1/17/07, Rating: 0
RE: And the format winner is...
By allst1 on 1/21/2007 4:37:17 PM , Rating: 2
He got rated down for that.. Funny watching him get negated for almost anything...

The way most internet downloads are at the moment the number of seeders just keep decreasing now days.

Example:
Leechers +4000
Seeders:50


Streaming HD?
By HueyD on 1/18/2007 8:35:42 AM , Rating: 2
How much bandwidth would you need to stream an MPEG 4 (H.264) 720P movie?

7-8Mbps ?




RE: Streaming HD?
By HueyD on 1/18/2007 8:41:54 AM , Rating: 2
Here is a link to Apple, its about H.264.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/


Sigh
By DrDisconnect on 1/18/2007 8:41:29 AM , Rating: 2
Shame to see Josh Whedon (s