Although Hollywood movie studios have little choice in which format they release their high-definition content, companies such as Disney and Fox chose Blu-ray Disc for its added copy protection features.

Since the AACS copy protection scheme was defeated, Blu-ray Disc had BD Plus (BD+), launched in June 2007 as a secondary protection method.

Like any other software protection scheme, however, it was only a matter of time before BD+ would be circumvented. In the latest version of SlySoft AnyDVD HD, released on Wednesday, the top new feature notes that the 6.4.0.0 software can now remove the BD protection from Blu-ray Discs. The release note also mentions that the removal of BD+ increases compatibility with titles released by Twentieth Century Fox.

Effectively an embedded virtual machine inside player hardware, BD+ allows content providers to include executables on Blu-ray Discs to perform specific, content protecting functions. For example, the BD+ virtual machine could run diagnostics on the host environment to see if the disc player has been modified, or to verify that the keys have not been changed.

As part of the BD+ scheme, video may be deliberately corrupted or modified to prevent the ripping of the data stream for piracy purposes. The BD+ environment, once verified, will correct and descramble the content to render it viewable.