In their efforts to stamp out illegal copying, the movie industry has come up with the perfect DRM system: one so good that it prevents even legitimate bought copies from playing on legitimate DVD players. The films affected are the Blu-ray releases of ‘Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer’ and ‘Day After Tomorrow’. High Def Digest has the details:
Two of the most eagerly anticipated next-gen releases in recent memory have hit a series of playback snags on select Blu-ray players [...] incompatibility issues with some players have hindered playback of the discs.
The most severe problems have been reported on Samsung’s BDP-1200 and LG’s BH100, which are both said to be incapable of playing back the discs at all. Less catastophic issues (error messages and playback stutter) have been reported for Samsung’s BDP-1000. The discs appear to play back fine on all other Blu-ray players (including the PlayStation 3), although users have reported lengthy load times of up to two minutes.
It has been widely speculated that these issues stem from the use of BD+ copy protection on the two discs. We contacted Fox for comment, but so far there’s no official word from the studio.
Way to go, Movie industry! I’m sure putting onerous restrictions on legal, bought copies will foil those evil movie pirates. Meanwhile if you want to watch one of these films, both are available on The Pirate Bay, without the crippling DRM.
(via Slashdot)
I know! I know! We’ll infiltrate Netflix with DVDs prepared with a thin coating of carborundum powder, so if anyone reads’em they’ll need a NEW DRIVE!
Whoops; that’s an 80s joke about floppies. DVDs and CDs are read without physical contact. Probably covers the RIAA’s technical knowledge and mindset nicely, though.
Well, perhaps they could develop a new plastic explosive, one triggered by laser light, and put it in DVDs.