Hardware / Other

HD DVD Encryption cracked ?

Yet to be completely verified, and not exactly simple to do, but it may be the case that we are about to see a flood of pirated High Def video hit the market. Will this story mark the beginning of the end for one of the new disk formats?

A thread on the Doom9 forum contains links posted by user Muslix64. They lead to a YouTube video and source download for a piece of java code to be employed in the breaking of Advanced Access Content System (AACS) encoded video. The encoding used for HD DVD content.

One minor requirement is for the "backupee" to find and add their cryptographic keys for the disc being copied. Muslix64 does provide help in that area.

If this becomes wide spread, what will it mean for the fledgling new High Definition home entertainment arena? Well it could go a number of ways.

Firstly there may be a small swing towards HD DVD players by consumers, if there was not already a swing in that area. This may be spurred by the availability of “cheap backups” of original High Def content.

It could also mean that the now divided movie studios move away from HD DVD to Blu-ray, but I doubt that the decisions that have already been made in Hollywood board rooms, will be that simple to shift, based on one forum post.

Most likely this situation will be short lived; I expect that if this Crack proves to be accurate, a similar Blu-ray Crack (given it uses the same AACS DRM) will be only a short period away. Meaning that we will be back to status quo in the format wars – ho hum.