[opendtv] Re: HD-DVD Loses Round One
- From: Tom Barry <trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:13:14 -0500
Olivier Houot wrote:
> I also like to toy with the idea that digital theoretically allows for
> the preservation of data for eternity (or a good fraction of it anyway)
> . But if a future archeologist stumbles upon a pack of DVDs or HD-DVD,
> he will get no chance of making sense of the bits , even if he has heard
> about MPEG, because of those damnable, key-protected encryption schemes.
> And so the artistical productions of our time will be lost. It will
> probably be even worse for those people to know that the data is there ,
> intact, but they simply can't access it.
This last part is especially important to me. We probably have the
technology to permanently save most popular media today for almost
forever. It totally upsets me to think some of our culture may be
permanently and unnecessarily lost due to paranoia and copy protection.
For instance, as a kid I was quite a fan of the late 1950's western
series Wanted Dead or Alive, starring a very young Steve McQueen.
Recently I became interested again and found only the first season was
available on DVD. But I was reassured to see that almost all the
episodes were somewhere out there on the net, with thousands of folks
keeping backups.
Of course with reasonable copyright laws those would probably all be
public domain by now anyway.
- Tom
Jeroen Stessen wrote :
All this bullshit about the right to make "backups", copies
for the car, downsampled copies for the portable media player,
it is not true. The only reason for making copies is for
giving them away or for trading. A bit of undefeatable copy
protection goes a long way for reading people their rights.
I respectfully disagree, Jeroen.
I played a lot with transfers of video clips from VCDs or DVDs i own to
my PDA, that i use as a portable video player from time to time. This is
nice for trips in the train, for example.
For that i have to ripp the material, downsample to 320 *240 (at least
on my former PDA), reencode to low bitrate Divx with ogg vorbis sound,
and wrap the result in an .ogm container.
If i had to go through the original disc rights owner they would :
- introduce a delay before delivering the file
- charge me for something i have already payed
- problably not do it exactly the way i want
- probably refuse any format that has anything to do with open source
By doing things myself i can :
- convert something in minutes at 3 o'clock in the morning if i please
- redo it immediately if the result is not exactly what i expected
- chose any format that i please
- pay nothing more than i already have
- feel free
- take full advantage of the magic of the digital revolution instead of
being prisonner of a crippled contraption
- do away with the unacceptable additional processor power consumption
involved in the decryption of the streams (in my former PDA just
decoding the video and audio was at the very limit of its capabilities)
By the way my VCD with the best picture quality is a Star Trek VI issued
by Philips at the very beginning of the CDI-FMV format. It's completely
non standard so i can't copy it at all , nor watch it on a DVD player.
Only the original CDI-FMV player will take it. Very good protection
indeed.When that player breaks down the contents of that disc will be
completely unreadable for me. I certainly regret that (Ok, i will
probably own a Blu-ray version by that time...)
I also like to toy with the idea that digital theoretically allows for
the preservation of data for eternity (or a good fraction of it anyway)
. But if a future archeologist stumbles upon a pack of DVDs or HD-DVD,
he will get no chance of making sense of the bits , even if he has heard
about MPEG, because of those damnable, key-protected encryption schemes.
And so the artistical productions of our time will be lost. It will
probably be even worse for those people to know that the data is there ,
intact, but they simply can't access it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
--
Tom Barry trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx
Find my resume and video filters at www.trbarry.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts:
