Instead, we can worry about the DVD CSS mess which doesn't look good at all

Sigh... am I the only person on the planet who doesn't have a DVD player? What is a "DVD CSS"?

Just as an aside, somewhat related to this off-topic discussion... anybody who hasn't done so owes it to himself to investigate TiVo. Think of it as an empeg for your TV set. Once you have TiVo, you never watch television anymore -- you watch TiVo. Just imagine -- every time you turn it on, you aren't limited by the vagaries and whims of the local TV schedule. Instead, you always have 30 hours of programming that you like on tap, ready to play at the touch of a remote. The TiVo learns what you like based on what you initially tell it to record, and then automatically records similar programming.

It works astonishingly well.

So what is a "DVD CSS"?

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

CSS is the encryption used on DVD's. DeCSS was written to get around that encryption, (allows copying and free playing) and now the Motion Picture industry is having a fit.

I think that's pretty much it in a nutshell. I'm sure someone else can give more specifics.

Bill B.
Mk.2 SN 080000183 - 38 GB / Green

CSS is the encryption method used to protect DVDs and prevent people from copying them.

Unfortunately for the DVD consortium, CSS was cracked and a program called DeCSS was released to enable you to de-scramble the DVD content (in effect enabling people to copy movies off DVDs and distribute them on the net).

The movie industry got all pissed off and started suing web sites posting DeCSS or even links to the source code. A big trial is ongoing involving the 2600 website and the movie industry. One side says it's illegal to post links to the code, the other side says code is like speech and should be free (as in freedom).

Anyway, that's the short version.

I'll second the Tivo plug, it rules and makes you wonder how you ever lived without it before.

-D


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I really like the hardware of tivo/replay recorders, but... I just can't get over the big brother aspects of it. To get the real value of it you have to hook it up to the phone and someone at a remote site gets to keep detailed records fo everything you watch. If they were a subscription process and only updates of tvguide info were being handed out, without sending my viewing choices back to a server... I might go for that.

Glenn

The Dishplayer from Dish Networks does Tivoish stuff as well and requires no phone line. The DirecTv Tivo may be the same way...

SonicBlue recently bought ReplayTV, the main competitor to Tivo. I'd love to see a "built with empeg technology" sticker on a future ReplayTV unit... :-)

The Dishplayer from Dish Networks does Tivoish stuff as well and requires no phone line. The DirecTv Tivo may be the same way...

I heard a rumour that there are small dish systems now, that can talk two ways. Why would a phone line be needed?

Glenn

DirectTivo gets their channel lineups through the satelite, no phone line needed for the Tivo stuff.

DirectTV is NOT bi-directional. That's why they are having so many problems with people hacking their own cards (until recently anyway but that's another story).

Normal tivo needs regular updates for all your channel lineups and sometimes software updates, a phoneline IS needed since as of now they don't transmit data through your cable or TV programs.

And just to clear something up: Tivo DOES NOT send any information back to anybody.

Tivo is now just about as hacked by people as the empeg is and any attempt on their part to sneak this in would be discovered very quickly. It works the same way as Windows Update which, for example, can determine what updates you need without sending any info to Microsoft.

The people behind Tivo are very cool BTW and understand they have more to loose than to gain by trying to pull something like this. Ultimate TV on the other hand hasn't made clear what their plans are in this area.

-D


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Thanks for clearing that up. Will you forgive me for being skeptical, given the abuses of spam and banner ads.

Glenn

Wow, both of my favorite gadgets have converged on one BBS!

TiVo RULES. Just one thing... Dids mentioned that a phone line is needed for software updates, and it is also needed for 2 TiVo features... 1) TiVolution Magazine and 2) Network Showcases...

In case anyone was wondering...

I can't watch live TV, EVER anymore. In fact, if there's something on that I want to see, I'll let TiVo "tape" it for long enough so that I can use the FF to go through the commercials quickly.

If you don't yet have a TiVo, get one.

- Jon

I heard a rumour that there are small dish systems now, that can talk two ways. Why would a phone line be needed?

That rumor is true, it's called StarBand, and it's an internet service. But the normal dishs can't transmit anything back. My DishPlayer has never called home for a single thing, since I also order all PPV via the net. And even if I had a dish that could transmit, the Dishplayer dosen't know how, as well as the DishPlayer would never be hooked to the transmitter, that goes to the modem.

Unfortunately for the DVD consortium, CSS was cracked and a program called DeCSS was released to enable you to de-scramble the DVD content (in effect enabling people to copy movies off DVDs and distribute them on the net).

DeCSS does not enable you to copy and distribute movies - you can just as easily distribute the scrambled digital content. What it does enable you to do is to write an unlicensed DVD player. If DeCSS is judged illegal it's highly unlikely that there'll ever be a free software DVD player (in either the "free beer" or the "free speech" sense).

Read http://www.cssfaq.org/ for more on this, it's a great page.

Borislav

DeCSS does not enable you to copy and distribute movies - you can just as easily distribute the scrambled digital content. What it does enable you to do is to write an unlicensed DVD player.

Not quite accurate. Although you could write an unlicensed DVD player with DeCSS technology, it also also allows you to copy and distribute movies. In addition, it allows you to circumvent the region-encoding of a given DVD.

What it allows is for the movies to be decoded into unencrypted video files onto your PC's hard disk. From there, you can either distribute them in their unencrypted form, or you can downconvert them into a smaller, internet-friendly video format such as .ASF or .MPG. Generally, those are the things you see distributed on the 'net- the smaller files downconverted from a DeCSS-enabled DVD rip.

Another thing you can create from these unencrypted video files is Video CDs, which is really what the copyright holders were so pissed about. Since Video CDs are popular in asian markets, DeCSS allows for pirates to easily create VCDs of freshly-released DVDs for distribution in those markets. And since this skips the region-lock code, too, then the companies can't easily do the regional price-fixing that the region-locking was supposed to help them do.

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Tony Fabris

Not quite accurate.

I see your points and while I don't completely agree with them I'd like to defer to the information in the link I posted, as well as the MPAA FAQ and the DVD CCA FAQ linked from there - let people make up their own minds.

...which is really what the copyright holders were so pissed about.

What I'm pissed off about is that software DVD players for Linux will suffer because of this. I believe that open source produces better software, we can't enjoy it in this case. The commercial players have been slow in coming and even when they finally appear they'll always lag behind since the Linux share of the desktop market is still tiny.



When I first came to the US after three years in the UK I was very amused by people exclaiming loudly "I'm so pissed!" (meaning angry, irritated in the US and drunk in the UK). That's worn off by now but I can still entertain myself by using British spelling with my US friends and vice-versa. Actually, the best way I've found to annoy both camps at the same time is to claim that rugby and American football are pretty much the same thing. (baseball and cricket works too)

Anyway, back on topic. Yeah, right.

Borislav

What I'm pissed off about is that software DVD players for Linux will suffer because of this. I believe that open source produces better software, we can't enjoy it in this case.

Which was the whole point of DeCSS in the first place, as I recall: To allow for the creation of an open-source DVD player which could run on Linux.

The problem is the side effect was to crack the copy protection. Not that it was terribly effective copy protection to begin with (it didn't prevent copying, as you pointed out, it only prevented playback on anything but a licensed player which could decode the encrypted stream).


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Tony Fabris

I didn't mean that DeCSS was created to copy DVDs, just that it does allow it which is what the MPAA is annoyed about.

I also don't want to imply that I agree with the MPAA, I was just stating facts. (Linux DVD driver -> GOOD!)

An like Tony said, the state of things is DeCSS DOES allow you to copy DVDs amongst other things.

-D


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