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SlySoft: Blu-ray fully cracked
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 31st December 2008
The BD+ DRM technology used on commercial Blu-ray discs has been well and truly broken by SlySoft's AnyDVD software.
According to BetaNews, the Antigua-based company has created a new version – 6.5.0.3 – of its software which makes light work of the much-vaunted BD+ protection built into commercially produced Blu-ray films. This latest version, described in traditionally tactful terms by the company as “incredible magic,” allows on-the-fly duplication of commercial Blu-ray discs without the need for an HDCP-compliant display device.
This isn't the first time that the company has claimed a breakthrough against the Macrovision-owned BD+ technology: we reported back in March that SlySoft had completed the work of cracking the protection technology. With BD+, however, that's never the end of the story: Macrovision's innovative DRM system allows for the underlying codes to be changed on a whim – meaning that it only takes a single update from the company to render SlySoft's work moot.
SlySoft, which takes advantage of lax copyright and intellectual property laws in Antigua to sell its software commercially via the Internet, is increasingly aware of this shortcoming: while previous versions of AnyDVD have come with a policy of free lifetime updates, the company is planning to offer an annual update scheme instead from January next year in order to cover the costs of attacking a continually-shifting target.
Despite the increased difficulties in breaking BD+ compared to the CSS system used by DVDs, it's clear that the content protection companies are on the losing side of this continuing battle.
Do you applaud SlySoft's efforts to show big business that efforts at DRM are ultimately futile, or is the company just attempting to make a quick buck at the expense of the IP holders? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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as i understand it, bd+ stores the decryption algorithm on the disc, but it only runs in a specific virtual machine on the bd+ compatible player. what slysoft has done is emulate the VM, so that even if macrovision decides to require a different decryption algorithm, the software can just read the new algorithm off the disk and start using it. the software should continue to work even after an update to the bd+ drm.
and then some!
Oh and making your PC region free is a bonus too.
I've been completely satisfied with AnyDVD on my HTPC for a couple of years now. It really is a great program, with some obviously talented programmers.
Actually, having done the maths, I'll stick to disc swapping for now.
Lol!!! I'm sure they have.
Whilst I can totally understand the reasoning behind sticking blu-ray disks on an HTPC/media server and being able to stream it to any machine in the house, as Tad points out, at 50GB a pop you'll need some serious amount of HDD space to be able to include all but your very few favourites. A 1TB HDD might only support 20 dual layer blu-ray movies, and financially, it doesn't make sense (about £4 to store each one).
Even a moderate DVD collection can begin to quickly overwhelm your storage when you are doing 1:1 copies.
Bring on the cheap, supersize HDDs please!
There's a lot of BD that are not duel layer and furthermore the size of the video file is smaller still. Today's generation BD don't have video files at 50gigs. http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AHABFECTNE15I/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview This is the most useful review I've found for BD check it out.
You can get some really good quality BD rips that weigh in at about 8GB, and when using some efficient codecs for the compression, you can end up with a video that's indistinguishable from the original source, well almost anyway.
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no, never...
SlySoft is forever and always my huggable, lovable, cuddlable snuggy-bear. With gigabit ethernet and a massive file server in the bedroom closet, this is a one-way ticket to media heaven.
Now that i'm done lauding the praises of slysoft, I must recommend that you not only use it, but pirate it, then rip a hard-copy pirate version of some film still in theaters.
It's like flushing all the toilets in an office building at the same time: simply magical.
Where's that from again?
are you confusing DVD? The smallest Blu-Ray rip where it was just the movie no other content in ite original format was like 14gb, the ones online are probably compressed which defeats the point of blu-ray and hi-def
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d82Lq2rVB_4
Thank God for Slysoft. Why would any company punish their paying costumers? It's beyond me.
As far as the rips are concerned, they are huge when uncompressed. Most of the rips you see on the net are scaled down to 720p which will save a bit of space. Also, depends on the codec that was used to encode the video on the disk.
I'm in the process of ripping the BD's I have to a media server, and I'm hitting anything around 2GB to 3.5GB at 720p with Dolby Digital 5.1 at 448Kbps. Even at 4GB to 5GB a shot, storage is real cheap and gives you a way to keep those BD's in a closet. I think I've seen a few 1080p's around at around 8-9GB as well. I haven't taken a look at any of them though as far as quality goes.
As far as another software player, I never was a fan of WMP. Too big and not really worth it IMHO. VLC/Media Player Classic tend to work better for me on my computer for videos but YMMV.
Or imagine donoading some movie you've never heard of, wanting to see it before shelling out wads of cash for a blu-ray copy, only to realise that after you've bought it, you still can't use it how you want. Like buying a car, with which you are only allowed to use the first three gears.