PDA

View Full Version : Gates knocks Blue Ray Copy Protection



zippyjuan
10-18-2005, 01:46 AM
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/storage/display/20051017175025.html


“Protection Scheme under Blu-Ray is Very Anti-Consumer,” – Bill Gates.
Microsoft Chairman Condemns Blu-Ray Protection Tech

Category: Storage

by Anton Shilov

[ 10/17/2005 | 05:50 PM ]


Microsoft Corp.’s chairman Bill Gates said in an interview that the copy-protection scheme on the Blu-ray discs was very anti-consumer, which would make them harder to on the personal computers. This partly explains Microsoft’s decision to support HD DVD format instead of Blu-ray format recently.

“The key issue here is that the protection scheme under Blu-ray is very anti-consumer and there’s not much visibility of that. The inconvenience is that the [movie] studios got too much protection at the expense consumers and it won’t work well on PCs. You won’t be able to play movies and do software in a flexible way,” Bill Gates said in an interview with The Daily Prestonian.

Mr. Gates said that physical format of the Blu-ray was okay, but copyright protection scheme was not fine for the PC. He indicated that once the Blu-ray group fixes that scheme to be more consumer friendly, “that would be fine”.

The chairman of the world’s largest software maker also said that the Blu-ray and HD DVD were the last physical formats and in future removable media will be substituted by streamed content as well as delivery of the content via the Internet.

“Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. Everything's going to be streamed directly or on a hard disk. So, in this way, it's even unclear how much this one counts,” Mr. Gates said.

HD DVD discs can store up to 15GB on a single layer and up to 30GB on two layers. Its competitor, Blu-ray, can store up to 27GB per single layer as well as support a variety of additional features, including advanced copy-protection mechanisms, but Blu-ray discs are more expensive to produce. The HD DVD is pushed aggressively by Toshiba and NEC as well as being standardized at the DVD Forum, which represents over 230 consumer electronics, information technology, and content companies worldwide. Blu-ray is backed by Sony and Panasonic, the world’s No.1 and No.3 makers of electronics. Among Hollywood studios HD is supported by Warner Bros. Studios, New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures, whereas Sony Pictures, Walt Disney and Twentieth Century Fox endorse Blu-ray.

Bires
10-18-2005, 03:28 PM
[teacher rant]

Was that a direct copy/paste? Someone needs to shoot his editor.

[/teacher rant]

zippyjuan
10-18-2005, 05:45 PM
Direct cut and paste. The site is Russian so it was translated somehow (but not by me).

johnnymk
10-18-2005, 06:31 PM
Bill Gates suddenly concerned about copy protection...gimme a break!!

InfiniteNothing
10-18-2005, 07:22 PM
HDDVD is going to be too slow. You're going to have to spin that thing at like 10K rpm to get 12X. Good luck getting it any faster.

johnnymk
10-18-2005, 08:04 PM
I believe that most people are concerned with capacity, not speed of copying

InfiniteNothing
10-18-2005, 08:11 PM
Not to me but, that too... BD has what 66% more capacity?