Five firms to create HD-centric DRM for SD cards
Format shifting without resort to the torrents?
Panasonic, Samsung, SanDisk, Sony and Toshiba are to develop a better DRM for memory cards.
Just what the world needs: more DRM...
The quintet's notion is that the technology will allow HD content to be transferred to SD cards and such and not copied elsewhere.
A typical scenario: your DVR records, say, a future Doctor Who Christmas special, and you copy it to SD so you can watch the show on your smartphone or tablet. But you won't be able to pass it on to a chum.
The punter gets to move HD material between devices, and the content makers can let him, safe in the knowledge the files aren't going to end up on Pirate Bay.
That's the theory anyway, and the five are confident they can pull it off. And get it into products some time during 2012.
"This content protection solution will be robust enough to protect HD content," they said today. "A high level of content security will be realised through the use of the initiative's technologies, including unique ID technology for Flash memory and robust copy protection based on public key infrastructure." ®
COMMENTS
And it will work in every device
What's that? Oh old devices aren't compatible, every new device then? Oh really, just the devices and software that have paid license fees to the consortium.
Guess we'll just stick to circumventing the bluray encryption then.
Let me make this very clear
I will not accept having a digital cop watching my every move any more than I would accept having a real cop in my house watching my every move.
I am more than fed up with these companies that act as if they have the right to police me in my own home just because they create themselves the means to do so.
I will not buy anything with any sort of DRM tech if I can avoid it. I have already decided on a total boycott of Sony products, and if I have to wait for a noname Chinese knock-off to get performance and freedom, then I will do so.
No one has the right to impose anything on me in my own house, period.
and once again
they make it so that the pirated versions are better than the officially purchased versions - can't they see why this is a problem?
More products to avoid then...
Like HDCP on HDMI isn't enough of a ball ache between an STB and a projector, what with the HDMI handshaking causing the picture to drop out intermittently. This never happens on the non DRM connection.
And really what is the point when it will only take a few weeks or months for a bored teenager to crack...
With Sony involved, I'm entirely sure that the group's primary focus will be to provide users with mechanisms to easily format-shift their material, and in no way will they try to hopelessly hobble the technology in order to try and prop up the craptastic notion of the "triple-play" media (which makes me laugh, given that the couple of digital editions I've seen bundled with DVDs have small print saying that the licence expires within 2 years).
I guess I'll be buying my SD cards (and probably media players as well, since I currently use a Sansa Clip+ for mp3 playback on the hoof) from someone other than SanDisk in the future then. That's a shame, they're bloody good at what they do.
