HD DVD players & media will use watermarking to stop piracy
Posted on 03/11/05 00:25 by Seán Byrne                             
HD DVD players & media will use watermarking to stop piracy

The HD DVD format has got an extra anti-piracy boost with the help of a new audio based watermarking technology, unveiled by the Hollywood.  The technology works by adding a watermark to the soundtracks of all major movies, including those released at the cinema.  This watermark is not audible to the human ear, but can be recognised by the decoder in HD DVD players.  If the HD DVD player recognises the watermark that should not be present on any HD DVD media (such as the watermark included in the soundtrack in the cinema), it will stop playback of the disc.  The same goes with detecting a watermark on recordable HD DVD media that should only be present on original factory-pressed media.

In order to prevent a mess-up from happening, such as if someone accidentally captures the sound of a movie while taping with their camcorder, the HD DVD player allows a certain amount of tolerance.  This means that for clips of a short duration, the HD DVD player will not reject the movie, such as from someone taping the family and happens to have a TV on with a HD DVD movie playing in the background.  Unfortunately in an aim to enforce this anti-piracy measure, Hollywood aims to have this anti-piracy measure implemented in all recordable drives including (but not limited to) CD/DVD drives, hard disk drives to even PCs.  Thanks to TrueAudio for using our news submit to let us know about the following news:

Hollywood has unveiled a powerful new technology which it hopes will help kill the pirating of movies. The system relies on sound '“ not vision '“ and was unveiled at a conference held by the international DVD Forum in Paris, France last week.

The opportunity for a novel copyright protection system arose because the Forum is now finalising the standards for the new High Definition DVD system that goes on sale early in 2006. The details of the system were explained by Alan Bell, executive vice-president of advanced technology with Warner Brothers in California, US.

All HD-DVD players will have a sensor that looks for inaudible watermarks in the soundtrack of movies. The watermarks will be included in the soundtracks of all major movies released to cinemas.

If a DVD player detects the telltale code, the disc must be an illegal copy made by copying a film print to video, or pointing a camcorder and microphone at a cinema screen. So the player refuses to play the disc.

It looks the DVD Forum still wants to prove anti-piracy measures is one of its top priorities, especially since Blu-ray appears like it will not support mandatory managed copying, something the movie industry is happy to hear.  It is interesting to see this measure being put into audio, but then again DVD Audio uses its own form of watermarking to counter piracy.

Feel free to discuss about the HD DVD format on our Satellite, HD-TV, Blu-ray and HD-DVD Forum.

Source: New Scientist

Reactions
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By Phunc, Thu 3 Nov 2005 00:43
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PhuncSeriously, how the hell are they going to explain to the people that we can't hear the watermark, but a crappy microphone on a camera recording family stuff in a room where a TV is playing a HD DVD movie can ? Either it won't work as they have hoped or it is indeed audible. Why not insert a subliminal message saying "copying is bad, mkay", while they're at it !
By Scour, Thu 3 Nov 2005 01:05
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"HD DVD players & media will use watermarking to stop piracy" And all this DRM-shit will stop people buy that crap clown
By kwkard, Thu 3 Nov 2005 01:18
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kwkardI've read forums where people won't buy DVD-A discs because they can hear the watermark and say it sounds like a hiss. This is absurd.
By BitRate, Thu 3 Nov 2005 03:54
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With all these fascist protection schemes being developed for vaporware HD-DVD/Blu-ray products these moronic companies are doing a splendid job in discouraging people from adopting next generation digital media technology. It's high time people stood up and told these companies to get f**ked with their attempts to control how paying customers should be allowed to use products. I hope HD-DVD/Blu-ray dies a miserable death. Long live DVD!
By shimman, Thu 3 Nov 2005 04:15
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long live dvd, indeed! as restrictions gets worse and worse, people who used to get legit stuffs will turn away & go for the alternatives? bill gates does not want both hd dvd/bd; what he wants is to drm everything including flash memory/hdd to collect money from us for anything like bandits take money from innocents btw, water marking would not cause sound degration & will be very difficult to remove with all these protections requirements, i wonder how much it will cost to just watch movies in hd quality? will the disk last long enough? i might just read books instead
By lui_gough, Thu 3 Nov 2005 05:49
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I wonder how it can not cause sound degradation yet be detectable ... and yet be picked up by an ordinary mike and survive all the lossy format conversions loveit
By sorti, Thu 3 Nov 2005 06:22
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sortiWell at some point China will back a more open pirate friendly format... And that will be the one I go with, thank *heck* for China! Keeping America in check for years to come.
By CORRSA, Thu 3 Nov 2005 12:25
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NO SALES EQUALS NO PRODUCT GET IT ? DONT BUY YOU MORONS ITS AS SIMPLE AS THAT BRING EM TOO THEIR KNEES WE ARE THE ONES WITH THE POWER NOT THEM NO PRODUCTS SOLD NO CORPERATE BULL SHIT COMPANY TO PISS US OFF
By techman, Thu 3 Nov 2005 12:28
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techmanNo way will I bye into this DRM restricted crap im quite happy with my DVD's and have no intension of moving standards. I hope it fails completely for these new formats because they do not have jo publics interests in mind.
By Dick Rivett, Thu 3 Nov 2005 16:17
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Design by committee is always a bad idea. You always end up with crap. Not only that, but they are more than happy to pat themselves on the back for this great accomplishment. DVD sales are down because there is a glut of content out there. Who wants to buy all new copies of all the things they already have. A good upscanning DVD player already looks awesome. pffffft!
By erzug, Thu 3 Nov 2005 17:11
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Personally, I think the best audio watermarking they could build into the DVD would be to add sounds of coughing, cell phones going off, incessant laughing...even during the quiet serious scenes. It all of this wouldn't be enough to curb piracy, I don't know what would.Wink
By bytre, Thu 3 Nov 2005 19:04
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Like anyone who would watch a camcorder crap-o-vision capture would put it on hd-dvd.
By Zeroi786, Fri 4 Nov 2005 11:22
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Zeroi786I will make sure no one in my Family buys this crap. HD-DVD and BD don't have to go F**K them selfs it seems they already have. Long live DVDbiggrin
By Chiphead, Tue 8 Nov 2005 03:41
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I can't be the only one who has thought of this. If the watermark is "inaudible" then why can't someone simply put a high-pass filter on the audio portion of the "recording" during "re-compression" and viola....bye-bye watermark. If I can't hear it I won't miss it!! Stick Out Tongue
By C4st13v4n14!, Sun 19 Feb 2006 12:12
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If your pets start going mental and you don't know why, could be that inaudible watermark! biggrin

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