Sunday, March 4, 2007
AnyDVD HD Defeats HD DVD Copy Protection
AnyDVD HD removes AACS encryption from HD DVDs, allowing users to play movies on non-HDCP compliant hardware
AnyDVD, a software favorite for DVD movie aficionados, has hit the HD era. SlySoft has quietly released AnyDVD HD over the weekend, offering similar decryption capabilities as its standard-definition version.
AnyDVD HD removes AACS encryption from HD DVDs, which will also allow the user to watch movies over a digital display connection without HDCP compliant graphics card and display. The software will also enable PowerDVD Ultra to run titles released by Studio Canal, The Weinstein Company, Kinowelt, Optimum Releasing—studios whose movies previously did not run on the PC player.
Another feature of AnyDVD HD is what SlySoft calls “magic file replacement” to remaster any commercial movie disc using simple XML scripts. These scripts will “magically” replace the files on the physical disc so that the user can customize discs without making a copy to a hard drive.
“We could only begin our development some weeks ago and we are immensely proud to get this product out to the users so quickly,” said Peer van Heuen, one of SlySoft’s lead developers. “This speaks to the commitment to our users: get good and easy-to-use products out on the market fast!”
Other features carried over from AnyDVD include the removal of CSS encryption and region codes from DVD movies, allowing for a user’s free reign over the optical format for backup purposes. AnyDVD is capable of removing unwanted movie features, including subtitles and prohibition messages such as copyright and FBI warnings.
While the release of AnyDVD HD seems to be more than coincidental with the discovery of the Processing Key that defeats all HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc protections, SlySoft maintains that its development was independent of what the hacking community accomplished.
“The way AnyDVD HD addresses and solves the problem doesn't have much in common with the discoveries of individual members of the Open Source community in reading AACS keys from the USB bus,” said Peer van Heuen. “As one can expect from SlySoft, our solution works fully automatic with all known titles while the so-called hacker tools require laborious reading out of memory or the USB bus. This is not to say that their efforts are completely fruitless; it’s just that ours need to be user-friendly. It’s just that simple.”
The current version of AnyDVD HD supports only HD DVD, but given the similarities in copy protection, SlySoft said that a version of its software that will support Blu-ray Disc is not far off.
“When we considered Blu-Ray, our strategy was simply to initially support HD-DVD and await further developments in the marketplace. Already during the beta phase we got many inquiries about Blu-ray so we decided to go ahead and also provide support for this as soon as possible,” added Tom Xiang, SlySoft’s Marketing Director. “Blu-ray employs the same AACS process as HD-DVD. An implementation was really just a matter of form. A beta version is planned for availability this quarter.”
AnyDVD HD is priced at $79 by itself or as an upgrade from AnyDVD for $30. The software may also be first downloaded for a free 21-day trial.
Source
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment