Wired's 2007 predictions. Funny that I'm getting a Blu-ray ad on a page predicting its demise. Still not sure why people are assuming that either format will win. Who won, SACD or DVD-A? Hehe, thought so.

Well, not quite ... I took a look at this, and it's not really that groundbreaking. Here's my Digg comment:

AACS has not been "hacked". The author's source code simply implements the decryption algorithm (documented, no black magic here).

The only thing of interest is the fact that he extracted the title keys, which he almost certainly obtained by poking around in PowerDVD's memory space.

The proper title for this post is (probably) "AACS Title Keys Extractable from PowerDVD".

Now, if the title keys can be obtained and distributed en masse (100,000 titles would require only a few megabytes even with title metadata), then AACS is certainly ineffective, but it's incorrect to say that it is "cracked" or "hacked". Nothing here will lead to a libdeaacs.so that could operate in the absence of a key database.

Angry but often insightful post on piracy vs. DRM-infected "legitimacy".

Quoted: Then came the PC makers, the dumb sheep that they are. There seems to be a race to see who can pass the buck quickest ...

Filling out my "2 + 2 = 4" tag ...

Quoted: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disappointing So Far -- article related to Hardware, Movies, and Media.

Quoted: GamesIndustry.biz article: Top movie studios look set to delay the HDCP copy protection system - which would only work on next-gen DVD players with HDMI ports, unlike the low-end PS3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 HD-DVD peripheral - for four to six years.

Could HD-DVD and Blu-ray both fail more miserably than SACD / DVD-A? Maybe ... what a mess. PS3 could easily be $599 at it's year late launch, and most of that for a drive that won't be properly leveraged by most games (most games are cross platform, and won't break the DVD format limit). A massive, massive gamble that enough people have good enough HD sets to make this matter.

Quoted: The report starts off by analyzing a bill of materials for "blue laser players" and came up with a round figure of about US$400.

Hmmm, not sure I'm ready to trust anything out of Sony's mouth (PS3 in Spring '06 ring a bell?), but this seems like good news. Very good news.

Screen shots of LoTR DVD vs. LoTR HD transfer -- gives a good idea of what we'll be seeing with next generation optical formats (Blu-ray, HD-DVD).