THE HACKER who broke the DRM behind HD-DVD and Blu-Ray has told slyck.com that the technology was easier to break than the CSS system it replaced...
http://www.slyck.com/story1390.html

Thats hilarious. Anyways, I am not surprised actually, and its not the copy protection that really annoys me about dvds in general, its the regional restrictions. Why shouldn't I be allowed to view a movie from a different country, since that movie has little or no chance of being released here in the states. If hollow-mind (hollywood) has no interest in it because it won't make them $$, then that movie will never see the light of day here, so I must circumvent regional restrictions on my player. It is true that the regional codes for hd-dvds and blu ray are 'slightly' lax, as in, us, europe and japan are in the same region, but other countries are still in their own. Its idiotic. There aren't any regional restrictions on music, so why should there be restrictions on movies? The whole argument about delaying the release to other countries for translation is BS. It doesn't take that much longer to add subtitles in said language. Its all lies. Anyways, I applaud those fine people who cracked hd-dvd and blu-ray.

It was just a matter of time once someone with the necessary talent put their mind to it. Actually, I am surprised it took him longer than a week. It is also good news that "fair use" is now possible with both formats. (Note: for me this is only of intellectual interest, since I have no desire to get a high definition anything currently. Maybe I will feel differently someday.)

Why are we even using discs anymore?

Can't we have asploding digital downloads? You download the movie, watch it three times, like it, send the team 10$, don't, it implodes, never to be seen again on your PC. Of course, not litterally implodes. Just deletes itself off the system without any chance of recovery, not even by sandboxing.

I hate discs. They scratch, they're expensive, they're bulky. You need to spend a ton getting a new player, too. 1,000$ for a BR/HDDVD burner is not innexpensive. Hard drive space is. I can pick up a 160GB hard drive, that can work on almost every PC in use today as long as there's room on the mobo, for 70$. Don't have room? 160GB FW/USB HDD is still just ~100$.

It's obvious that "discs" are on the way out. I mean, both music and movies are "software." You don't need to print plastic disks, stuff them in boxes, stack them en masse on store shelves, and drive three miles in the rain to get them along with a box of popcorn. How twentieth-century! And, how expensive!

"Hell-ywood" should have learned its lesson with Shrek-2. They overestimated the demand, printed way too many disks, sent them to retailers with much fanfare .. and in time, the retailers sent them right back. The studio had to re-state a profitable quarter as a serious loss.

Why? Because of plastic discs! Overhead! Production costs! Complicated accounting! And... resultant, but unnecessary, big-time losses.

Shrek-2 should have been a simple, moderately-sized download. Request it, get it, play it. You play it a couple-three times and then you're tired of it. Or, maybe your three-year old goes right to sleep whenever you play it and you think that's so wonderful (and, trust me, you will... ) that you want to print a plastic copy. You should be able to do that.

With all of the millions of dollars that the industry could save by making that switch, they should be champing at the bit to "get 'er done." But you know, first the attitude has to shift. Right now they call 'em "films," which implies plastic.

As an industry, they're still imagining their product as a tangible object, when it really isn't. Discs, and tapes, and "films," are simply the medium in which it (for historical but now-obsolete reasons) has been fixed.

1. Impossible to prevent recovery with sandboxing.
2. It would require proprietary (closed-source) software.

@Sepero: Never mind, then. I guess they should sell them online for face value. That seems more resonable than what they're doing now. I wouldn't mind paying the 10$ for a movie ticket plus some to compensate for lack of DVD sales, to watch a movie from the comfort of my home.

And possibly some sort of special browser that lets you watch a movie. Gets charged to your ISP account or something, and it'd be streaming, so yeah no downloading if it's illegal. Something like YouTube, minus the fact that you can download the clips. That way you can see the movie without spending much.