Sunday 10 June 2012

Digital wrongs mismanagement

Earlier this weekend, a customer came back with his new PC, saying that he couldn't get the Blu-ray drive to play Blu-ray movies. On closer inspection, it wasn't an open-and-shut case.

We spent the best part of a few hours un-installing and re-installing the Blu-ray software, with limited success - we kept getting the same error messages over and over: "You must update Cyberlink PowerDVD to continue playback of this content." We even tried some work-arounds - including open-source video players - and they didn't work either, this time getting errors related to 'unrecognised AACS keys'.

Here was a customer who purchased a legit Blu-ray drive that came with legit Blu-ray software, in the hope of playing back a legit Blu-ray movie disc. And what happens? The Blu-ray software kicks up a stink and effectively tells us otherwise. The Blu-ray movie provided by the customer indicated on the back cover that it was copy protected. Protection from what, exactly? Honest consumers?

If content providers are going to insult our collective intelligence, and make it harder for us to enjoy genuinely purchased media, then is it any wonder that file-sharing remains popular? I'd wager that people who file-share don't do it because they like to, but rather because they're left with little other choice. It's like purchasing a brand new car, only to find that the anti-theft mechanism has locked out its owner and won't respond to the keys. The Playstation 3 and dedicated Blu-ray players have no issues with all this, so those who want to enjoy home theatre on their personal computers should have the same right not to have to jump through annoying hoops.

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