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Piracy Encryption Movies Privacy Security Entertainment

AnyDVD Supports UHD Blu-Ray Ripping, While Devices Patch Security Holes (torrentfreak.com) 68

The controversial ripping tool AnyDVD has released a new beta version that allows users to decrypt and copy UHD Blu-Ray discs. The software makes use of the leaked keys that came out recently and appears to work well. Meanwhile, disc drive manufacturers are patching security holes. TorrentFreak reports: This year there have been some major developments on this front. First, full copies of UHD discs started to leak online, later followed by dozens of AACS 2.0 keys. Technically speaking AACS 2.0 is not confirmed to be defeated yet, but many discs can now be ripped. This week a popular name jumped onto the UHD Blu-Ray bandwagon. In its latest beta release, AnyDVD now supports the format, relying on the leaked keys. "New (UHD Blu-ray): Fetch AACS keys from external file for use with 'UHD-friendly' drives," the release notes read. The involvement of AnyDVD is significant because it previously came under legal pressure from decryption licensing outfit AACS LA. This caused former parent company Slysoft to shut down last year, but the software later reappeared under new management. Based on reports from several AnyDVD users, the UHD ripping works well for most people. Some even claim that it's faster than the free alternative, MakeMKV.
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AnyDVD Supports UHD Blu-Ray Ripping, While Devices Patch Security Holes

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  • Dead to me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21, 2017 @09:29PM (#55787197)

    Sorry, but AnyDVD is dead to me. I paid for a lifetime license and now they don't honor it. I honestly don't buy into the whole "oh, that OTHER company shut down, and we're an entirely different company, but oh we have their code and their forums and everything, so pay us again" BS.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Same thing happened to me. I've still got it installed, but it's stuck at version 7.6.9.5.

      You'd think the least they could do is release a local copy of the online database to paid users that covers titles up to point where support ended. Instead, it's simply inaccessible, making BD+ titles that required the database un-decryptable, even though they previously worked.

      I'm not too pissed off, because I got a lot of use out of the software over the years, but I will probably never buy the new version because t

      • by Anonymous Coward

        I'm personally pissed because I paid for a lifetime license and got less than a year of updates. And the deal they offered to pay them again was atrocious.

        I know some people who paid for lifetime updates got years out of it, but there's no way in hell that I'm giving them another dime after they failed so miserably in handling it.

        Personally, I don't buy the notion that they're a separate company when they're mostly the same employees and they have the source code. The minor discount they offered was a prett

    • Re:Dead to me (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Friday December 22, 2017 @04:30AM (#55788145)

      Sorry, but AnyDVD is dead to me. I paid for a lifetime license and now they don't honor it. I honestly don't buy into the whole "oh, that OTHER company shut down, and we're an entirely different company, but oh we have their code and their forums and everything, so pay us again" BS.

      SlySoft is DEAD. The company founder was jailed and the company was forced to shut down. (Slysoft was either a company based in Antigua). The company wiped all the front-end servers during the shut down, including customer databases. That company is dead. USTR and AACS LA forced them to close and they folded.

      Now, RedFox is composed of the developers of the company - they discovered when SlySoft shut down, and the servers wiped, the source code servers and build machines were very much alive. So they basically stole it all - source code and everything, shut down the old Slysoft servers because the company is legally dead.

      For a time, they hosted Slysoft data - at their expense. Remember, the financial assets of Slysoft were seized during the shutdown.

      So RedFox guys got together and incorporated in Belize, again, with their own money (they didn't even do a Kickstarter, which is the trendy thing these days). As a goodwill measure, they offered recent licensees a whopping 50% discount off new licenses (including lifetime). This was on top of the 20% discount they were offering to get seed money started, and you can get another 10% if you pay in bitcoin.

      They didn't have to do any of it - because legally speaking, Slysoft's assets are no more. They are two completely independent companies. In fact, AnyDVD's source code is technically stolen from Slysoft, but I'm sure SlySoft will not be suing them for the theft.

      I'm sure the US Government might try to seize the source code back, but I'm sure that would lead to thornier issues since the wrong move might make it available to all as part of a FOIA.Or who knows what else - treat it wrongly and it might end up through some legislative loopholes to be a US government supported piece of software.

      • by BLKMGK ( 34057 )

        Jailed? No he was fined $30K or had to spend 6months in jail. Sorry, don't make this out like the guy didn't do just fine out of this.

    • When someone sells you something for "lifetime", it means "for as long as I live". Not you.

      Never buy anything "for lifetime" where you're dependent on someone to continue his business. It's usually a good indicator that he won't be doing it for much longer.

      • by Guyle ( 79593 )

        When someone sells you something for "lifetime", it means "for as long as I live". Not you.

        In an ideal world, sure. In the real world, shit happens, and you get what you get. Yeah, I didn't like having to buy AnyDVD HD again from RedFox after having a lifetime license from SlySoft. But you know, I respect the guys who resurrected it and brought it back to life, so they deserved getting my money again. Hell, the one thing I wanted was UHD support, and it's finally coming around. They wouldn't have had money for that kind of development if they just let everyone who had old SlySoft lifetime li

    • by BLKMGK ( 34057 )

      Right there with you, I was a lifetime user and supporter of many years myself. Got others on the bandwagon and used their software to great success. Now suddenly it's Chinese software in posession of the full IP of the other company but they cannot honor my license? I should accept this? No thanks, I've moved on and there are other options.

    • That's another reason you're better off investing in free software, software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason. It's not the program that costs no money, it's the users that are free to make the program suit their needs. If the software were free software you could run it, hire people to improve it, learn programming (if you're not a programmer) to make improvements yourself, and share copies to help your community. I invest in free software and I recommend others

  • DVD rips looks good enough on my 23" widescreen LCD monitor. DVI and HDMI inputs, no fucking built-in tuner that could become outdated, no smart TV crap that would change how the monitor works without my approval, no smart TV crap that can get infected with spyware.

    Sure, Blu-ray would look better, but that would require investing in buying movies to be worth it and I'm doing as little as possible to help the old media cartels.

  • MakeMKV is free (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday December 21, 2017 @09:34PM (#55787219)

    What do I care if it's somewhat slower than AnyDVD? I hardly buy any movies at all, anyway, since most of the time if I've seen it once I have no interest in seeing it again. And it's not like I'm hanging around while I rip a Blu-Ray or DVD.

    Plus MakeMKV is available for Mac.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      MakeMKV doesn't support UHD Blu Ray unless you use a tool like AnyDVD or DeUHD.

      • Re: MakeMKV is free (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21, 2017 @11:38PM (#55787597)
        I just backed up my UHD Blu-Ray of Ghostbusters (1984) using only MakeMKV and the leaked key list. I have neither AnyDVD nor DeUHD installed.
        • So how big are these UHD's anyway ? I believe a Bluray movie is typically 25-30gb, are the UHD's ~55-60gb ?
          • by Kjella ( 173770 )

            So how big are these UHD's anyway ? I believe a Bluray movie is typically 25-30gb, are the UHD's ~55-60gb ?

            Officially the discs come in three sizes of 50, 66 and 100GB but in practice most are of the 66GB variety and raw rips 50-60GB. Remuxes with just the primary audio and no extras are usually 10GB less. But they have started to make encodes which are typically around 20GB that give you all the UHD benefits (resolution, color space, 10 bit color, HDR, HEVC compression) in less space than a Bluray. It looks better if you have a setup that can handle it, HDR throughput or HDR -> SDR mapping can be difficult t

          • To keep the same visual quality, the rip should end up about twice the size after re-encoding as an equivalent 1080p title. Four times the resolution, but the codec (HEVC/H.265) uses half the bits. Disc capacity is up to doubled too.

            Once re-encoded, my rips end up at about 12-15GB for standard Blu-Ray and the quality difference is nearly imperceptible to the original.

        • by BLKMGK ( 34057 )

          What hardware player are you using? I might like to pick one up for future use :)

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Ditto. I used to buy discs a lot, but I rarely watched them. I will just borrow/rent/stream/record if I am going to rewatch, but usually in higher formats like VHS -> DVD -> HD -> 4K for kicks. I just don't have a lot of fret times like I used to. :(

  • Why I rip my media (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21, 2017 @11:19PM (#55787539)

    I'm sick of paying for Blu-Ray player software that refuses to play media after about 1 year and requires a paid upgrade to continue playing media I've owned for years. This is just one of the myriad reasons why Blu-ray media has never achieved the level of market acceptance that DVDs enjoyed.

    • Same here. I have a legit blu-ray (Avatar) and I can only play it using a old version of AnyDVD (No, I will NOT buy a expensive dedicated blu-ray player, my PC is more than enougth for the job).
    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      Pretty much the only approach that makes sense is to just rip the original disk and forget about it. Back up the ripped copy if you are worried about needing the original again.

      I've watched a BluRay disk just ONCE with a real player.

      That was one time too many in my opinion.

      Hollywood is it's own worst enemy.

      • by BLKMGK ( 34057 )

        Ditto! I rip and store the originals - too much forced crap on disks these days. Here's an FBI warning, here's a preview, here's who knows WTF I don't want to see. I also buy my disks used as often as possible for as little as possible. Some movies that I really appreciate I'll pay for brand new but it's sure not too many with the cost of them.

    • I think it is mostly because bandwidth and compression technologies became viable for "good enough" streaming.
      Personally, I do own about 120 blu-rays of stuff that I want to look/sound as good as I can get, but that's nowhere near my peak ~700 dvd collection.
  • This is the reason I haven't bought a single bluray yet. Once it's as broken as DVDs are, then I'm in - otherwise not so much. If I can't rip it to my Nas, then I can't watch it - I have no intention of running off to the garage to put a different bit of bit of plastic in the player each time I want to watch a film. This isn't the 1990s any more.

    In my case at least, DRM didn't stop 'piracy' because I wasn't swashbuckling on the high seas to start with. It did stop consumption though.

    • by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
      You need to check out what's available. All DRM is as broken as DVD DRM.
    • I've ripped my entire collection via MakeMkv. What are you waiting for?
    • I spent weeks changing discs and copying my DVD collection to my media server at one point this is after I had already re-purchased most of my VHS collection on DVD. If I can't purchase new movies in a format that I can place on my media server then I'll just watch what's on netflix or hulu and they go suck it.
         

  • If I can't rip the DVD or Blu-ray, I can't watch it. It's as simple as that.

    • by BLKMGK ( 34057 )

      An ironic statement made in a posting about software that allows you to do EXACTLY that. RedFox aka SLySoft and MakeMKV as well as others allow you to rip the media just fine.

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