AfterDawn: News

DreamStream signs on to encrypt Blu-ray competitor

DreamStream has announced they have signed a deal to encrypt Royal Digital Media's new optical media format, a competitor to Blu-ray.

The company uses military strength encryption and says the protection will be used on commercial motion picture discs.

"DreamStream and RDM's technologies align perfectly, as they both rest exponentially beyond the standards currently being employed," added DreamStream's Chief Development Officer Ulf Diebel.



The protection used will be 2,048-bit encryption. In comparison, Blu-ray uses 128-bit.

RDM's new HD media offers storage capacity of 100GB per disc, a notable upgrade from Blu-ray's 50GB. The company says their discs can also offer display qualities higher than 1080p.

"RDM's format will transform perceptions of high-definition," said Diebel. "RDM's system is able to display the next generation of high-definition: 1920p. With this advancement in technology, true digital cinema will soon be a widespread reality."

A single disc can hold about 4 hours of 1920p resolution video, added the company.

The RDM systems are based on red laser technology, which is much cheaper than Blu-ray's blue laser technology and therefore players and discs are expected to be cheaper.

"The retail prices for RDM's players and discs are expected to equal those of the traditional DVD format, greatly undercutting Blu-ray," said Diebel.

"The mission of RDM is to replace traditional DVD technologies with a comprehensive, next generation HD system," said Eugene Levich, RDM's chief executive officer. "The industry's problem, which Sony has been unable to solve with Blu-ray, is how to transition into HD without destroying the existing DVD industry or gouging the pocketbooks of consumers. We have the solution and can solve this without having to drastically overhaul the entire infrastructure of DVD production."

Should be very interesting to say the least.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 30 Oct 2008 17:32

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• 24 comments

• slickwill

  Sounds great if the technology become available to the consumer. This could possibly beat blue-ray in the market if the players and discs are cheaper.
  
  Quote:"The industry's problem, which Sony has been unable to solve with Blu-ray, is how to transition into HD without destroying the existing DVD industry or gouging the pocketbooks of consumers. We have the solution and can solve this without having to drastically overhaul the entire infrastructure of DVD production." What? How are they suppose to accomplish that, especially when a new movie format is being introduced?

  30.10.2008 17:42 #1

• CNDLG

  Too little too late. They'll have to wait another 5-10 years before people are ready for a new format. By the time these discs hit shelves Bluray players and movies will probably be as cheap and common place as regular DVDs are now. Also too many people haven't caught up yet with an HDTV of any kind (720 or 1080). This format is ahead of its time (unless someone wants to tell be where I can get a 1920p TV!?)

  30.10.2008 18:56 #2

• varnull

  This technology is aimed at large screen projection and event displays.
  
  Why the hell would we want "military grade" encryption and drm on our purchased media?.. They aren't going to let us encrypt using it.. just another method to deny fair use.
  

  
  
  Free open source software = made by end users who want an application to work. The flower of carnage-shura no hana..

  30.10.2008 18:59 #3

• engage16

  But the 2048 bit encryption would be a nice fun game for the hackers to break...

  30.10.2008 20:03 #4

• NexGen76

  Good luck on very & i mean very limited studio support.D.O.A.

  30.10.2008 20:06 #5

• Hunt720

  I think it's funny that RDM is just DRM jumbled. How can disks of this quality ever penetrate households when the specs outmatch the resolution of currently available TV sets?? Varnull, I don't think the costs of r&d on this will be met if it's only for high red projection and event centers.

  30.10.2008 20:31 #6

• tin23uk

  how much more high def do we need, whats next virtual reality where you can actually be in the movies.
  
  right now i only have a standard def tv, i see a huge difference between it and HD but nothing i lose sleep over, my SDTV is only 32" and one day i plan on going bigger, when i do ill go to 1080p so as i can have a bigger and cleaner picture but to move up to 1920p how big would my tv ned to be to really see a difference between 1080p and 1920p.
  
  true maybe it is only in the works for cinemas but how long will it be before they start trying to convince us we cant live without a definition so high its completely pointless to have in your home unless you have a 400" screen and sit 100ft away from the box.

  31.10.2008 01:08 #7

• langy72

  People seem to be missing the point here entirely. This is actually fantastic news - I find it fascinating how everyone instantly sees this news as "even worse DRM", "ahead of it's time", "good luck getting studio's support".
  
  The article states that the format is CAPABLE of 1920p video. It never stated that this was the only format available. If anything, it'd be nice to know that purchased discs that work with current technology, are going to be usable on future, better techonology - without having to go out and buy yet another new format and replace all of the 'old' discs we've already spent money on [which we've had to do for the transition between DVD and Blu-ray]
  
  To have high-definition movies, at the price of standard definition, that's actually BETTER quality than the current HD media, sounds too good to be true. But if this launches, it soon will be.
  
  Although as NexGen76 said, practically no studio support will mean entering the public sector will be a tough task to achieve - fingers crossed it'll happen though!

  31.10.2008 10:21 #8

• Pop_Smith

  While I would like to see more specs on the disks it is cool to see that they use red-laser technology, which means it would probably be possible to upgrade existing DVD lines to this, and the storage space is twice that of current (although not the limit of) Blu-ray discs.
  
  The only not so hot thing is the "Military grade encryption". However, if this format picks up steam at all it would be fun to watch Slysoft take a whack at it.

  31.10.2008 10:37 #9

• juankerr

  Originally posted by Pop_Smith: The only not so hot thing is the "Military grade encryption". However, if this format picks up steam at all it would be fun to watch Slysoft take a whack at it.They'll need the help of Frenzy - the Decepticon who hacked into the US military computer system.
  
  
  

  31.10.2008 11:25 #10

• sKrEwZ

  Lol ^^
  

  Sometimes a second chance is just the opportunity to kill something thats already injured.

  31.10.2008 13:22 #11

• Mr-Movies

  All it takes is one leak of encryption keys as we had with DVD’s and the protection scheme is a mood point no matter how large resolution wise it is, or that it is considered Military Grade or not. Will the players have a camouflage paint scheme? LOL
  
  Is the larger encryption key passing going to cause performance issues in playing movies?
  
  One nice thing about the red laser is you should have better compatibility with older format DVD’s. It is also nice to have competition in the market however most of you don’t see that and just complain to no end about format wars and what not.
  
  BD is capable of higher resolution as they have the storage capability to facilitate such a need so that is no plus to this new format. I agree with others that it is “too little, too late” but it might fly in a niche market; I don’t see people running out to get one of these players if they have BD and their TV can’t handle the higher resolution anyway. For high end users though this might be pretty nice especially since they don’t mind dropping thousands of dollars on technology.

  31.10.2008 17:11 #12

• maitland

  exponentially, huh?
  
  50^x = 100 <-- solve for x
  
  hahaha, sounds like they put more work into developing the DRM technology than the storage capacity. yawn
  
  
  ~Maitland

  31.10.2008 17:24 #13

• hermes_vb

  With all that encryption going on you will probably need a powerful player or a lot of patience because its gonna take a lot of time to start playing the damn thing. You could probably walk the dog, make yourself a sandwich and balance your checkbook while you wait for it to decrypt.

  1.11.2008 02:08 #14

• domie

  the encryption is military style ? oh that's ok then - we can all breathe a sigh of relief and sleep comfortably - the military are 100% secure and alway make the right decisions on everything lol.

  1.11.2008 07:45 #15

• puterman

  Originally posted by hermes_vb: With all that encryption going on you will probably need a powerful player or a lot of patience because its gonna take a lot of time to start playing the damn thing. You could probably walk the dog, make yourself a sandwich and balance your checkbook while you wait for it to decrypt.Don't forget the retinal and finger print scan you'll need to do before you can watch anything but the 30 minutes of commercials that they'll force you to watch before you get to the main menu.

  1.11.2008 18:00 #16

• salsa36

  Good luck with that!

  1.11.2008 18:08 #17

• DXR88

  2048-bits so what big deal. you still fail if the key cannot change then it's a mute issue.
  
  i would much rather have 256bits and a key that scrambles itself every 6 seconds, besides 2048bit is just the length of the key.
  
  there is no such thing as military grade encryption. as most military documents are contained on a closed network, that and the military fancies credentials more than encryption. like your eye ball, your fingers and micro chip in the back of your helmet.

  1.11.2008 18:53 #18

• maitland

  Originally posted by DXR88: 2048-bits so what big deal. you still fail if the key cannot change then it's a mute issue.
  
  i would much rather have 256bits and a key that scrambles itself every 6 seconds, besides 2048bit is just the length of the key.
  eh 256 bits can hold aproximately 115792089237316195423570985008690000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 different possible numbers.
  
  whereas 2048 bits can hold approximately 32317006071311007300714876688670000000000
  000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 different numbers...
  
  the issue is 2048 would be impossible to crack by brute force because of the sheer amount of possible values involved. it would take a lot of computers a really loong time to crack just one code...
  
  Quote:
  there is no such thing as military grade encryption. as most military documents are contained on a closed network, that and the military fancies credentials more than encryption. like your eye ball, your fingers and micro chip in the back of your helmet.lol
  
  edited by DVDback23- the number you posted was demolishing the pages' margins haha

  1.11.2008 19:36 #19

• ThePastor

  Quote:"The retail prices for RDM's players and discs are expected to equal those of the traditional DVD format, greatly undercutting Blu-ray," said Diebel.
  Don't know, don't care about whatever encryption they want to try to use... If they make a player/recorder at current DVD player/recorder prices that can burn 100gigs on a disk that costs .50 cents then BR disks get filed with those LP sized "laser" disks of the 80's!

  3.11.2008 13:39 #20

• hermes_vb

  The fundamental flaw of all these encryption schemes is that in order to be played, the keys need to be stored on the player thus making reverse engineering possible (eventually). Outside the DVD world, the keys for an encrypted content are known only by the person who encrypted the material and the few people for whom it is intended. When you mass market something like that, someone is going to make a mistake. Maybe a chunk of bad written code in a software player can be exploited thus revealing the keys. Remember the WinDVD DVD-Audio hack. In other words you will always have the possibility of betrayal from wihtin (metaphorically speaking).

  3.11.2008 14:37 #21

• maitland

  Quote:
  Don't know, don't care about whatever encryption they want to try to use... If they make a player/recorder at current DVD player/recorder prices that can burn 100gigs on a disk that costs .50 cents then BR disks get filed with those LP sized "laser" disks of the 80's!Hey, c'mon now! Laser discs were pretty cool! In Japan they had HD laserdiscs that did 1080i back in 1991 or so! ...they just never got very popular
  
  
  ~Maitland

  3.11.2008 23:01 #22

• DXR88

  Quote:Hey, c'mon now! Laser discs were pretty cool! In Japan they had HD laserdiscs that did 1080i back in 1991 or so! ...they just never got very popular
  
  
  ~MaitlandYour right they where cool, they flew rather nicely especially after lazerrot.

  4.11.2008 00:08 #23

• maitland

  Quote:Quote:Hey, c'mon now! Laser discs were pretty cool! In Japan they had HD laserdiscs that did 1080i back in 1991 or so! ...they just never got very popular
  
  
  ~MaitlandYour right they where cool, they flew rather nicely especially after lazerrot.
  haha right and you could shoot them out of the air like clay pigeons! lol

  4.11.2008 00:56 #24