>Look at it's base price, then lookat their customers. It makes no sense to break it.
You're not thinking the same way the motivated pirates think. Some pirates (especially in Eastern Europe, Asia, etc) rip new releases as fast as possible to illegally re-sell or re-stream for lower prices (or show along with ads for revenue). In this way, the pirates get the revenue instead of the legitimate movie studios.
So pirate groups in combination with illegal streaming websites can be thought of as a black market financial arbitrage. So far, the video sources they used include Blu-Ray rips and streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime Video webrips.
However, the Kaleidescope players could theoretically also be included as rip sources ... if the DRM was broken. The math for profitable arbitrage isn't that ridiculous. E.g. :
- it would take only ~80 of those titles to recoup the cost of $1995 Kaleidescope player + the $7.95 rental fees for 80 downloads. All downloads after that break-even threshold is extra money for the pirates. Another bonus is pirating 4k UHD content that's not available on physical Blu-rays.
But the Kaleidescope DRM isn't broken. Therefore, the $7.95 rental downloads can't be used as a new vector for pirate releases. Of course, Kaleidescape doesn't want this scenario to happen so they're incentivized to continue paying for the DRM licensing protection.
And to recap the specifics I was replying to, it was this:
>"If you're going to allow playback on devices in "adversarial" hands (streaming, home physical media playback), it's going to be incredibly difficult to restrict copying."
Kaleidescape is one counterexample to that. So far, they have actually restricted copying with success.
The issue is the so-called "DRM" isn't just the encryption of the harddrive files. The DRM protection also includes the watermarks in the video images that survive the HDMI capture. If pirates don't want their $2000 Kaleidescape player blacklisted and bricked, they have to figure out how to remove all forensic watermarks (the invisible low-level "noise" in the image frames) so the illegal copies can't be traced back to that specific compromised player.
It's not impossible but it raises the threshold of difficulties. E.g. using differential analysis to reverse-engineer watermarking now requires buying TWO players for $4000 instead of just one for $2000; and paying for 2 download rentals instead of just 1. And add hours of analysis work on top of that. DRM doesn't have to make piracy impossible; it just has to make the cost/effort equation not attractive. For now, the Kaleidescape DRM scheme is "good enough" for the cost/effort equation to not make sense for pirates.
I was talking digital. The output has to hit a device that does something with pixels at some point. At that stage it isn’t encrypted. (Think ribbon cable to LCD, or equivalent). No reason why an FPGA or some custom hardware can’t grab that, just requires engineering effort.
You're not thinking the same way the motivated pirates think. Some pirates (especially in Eastern Europe, Asia, etc) rip new releases as fast as possible to illegally re-sell or re-stream for lower prices (or show along with ads for revenue). In this way, the pirates get the revenue instead of the legitimate movie studios.
So pirate groups in combination with illegal streaming websites can be thought of as a black market financial arbitrage. So far, the video sources they used include Blu-Ray rips and streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime Video webrips.
However, the Kaleidescope players could theoretically also be included as rip sources ... if the DRM was broken. The math for profitable arbitrage isn't that ridiculous. E.g. :
- a 4k UHD Blu-Ray is $33.49 : https://www.amazon.com/Conclave-4K-UHD-Edward-Berger/dp/B0DP...
- it would take only ~80 of those titles to recoup the cost of $1995 Kaleidescope player + the $7.95 rental fees for 80 downloads. All downloads after that break-even threshold is extra money for the pirates. Another bonus is pirating 4k UHD content that's not available on physical Blu-rays.
But the Kaleidescope DRM isn't broken. Therefore, the $7.95 rental downloads can't be used as a new vector for pirate releases. Of course, Kaleidescape doesn't want this scenario to happen so they're incentivized to continue paying for the DRM licensing protection.
And to recap the specifics I was replying to, it was this: >"If you're going to allow playback on devices in "adversarial" hands (streaming, home physical media playback), it's going to be incredibly difficult to restrict copying."
Kaleidescape is one counterexample to that. So far, they have actually restricted copying with success.