I have been working (and occasionally playing) with my PlayStation 3 recently. I upgraded the 80 GB internal hard drive to a 1/2 TB one. Since I have the old 80 GB HD laying around, of course I have to plug it in and see if there’s anything familiar about the data. It’s a short exploration: As you might suspect, the HD is completely impenetrable. No partition table reported through Linux fdisk. No human-readable strings can be seen when running ‘strings’ over the raw HD sectors. Based on forum postings I have read where one PS3 HD can’t successfully be transplanted to another PS3 (and have all the data accessible; the HD could still be reformatted fresh to work in another PS3), I’m guessing that every sector is encrypted with a key derived at least partially from a unique ID embedded in each console. That’s all the effort I plan to put into this exercise. Next stop for this HD is my Eee PC 701 which is currently struggling to run Ubuntu Linux on a mere 4 GB SSD.

I downloaded a free movie trailer through the PlayStation store. When I inspected the information through the PS3′s XMB menu, the filetype was reported as “MNV”. A little Googling ties this format into the paid content format of the PS3 store. I’m not especially confident about this format since the trailer that I downloaded doesn’t even play correctly on the PS3. The video stutters back and forth, almost as though it’s swapping pairs of frames during playback: 1, 0, 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 6, etc. The XMB allows me to “backup” this media. This option needs to be distinguished from “copy”, which is sometimes an option. “Copy” implies an unlocked version that can be copied onto removable media and used anywhere. “Backup” implies that it can be copied onto removable media but is still keyed to — and can only be used on — this console. I backed it up and was able to inspect the data on the USB drive. It turns out that the MNV file is still a stock MP4 but with custom DRM. When FFmpeg is aimed at this file, this is the result:

[h264 @ 0x1004000]AVC: nal size -2055117847
[h264 @ 0x1004000]no frame!
[...repeated many times...]
[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x1002600]max_analyze_duration reached

Seems stream 0 codec frame rate differs from container frame rate:
 48000.00 (48000/1) -> 23.98 (24000/1001)
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from
 '/Volumes/KINGSTON/PS3/EXPORT/VIDEOBKP/20091220-220733-00000001/20091220-220733-00000001.001':
  Metadata:
    major_brand     : MGSV
    minor_version   : 20842393
    compatible_brands: MGSVmp42isom
  Duration: 00:01:46.64, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 8651 kb/s
    Stream #0.0(und): Video: h264, 2205 kb/s, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 24k tbn, 48k tbc
    Stream #0.1(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 264 kb/s
    Stream #0.2(eng): Audio: aac, 48000 Hz, 5.1, s16, 395 kb/s
    Stream #0.3(und): Data: mp4s / 0x7334706D, 759552 kb/s
Video pixel format is unknown, stream cannot be decoded

I remember some patches flying around the FFmpeg-devel list recently which would allow the program to print warnings and bail out if it encountered a known DRM scheme. When I shove an Apple-encrypted file through FFmpeg, it doesn’t tell me anything special so I don’t think the patch is in yet. However, FFmpeg should probably detect this type of DRM file as well.

This is positive news when viewed from a certain perspective: MLB rips off fans who bought DRM videos. So Major League Baseball (a big deal in American sports) had a media download service that was protected by iron-fisted digital rights management. It was the type of DRM that called home for authorization to check if you still had permission to view the downloaded content. And the mothership had decided to go with a different DRM system or provider.

I wonder if this is high profile enough to set a serious example for the implications of consumer media DRM? I know it’s a wake-up call for me to remember to crack all of Apple iTunes Music Store purchases while the keys are still somewhere on my computer.

According to the discussion linked above, MLB may have relented somewhat and offered existing consumers a means of re-downloading their purchased content under the new system. So maybe this episode won’t provide much of an object lesson after all.

Several people have pointed me to the news that claims of cracking AACS (the content protection system protecting both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs) have been leveled. Here is a doom9 thread on the matter. My first reaction was, “What took so long?” Conceptually, it should have been pretty straightforward to understand the entire system and recover secret keys since technical documents on the matter are quite openly available. I always considered that rather odd since a large part of DRM’s efficacy hinges on obscurity.

Good news, nonetheless, if it’s accurate.

So the Free Software Foundation has launched badvista.org, ostensibly a clearinghouse for informing computer consumers just how harmful Microsoft’s impending Windows Vista is for their digital and online health. To be honest, I haven’t really examined the literature too thoroughly, mostly because I just don’t personally care about Vista (“Yadda yadda, Microsoft bad, proprietary software implicitly wrong and evil, ad nauseum”). Though it did finally get me to thinking about the multimedia-related implications of the new OS upgrade. Per my reading, there will be no new actual multimedia container formats, video codecs, or audio codecs. But there are supposed to be layers upon layers of new DRM and associated rules encapsulating the existing formats and determining where/when/how a user can consume a particular piece of media.

Strange, but with my experiences using Linux over the last year, and particularly in the last week, I could set up a similar site about various shortcomings of Linux (as if that hasn’t been done to death already). But I notice that badlinux.org does not appear to be taken as of this writing.

Sometime last week, IMDb’s Studio Briefing notified me that there was an online service for paying for officially licensed DVD images that can be burned (just once, officially): New Movie Download Service Launches Today. The service is CinemaNow.

So, I actually decided to boot into Windows XP and try it out. First, I had to find a movie that I actually wanted. Last Wednesday night, they had 101 titles to choose from, not too many that might be termed “mainstream”. I settled on In Good Company that I saw in the theater and somewhat enjoyed. The price was $3 less than what Amazon charges, as a basic value comparison.

I thought it best to go with all the recommended software. I bit the proverbial bullet and upgraded to the beta of Windows Media Player 11, which is the first I have heard of it. I wonder what new multimedia support challenges it will cause for Linux multimedia? The experience also requires a piece of 3rd party, .NET-based software called FluxDVD.

The whole thing goes fairly seemlessly and takes about 4 hours as promised:

The DVD plays in a standalone player as promised. I wonder if the DVD itself features the standard CSS encryption? Probably does but I haven’t checked empirically yet. The source file remains on my hard drive after download. It has a .fluxdvd extension, as seen in the screenshot, and contains some DRM-looking stuff at the front. Double-clicking launches the WMP 11 beta which performs some network activity before playing the file.

The disc image is 1.9 GB. I was wondering if the file was a Windows Media file that got converted to MPEG-2 on the fly by the above program (the “Convert and Burn” was my first clue). Colin Hill points out for me that the actual In Good Company DVD is a dual layer affair.

In other DRM news, I finally got a TV show off of iTunes. It was free. I was sorely disappointed, both with the content and the presentation. Content, because the Blade movie (at least the first one) was so awesome; but the pilot of the spinoff TV series is so bad that they have to give it away for free. Presentation, because the best that iTunes can do is display the 320-width window doublesized to 640. This doesn’t look so great on a 1280-width display. Is it really that tough to do full screen? I think not, especially if iTunes renders the video directly as YUV. I suspect that iTunes probably holds back the full screen feature for a premium version of the program, just as Apple’s QuickTime Player does.

IMDb’s Studio Briefing reports that c’t reports that a hole was found in next-gen copy protection, presumably AACS: Copy Protection Fault Found in HDTV DVD Players. Something about pausing the video and pressing the “print screen” button on the keyboard, along with the hypothesis that the process could be automated to obtain a perfect copy of every video frame, storage implications notwithstanding:

1920 pixels across * 1080 pixels down * 1.5 bytes/pixel * 30 frames/second * 60 seconds/minute * 90 minutes/movie = in the neighborhood of 500 GB

I’m not sure what hardware they’re using for this little science project and I’m too lazy to track down more research. What’s to get excited about? This is just the ever-present analog hole (roughly stated: If you can perceive it, you can copy it). We know that the copy protection will really be broken when we have an open source program that can figure out the content encryption key and decrypt the material for real time decompression and presentation.

This article reminded me to follow up on the Toshiba Qosmio laptop that was supposed to have an HD-DVD ROM drive. It turns out to be the Qosmio G35-AV650 model that is equipped with said drive.

Not to be outdone by the recent delay of HD-DVD technology, Sony has also delayed Blu-Ray consumer devices. Today’s IMDb Studio Briefing reports “that [Sony] has been forced to delay the launch of PlayStation 3 until November”. The reason cited is most curious: “to upgrade the copy-protection feature of its Blu-ray technology.”

The last I heard, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD were both supposed to leverage Advanced Access Content System (AACS) for content protection. Maybe Sony went off the reservation by implementing a separate DRM scheme? Or possibly there is much more to the story than can be fit in a 2-sentence news brief.

It has been a long time since I looked at that AACS stuff, there wasn’t much to look at. Let’s look again: Now, the site’s specification page contains 7 different PDF documents. Their FAQ page is still conspicuously empty, which is too bad since the #1 question I have is, “How is this scheme ever supposed to fly?” I can’t wait to read through all of the PDFs.

A coworker brought to my attention the latest cross-company DRM consortium effort: Advanced Access Content System (AACS). When I hear about these efforts, I feel as apathetic as the AACS model pictured here (they put all this effort into making their movies and music secure but they still can not stop me from ripping the still images from their website): She just does not look too happy, does she? Almost as if she is getting burned out on multimedia technology. All of the usual promises are there: All multimedia hardware and software will eventually adopt this standard. This includes HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, recording from broadcast, and the capability to move the content around in a “managed” fashion, probably designed to optimize the amount of cash moving out of consumers’ wallets.

Green AACS Spokesmodel says: “Is Sony Blu-Ray going to clash with my outfit?”

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