[mythtv-users] State of blu-ray support?

Stuart Morgan stuart at tase.co.uk
Sat Nov 16 16:48:49 UTC 2013


On Saturday 16 Nov 2013 15:42:37 Simon Waldman wrote:
> On 15 November 2013 18:43, HP-mini <blm-ubunet at slingshot.co.nz> wrote:
> > - all BD players will get their device keys revoked periodically..
> > So when revoked you need to upgrade to the latest genuine f/w.
> > When genuine f/w updates stop, you junk the drive or..
> 
> *boggle*
> Is this just something that affects use on linux (how?)?
> Or... do consumer drives get deliberately bricked on a regular basis?!

No Device keys don't get revoked often at all, it's only ever done when a 
particular piece of hardware/firmware is found to be insecure allowing keys to 
be leaked. Some people will have experienced it more than others because they 
deliberately bought some of the early drives which had hackable firmware. I've 
never experienced it with my drive in the years I've owned it.

What does get revoked regularly, at least for us Linux users, are the leaked 
Host keys. For PC drives the Host key is supplied by the player software, not 
the firmware and a firmware upgrade will not fix the problem, only changing the 
key used by the software will. Because these keys get revoked so quickly, it's 
now nearly impossible to find a usable one online - the regular forums are 
monitored by AACS LA and they revoke keys the moment they show up. Because key 
revokations are done through the discs, you can do get a short grace period 
and if you never play a new disc then you'll be unaffected, but that's not very 
realistic.

What all this means for us is that entirely open source playback of Blu-ray 
discs is currently impossible. The reason is that unlike decss, aacs hasn't be 
cracked - at least not publicly - so we're reliant on using leaked/stolen 
keys. MakeMKV currently appears to be the only option and until now that has 
meant ripping the discs just to play them. The new libbluray/libaacss 
integration looks very promising, it's just a shame that I didn't buy a 
MakeMKV license when they were $20 instead of $80.
-- 
Stuart Morgan
MythTV


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