New DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'


DVDs will soon be embedded with radio transmitter chips which will allow the major movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves and to consumers' homes. The studios hope the technology, which can be used for Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs as well as normal DVDs, will prevent unlawful copying and pirating of their films.

The companies behind the new advance say living room DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and reject any discs which have been copied or played in the 'wrong' geographical region. Ritek Corp., parent company of U-tech Media, which will manufacture the discs, is currently the world's largest DVD maker.

"This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," claimed Ritek's chief exec. Gordon Yeh.

U-Tech, along with IPICO, the company behind the RFID chips to be used in the discs, confirmed on Friday that production of these new 'chipped' DVDs will begin at U-Tech's main plant in Taiwan. Once extensive testing is complete, home DVD players will be embedded with RFID readers to extend the anti-copying technology into homes as part of a digital rights management (DRM) system.

IPICO claims that its RFID tags can be read a minimum six metres away, and at a rate of thousands of tags per minute. The chips will not require a battery, as they'll be powered by the energy in radio waves from the RFID reader.

The president of IPICO, Gordon Westwater, added: "[This is the] first step towards new international standards to safeguard optical media, and the subsequent adoption of the chip-on-disc concept as a global standard."

Could this new technology see a realistic end to optical disc piracy?

good post, but I believe where there is a will there is a way. There are way to many people who love backing up and burning dvd's, someone somewhere will find away around this if it comes to pass. Just look at the xbox 360 security measures that were taken withs it's games, I think it took around a month to have people running backups. We will see...

I expect that once I get that signal to my analog TV ( even through a converter box ) I'll be able to "remaster" it into a hi quality mpeg4, and re-burn a DVD. It may lose some of it's quality, but I'd bet it would still be quite viewable . It's only an all digital solution that will be problematic , and even then, there's Linux as a hope.:)

It should stop a lot of casual copying, though, and restrict it to the slightly more resourceful, which would be a big gain for the industry.

That's just a stupid RFID "chip". It's not even a chip it's more of a code. "Track them down" how lame is that?! Are they going to follow all the discs with GPS tracking?! :D HAHA

I agree with kdawg and traian2003 something protected always gets broken or hacked, it is just a matter of time. Sony is using a protection of sorts on their DVD releases, I have yet to see a movie (on a Sony disc) that hasn't been shared on the internet because the protection was in the way.

Even if it's an onboard chip that checks for disc integrity, I am more than certain there will be a mod to go around that.

What I don't understand is if you buy blanks now, which have no protection on them yet and make your own home movie or otherwise, how would a player with the chip in place recognize that the disc has your home movie and not a copy of a copyrighted material.

New DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'


DVDs will soon be embedded with radio transmitter chips which will allow the major movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves and to consumers' homes. The studios hope the technology, which can be used for Blu-Ray and HD DVD discs as well as normal DVDs, will prevent unlawful copying and pirating of their films.

The companies behind the new advance say living room DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and reject any discs which have been copied or played in the 'wrong' geographical region. Ritek Corp., parent company of U-tech Media, which will manufacture the discs, is currently the world's largest DVD maker.

"This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," claimed Ritek's chief exec. Gordon Yeh.

U-Tech, along with IPICO, the company behind the RFID chips to be used in the discs, confirmed on Friday that production of these new 'chipped' DVDs will begin at U-Tech's main plant in Taiwan. Once extensive testing is complete, home DVD players will be embedded with RFID readers to extend the anti-copying technology into homes as part of a digital rights management (DRM) system.

IPICO claims that its RFID tags can be read a minimum six metres away, and at a rate of thousands of tags per minute. The chips will not require a battery, as they'll be powered by the energy in radio waves from the RFID reader.

The president of IPICO, Gordon Westwater, added: "[This is the] first step towards new international standards to safeguard optical media, and the subsequent adoption of the chip-on-disc concept as a global standard."

Could this new technology see a realistic end to optical disc piracy?
I think we the consumers need to let them know we wanta dvd player that plays all our disks oh yeah i am going to go out and pay a couple thousand for a dvd player that only plays the new blu ray disks that cost like 35 to 40$ us dollars . They need to sell us what we want not what they want us to have i for one will not buy a blu ray player if it so equipped.

u now the scam they will give u the player just rent the disk 12mth. agreement ofcourse

Anything that is any engineered can be reverse engineered. So I am sure that if they do release this type of technoligy somone will compromise it just like the xbox 360 and every other type of so called unhackable hardware.

What a bunch of dumbf*cks those movie industry people are. Like dawg said, when there is a will there is a way. Just burn the f*cking chip or fry it. Some kind of circumventing technology will come out. F*ck the movie industry....f*ckers have been ripping people off for decades....much like the music industry. Guess we can't make our own backups of movies for ourselves even though we have bought the right to do that. I hope somebody sues the industry over this crap.

Stryker1 :yes:

I agree with kdawg and traian2003 something protected always gets broken or hacked, it is just a matter of time. Sony is using a protection of sorts on their DVD releases, I have yet to see a movie (on a Sony disc) that hasn't been shared on the internet because the protection was in the way.

Even if it's an onboard chip that checks for disc integrity, I am more than certain there will be a mod to go around that.

What I don't understand is if you buy blanks now, which have no protection on them yet and make your own home movie or otherwise, how would a player with the chip in place recognize that the disc has your home movie and not a copy of a copyrighted material.

h3lt3r, the convergence of this technology will only happen when both the
media and the player are compatible, otherwise things will remain to flow
along the same way. It sounds as if they are trying very hard to control
the wave of pirated material from the far east ( China ) which finds its way
onto North American soil. I guess we'll see how this unfolds!

I think we the consumers need to let them know we wanta dvd player that plays all our disks oh yeah i am going to go out and pay a couple thousand for a dvd player that only plays the new blu ray disks that cost like 35 to 40$ us dollars . They need to sell us what we want not what they want us to have i for one will not buy a blu ray player if it so equipped.



microsoft has been doing that to us for years
lololololololol

eldiablo: thanks for posting the "READING TEST". I saw it,somewhere, a few days ago and could not find it anywhere.....Thanks again.......C.:beer: :beer: