GhostDoggy
Senior member
Unless you are an idiot, the best known method for steal movie content (instead of paying for the DVD, that is) is to rent/borrow the movie and rip it on your personal computer. What you typically wind up with is a nice copy of the movie in which competitent rippers will have automatically stripped the Macrovision and maybe cut out some of the fluff prior to reauthoring the disk.
All of this activity is done in the digital domain. So, why does the legal office of MPA need to promote misinformation and claim that there is an 'analog hole' that has dire consequences and takes priority over other concerns they are also forwarding? How many competitent 'rippers' play a movie out an analog video port and into an analog port on a capture card in real time? Sure, maybe +5 years ago, but anyone that has ripped anything has done it digitally.
As such, I am trying, almost desperately, to understand the logic, the rational thinking of the MPA and its constituents regarding this so-caled analog hole. This concept that people are bootlegging and reselling (or acquiring without legal sale) of analog copies of standard-definition video seems almost comical if it were not for their persuasive endeavors to even more ignorant individuals that we call lawmakers.
Take for instance High Definition television content. Does anyone want to guess the amount of bandwidth an uncompressed HD 1080i video stream requires? Well, if the lawmakers had any idea they would see the absurdity for what it is. How many common rippers can capture in analog at a rate of 1.5Gbps? A two-hour movie in 1080i can represent a compressed volume of +15GB. Compressed. At 1-Gbps uncompressed video stream and two-hour movie is 7.2Tb, or 975GB!
Now, how many people have real-time MPEG (or VC1) encoder cards? And if you are lucky enought to get the 'end result' down to 9GB, typically hald what an MPEG-2 two-hour 1080i presentation requires, how many of you own HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk writers to store this? Or worse, how many ripper-consumers are going to d/l 9GB of data to watch a bootlegged movie vs simply TiVo-ing?
I often wonder why geeks and techies are never invited to public forums and debates with the people of MPA and FCC on matters ike this. Politically speaking, I do not know a politician that cares to be illustrated as an ignorant SOB, and the last thing the MPA wants is a youthful geek removing the fog of the MPA war, and highlight falacies in their arguments.
But it would semm that the major players are control consumer lives, and yet the majority are like deaf cows that are either too ignorant of their condition and only grasp the realities once the plunger makes its point known.
I still see no reason why consumers cannot buy a DVD player on the open market (retail) that allows for a scaled video analog output. What difference does it make if the scaling is done internally or externally? The MAP can't answer this one, but yet they've effectively beat electronics manufacturers into disallowing this--it can only be done using either a DVI-D & HDCP interface/protocol, or via HDMI.
And yet this is suppose to keep rippers from ripping content, which btw takes all of five (5) minutes, including the removal of Macrovision. No one needs to even output it from the standalone DVD player, yet the MPA thinks they've got a handle on the situation by locking down consumers when they go to pop a DVD into their standalone player in the family room.
Nice going, MPA, you have successfully convinced the well bribed (ahem, enticed) political machine of your pro-confused problems and have done nothing but affirm your misguided concerns to aggrevate law-abiding consumers in favor of doing nothing to the common ripper.
I suppose I should look at this as the lawyers of MPA as only doing what it takes to make their employers 'think' they are doing something good. As long as it doesn't get out that they are completely ineffective at stopping the real problem then they can continue to collect their paychecks.
All of this activity is done in the digital domain. So, why does the legal office of MPA need to promote misinformation and claim that there is an 'analog hole' that has dire consequences and takes priority over other concerns they are also forwarding? How many competitent 'rippers' play a movie out an analog video port and into an analog port on a capture card in real time? Sure, maybe +5 years ago, but anyone that has ripped anything has done it digitally.
As such, I am trying, almost desperately, to understand the logic, the rational thinking of the MPA and its constituents regarding this so-caled analog hole. This concept that people are bootlegging and reselling (or acquiring without legal sale) of analog copies of standard-definition video seems almost comical if it were not for their persuasive endeavors to even more ignorant individuals that we call lawmakers.
Take for instance High Definition television content. Does anyone want to guess the amount of bandwidth an uncompressed HD 1080i video stream requires? Well, if the lawmakers had any idea they would see the absurdity for what it is. How many common rippers can capture in analog at a rate of 1.5Gbps? A two-hour movie in 1080i can represent a compressed volume of +15GB. Compressed. At 1-Gbps uncompressed video stream and two-hour movie is 7.2Tb, or 975GB!
Now, how many people have real-time MPEG (or VC1) encoder cards? And if you are lucky enought to get the 'end result' down to 9GB, typically hald what an MPEG-2 two-hour 1080i presentation requires, how many of you own HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk writers to store this? Or worse, how many ripper-consumers are going to d/l 9GB of data to watch a bootlegged movie vs simply TiVo-ing?
I often wonder why geeks and techies are never invited to public forums and debates with the people of MPA and FCC on matters ike this. Politically speaking, I do not know a politician that cares to be illustrated as an ignorant SOB, and the last thing the MPA wants is a youthful geek removing the fog of the MPA war, and highlight falacies in their arguments.
But it would semm that the major players are control consumer lives, and yet the majority are like deaf cows that are either too ignorant of their condition and only grasp the realities once the plunger makes its point known.
I still see no reason why consumers cannot buy a DVD player on the open market (retail) that allows for a scaled video analog output. What difference does it make if the scaling is done internally or externally? The MAP can't answer this one, but yet they've effectively beat electronics manufacturers into disallowing this--it can only be done using either a DVI-D & HDCP interface/protocol, or via HDMI.
And yet this is suppose to keep rippers from ripping content, which btw takes all of five (5) minutes, including the removal of Macrovision. No one needs to even output it from the standalone DVD player, yet the MPA thinks they've got a handle on the situation by locking down consumers when they go to pop a DVD into their standalone player in the family room.
Nice going, MPA, you have successfully convinced the well bribed (ahem, enticed) political machine of your pro-confused problems and have done nothing but affirm your misguided concerns to aggrevate law-abiding consumers in favor of doing nothing to the common ripper.
I suppose I should look at this as the lawyers of MPA as only doing what it takes to make their employers 'think' they are doing something good. As long as it doesn't get out that they are completely ineffective at stopping the real problem then they can continue to collect their paychecks.
