Mac OS X, Xbox360, and HD-DVD [Archive]

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Bhima

9th March 2007, 15:14

awhitehead

9th March 2007, 22:22

Does anyone have any advice I how I could go about using an Xbox360 HD-DVD drive to decrypt HD-Content to my PowerMac G5?

Hopefully something that does not contain the phrase "connect the drive to the USB port on your Windows or Linux computer" as I believe both of those boxes have USB 1 only. I haven't used either in a while.

Also someone mentioned that photos of the insides of this drive would be interesting. This is something I really can do. If it is truly of interest and useful please let me know.

Hi, Bhima.

I'll try to address your questions one by one.

If you plug in an Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive into a Mac using the provided USB cable, it will work fine, and will be able to read CDs and "regular" DVDs.

Newer optical disks, such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray use a different filesystem, called UDF 2.5. UDF 2.5 is a modification of UDF 1.x filesystem that is commonly used with DVDs. Part of the problem is that MacOS X 10.4 doesn't have UDF 2.5 support, and thus if you run 10.4, you can not read the data on the disks.

If you are a developer and are running a build of Leopard (upcoming MacOS X 10.5), you will be able to read the HD-DVD disks, since 10.5 supports UDF 2.5 filesystem.

I suppose there is an additional option of either writing your own filesystem kernel extension, or application that would access and interpret the data on disk raw, but this is likely outside of the scope of what you want to do.

So currently, unless you write your own software, or you are running Leopard, what you can do is plug the drive into a Windows system, and share it over the network (right click on the drive icon in "my computer", select "share", follow the instructions). Then your mac can access the shared drive (Apple-K in finder, followed by typing smb://<ip address of your windows system/ , again, once connected, you'll be presented with list of shares, and asked to authenticate. Just follow the prompts.)

You mention that your Windows and Linux systems have USB 1. USB 1.1 or USB 2 depends on the motherboard, not on the operating system, however if you are unhappy with USB 1.1 speeds (I would be too, if I were you), there are two options: a PCI USB 2.0 expantion card, that would provide USB 2.0 ports, or a JAE 50 adapter, that would allow yout to connect a laptop IDE connector to full sized IDE connector inside a PC (or a Mac). Latter solution probably will work with PowerMac G5, if you decide to replace the internal DVD burner with HD-DVD Rom (Which probably wouldn't make sense, at least until MacOS supports UDF 2.5 natively).

So once you can access the contents of the disk under MacOS (either directly using Leopard, or over network), you can use the Java version of BackupHDDVD (I tested this) or DumpHD to decrypt the DVD. BackupHDDVD-GUI will fail, since it uses a Windows DLL and calls a Windows .exe to decrypt the menues.

Once you have unencrypted .EVO files on your computer, you can watch VC-1 video by compiling ffmpeg (potentially VLC is supposed to support it EVOs in latest builds too, but I didn't test this), however there are no free decoders for the high defenition audio yet, so there you will have troubles.

So overall, to watch HD-DVDs under MacOS X you need Leopard to read the disks or a Windows box to share the disks over the network, BackupHDDVD or DumpHD to decrypt them, and ffmpeg to demux and play VC-1 video. If this sounds like you, let me know, I'll give you some tips on compiling latest ffmpeg.

As for photos....
A thread on xboxhacker.net has some really good high resolution photos of the logic board of the drive. Currently we are puzzled by Toshiba TC94A68AG chip, which is likely CPU of the drive. Based on information provided by Geremia, my current suspition is that it's a chip with TX19 core and firmware is compiled for MIPS16 platform, however so far I've not been able to put the necessary time into writing an instruction set decompiler for MIPS R3900 with MIPS16 extensions.

http://www.xboxhacker.net/index.php?topic=6866.0

If we are correct, and it's possible to disassemble SD-S802A firmware, it might be possible to modify drive firmware to read protected areas of the disk, ignore revocations, be region free while reading normal DVDs, etc.

awhitehead

10th March 2007, 06:32

I forgot to mention that plugging the drive into a Windows or Linux system is not the end of it. Under Windows XP you need an additional filesystem driver to enable UDF 2.5 support, since Windows XP doesn't support the filesystem (and I am not sure if earlier versions of Windows, such as Windows 2000 would work with the driver that is making the rounds). Under Linux, as a general rule you need to patch and recompile the kernel (or compile and load kernel modules) again, to support UDF 2.5 filesystem.

UDF 2.5 has been around since mid 2003, and UDF 2.6 since early 2005, however only recently is support for it starting to appear in mainstream operating systems, partially due to a requirement to support Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks.

So no, even under Windows, HD playback is not problem-free yet.

Bhima

10th March 2007, 10:06

Thanks for the long and detailed answer!

WinXP, Linux, and Mac OS don't natively support UDF 2.5, this I understand. Is there a preferred driver for XP & Linux?
The lack of support in Mac OS is confusing as the phrases "UDF 2.5" and "HD-DVD" are littered about Apple's site. Perhaps the pro DVD app brings support for UDF 2.5. In any event this sounds like a perfect use for MacFuse... but there isn't an existing Linux Fuse UDF 2.5 file system driver... yet.

I am not running Leopard and it sounds like it is a long way off, so I won't hold my breath. I had an install disk for virtual PC somewhere... I think I'd rather try my luck with that. As apposed to using USB 1 or listening to the jet engine inside my Linux box.

I had no idea VLC didn't already support these Hi-Def codecs. I have watched several 1080p media files I downloaded, using VLC... so presumably someone transcoded them somehow.

Hacking the drive itself would be interesting... if you have more details please mail me.

plasmacutter

10th March 2007, 11:42

To Bhima, you can find current builds of leopard torrented. my friend uses the current dev build on a test machine and its stability is "ok" (if youre a mac user its about on par with windows XP if you dont run adaware enough ;P )

I have questions of similar to greater n00bishness.. so i figured i'd lump em in with this thread rather than clutter the board.

so, i've been reading left and right about the processing key being found, about various new applications, etc. but i have not seen any thread summing things up (or maybe i'm not looking hard enough?).

so i have questions:

1. i've been hearing blu-ray uses a process similar enough to hd-dvd that, besides the obvious physical media differences, hd-dvd tools will work for blu-ray as well. substantiate? elaborate?

2. with the recent discovery of processing keys does this mean individual keys for each title are not or soon will not be necessary? on a related note does this mean software players are no longer/will no longer be necessary?

3. There are multiple tools out there in development, but i've seen no thread which concisely sums up where to find current builds. i'd love to ask for one here.

Bhima

10th March 2007, 12:05

awhitehead

10th March 2007, 12:09

Thanks for the long and detailed answer!

WinXP, Linux, and Mac OS don't natively support UDF 2.5, this I understand. Is there a preferred driver for XP & Linux?

Based on my understanding,
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1476807&group_id=295&atid=300295
is the preferred driver for Linux (Patch is against 2.6.16, and adds read only support for UDF 2.5).

For Windows, people either install Toshiba drivers for UDF 2.5 (http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2006/11/8303/ links to http://rapidshare.com/files/3149367/XBOX360-1.HD-DVDRom.UDF.Reader.v2.5.WindowsXP-BluePrint.rar.html) or they install AnyDVD HD (that provides the UDF driver as part of the package).

The lack of support in Mac OS is confusing as the phrases "UDF 2.5" and "HD-DVD" are littered about Apple's site. Perhaps the pro DVD app brings support for UDF 2.5. In any event this sounds like a perfect use for MacFuse... but there isn't an existing Linux Fuse UDF 2.5 file system driver... yet.

I am not running Leopard and it sounds like it is a long way off, so I won't hold my breath. I had an install disk for virtual PC somewhere... I think I'd rather try my luck with that. As apposed to using USB 1 or listening to the jet engine inside my Linux box.

VirtualPC might indeed work. It won't be speedy, though.

I had no idea VLC didn't already support these Hi-Def codecs. I have watched several 1080p media files I downloaded, using VLC... so presumably someone transcoded them somehow.

I primarily follow the ffmpeg developement, so I can tell you that by late january - early february VC-1 support in ffmpeg was pretty much fixed, .EVOs were deuxing, and subtitles were working. Problem right now are high defenition audio standards, public documentaiton for which is not really available. I suspect that someone will reverse engineer them at one point or another, but that would require time.

Since many projects use ffmpeg, next time they pull in the upstream sources, they will gain (or already did) gain EVO support.

I believe VLC supports Windows Media 9 codec on which VC-1 is based. But then again, I am probably wrong.

Hacking the drive itself would be interesting... if you have more details please mail me.

Unfortunately this is a very complicated problem, and I really have very little clue. Part of the problem that hampers me right now, is that plscsi port for macos x (same as fplscsi) doesn't want to talk to HD-DVD drive over USB. This is either a "feature" of Apple kext, or plscsi doesn't support device enumeration over USB, so to send CDBs to the drive, one needs either something else.

http://nil.rpc1.org/ <= fplscsi.
http://members.aol.com/plscsi/ <= plscsi.

plscsi has a tutorial on CDBs. fplscsi works under Mac OS X.

For dealing with firmware it also helps to have soldering skills (which I lack), and a flash chip programmer (ditto). So so far I was looking at firmware for TS-L802A (which is a slim drive in Qosmio laptops), and started to write a MIPS disassembler.

My suggestion is to read, read and read the SeventhSon's explanation on how the firmware of the DVD drive in XBox 360 was hacked, xboxhacker.net forum, and rpc1.org forum. Unfortunately there are only so many hours in a day....

plasmacutter

10th March 2007, 12:12

I'm sure leopard builds out there... honestly I'm not a big fan of beta code. Besides it's a shame to download 5 or 6gig for what amount to be a driver... I wonder if the driver could be removed from leopard and placed in Mac OS current.

In answer to your questions:

1: I have the impression that the code for one format is easily ported for the other.

2: An unrevokable key suitable for an open source player has not been found.

3: I have been annoyed by that too

i thought the processing key was an unrevokable key. (or if it was you could use the device, volume, and other keys from existing players to quickly reverse engineer out the new one as per this summary of the findings (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=222224&cid=18001066))
Also..normal dvd ripping and decoding tools have always required periodic updates to deal with things like ripguard or arccos.

im just interested if the current generation is stand alone and dependable, or if the next generation will be.

and i understand about the beta software.. especially as a fellow mac user. Windows users are used to having to wipe their drives whenever they need to upgrade their OS, but us mac users are not, and dont have to with offical releases like you have to with dev betas.

awhitehead

11th March 2007, 07:45

3. There are multiple tools out there in development, but i've seen no thread which concisely sums up where to find current builds. i'd love to ask for one here.

See http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=968695

awhitehead

11th March 2007, 07:59

1. i've been hearing blu-ray uses a process similar enough to hd-dvd that, besides the obvious physical media differences, hd-dvd tools will work for blu-ray as well. substantiate? elaborate?

This partially depends on what you call "hd-dvd tools". From point of view of formats, both use same content protection system, same container format and same codecs. Differences are in the interactivity (HD-DVD uses XML and essentially requires web developement skills. Blu-Ray uses Java for interactivity, and requires Java programming skills), and what spects of functionality are mandatory and which ones are optional. For example, Microsoft developed and released to studios a tool that takes a VC-1 stream compressed for HD-DVD, fudges it a bit, and makes it compliant with VC-1 for Blu-Ray without re-encoding.

From point of view of AACS, there are similarities. evdberg mentioned that validatevuk tool of his works on both HD-DVDs and on Blu-Ray disks, as long as supplied with proper path to files.

Since I've yet to read Blu-Ray spec, and only glanced at certain parts of AACS spec (Promptly realized that I don't know enough elliptic cryptography, so currently I am slogging through chapter 6 of N. Koblitz's “A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography”, which is a really good book on crypto for dummies. But then again, my degree's in math, so my idea of a dummy might be different from yours), there are other folks who would be able to tell you alot more.