HD Watermarking....

[ron spencer]

anyone see this:

http://www.verance.com/news/releases/07-02-07.html


Verance says it will license audio watermarking for high def...if so, what would this mean for backing up HD stuff as, presumably, players that look for watermarking would not play such material.....

[jesperl]

There is some information about the watermark in this document from our friends at the AACS LA
http://www.aacsla.com/support/AACS_Interim_Adopter_Agreement_060215.pdf

There seems to be two variations of the Verance watermark in the AACS context (text in italics is taken from the above document)

1) Consumer Mark (exhibit F, 2.7)
Consumer Mark shall mean the Audio Watermark state designated as the Consumer Mark in the applicable Audio Watermark specification for which presence indicates Digital Entertainment Content that should be encountered on optical storage media only in a trusted protected form.

2) Theatrical No Home Use Mark (exhibit F, 2.19)
Theatrical No Home Use Mark shall mean the Audio Watermark state designated as the Theatrical No Home Use Mark in the applicable Audio Watermark specification, for which presence indicates theatrical release content that should not be encountered in a consumer (i.e., non-theater) environment. Note to Adopter: Content Participants and Content Providers are permitted to embed this watermark state in conjunction with the AACS Flag in any theatrically released content, in accordance with the obligations set forth in Part 3 of these Compliance Rules and Section 5 of the Interim Content Participant Agreement or the equivalent Section of the Interim Content Provider Agreement as applicable.

The first case (consumer mark) sounds like the DVD-Audio watermark: the disc must be protected (AACS) if the watermark is found. The second watermark should not be found on home equipment like HD-DVD players, so it can protect against camcording in theaters with watermarked audio (if camcording in theaters ever gets so good that people will consider putting the cam releases on HD-DVD media?). Maybe it could also be used like a broadcast flag, preventing people from capping HDTV programs and remuxing them to play on, say, an HD-DVD player?

Needless to say, this is my own interpretation.

[mitsubishi]

Yeah I had a flick through earlier, there's more in the FAQ at verance, a couple of things that quite annoyed me.

This annoyed me:

"Warner Bros. believes in providing consumers a wide array of choices as to how they access and consume our content, and Digital Rights Management is a tool that allows us to offer these different business propositions,"

The two parts to the sentance do not sit well together, "We want consumers to have choice, providing they are our choices and each one is an extra revenue stream"

What do the audio experts think? Surely it would have to be one hell of a system to survive "camming", even on telesynced scene releases would be impressive, but through a microphone in a theatre!?! And how would something imperceptible survive re-encoding, I thought the idea of most codecs was to remove imperceptible noise to reduce bandwidth?

[davinleeds]

My first thought was they are doing what Videocipher 2 did for Cband, change from VC1-no sound unless you upgraded your board. No subtitles or alt language, but you can watch.

[ron spencer]

would current players support this? If not then they would play backups.


If players did support this, then as soon as it saw a playback without AACS (i.e. watermarking with no AACS) it would shut down. Thus no backups would ever be possible without a firmware "fix" in the standalone. Is this right?

[HyperHacker]

Unless you found a way to remove the watermark, which probably won't be much easier.

[casket]

In another thread discussing dvd-audio, it was said that you could hear the watermark.

If this is true, and you knew it was a 50 meg file... and the watermark occurs at 2:15 ... then you could approximate where to look for the watermark in the file (+/- 250k).

[tteich]

In another thread discussing dvd-audio, it was said that you could hear the watermark.

If this is true, and you knew it was a 50 meg file... and the watermark occurs at 2:15 ... then you could approximate where to look for the watermark in the file (+/- 250k).

This seems to be the same watermarking technology, which was developed for DVD-Audio. It's a complex echo signal that repeats every 30 seconds. As with the first DVD-A capable players, I guess none of current HD-DVD-Players would be able to detect the Verance code (unless the detection algorithm is added with firmware). On DVD-A-Players I guess the detector was implemented in hardware.

For further reading I suggest you google for the keywords "Felten SDMI Verance".

However, since the Watermark seems to be audible, this is a no-go for Hidef-Enthusiasts.

[tteich]

Unless you found a way to remove the watermark, which probably won't be much easier.
You can trick the Verance detector, but this would leave the watermark in the audio signal (thus it remains spoiled for Audio enthusiasts ears). The better way would be to remove the watermark, which is not easy because it's a complex echo signal.

[ron spencer]

this seems like the perfect copy protection....why even bother with AACS as even if unencrypted, the player would pick up the watermark and stop playing....unless the watermark is really noticeable

[k-c-ksum]

wouldnt stop the remuxes though. unless they secretly started adding the water mark to dvd and cable/sat broadcasts

[Doom9]

wouldnt stop the remuxes though.Actually it does.
If the watermark is present but AACS is not, then playback will be stopped. Even on PCs, if they implement it on a filter level, we'll be needing open source filters for the audio formats found on HD discs and an MPC overhaul to include HD playback capabilites to play ripped HD discs. And knowing Sony you can probably expect the detector to be active even for HDAV ;)

[k-c-ksum]

Actually it does.
If the watermark is present but AACS is not, then playback will be stopped. Even on PCs, if they implement it on a filter level, we'll be needing open source filters for the audio formats found on HD discs and an MPC overhaul to include HD playback capabilites to play ripped HD discs. And knowing Sony you can probably expect the detector to be active even for HDAV ;)

but if the audio was sourced from sat/cable/dvd and remuxed with the hd video which is possible, although cumbersome then there would be no watermark present. They would have to embed the audio watermark into all broadcast and distributed media to close this potential work around.

[noclip]

Couldn't you reverse engineer a player that is able to detect watermarks and use the same code to find them and remove them? Granted, you'd lose audio quality unless the original track was lossless, but wouldn't that effectively defeat these measures?

[jesperl]

Couldn't you reverse engineer a player that is able to detect watermarks and use the same code to find them and remove them?

A team led by Ed Felten of Princeton managed to remove the Verance watermark in the SDMI challenge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Felten#The_SDMI_challenge) in 2000. The details of the method are not publicly available, but surely someone else can do it when the need arises. DVD Audio may not have been sufficient grounds for doing this, but things will likely be different with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray using the Verance watermark.

The best way to defeat the watermark would be an open-source media player (for your HTPC) which can simply ignore the watermark.

[Ajax_Undone]

Is this watermarking a "got to find the key to unlock it" issue...

And if so. When and if it dose come to pass then should it not be a memory resident to decrypt and use. to get a direct stream copy with out the watermarking... (IE picking the lock)

Or is it a Audio resident (high frequency echo) that will vacate the entire market for bluray disks and players period...

(No one wants any quality loss. Not even if its not noticeable) Bluray will sink like the titanic if this be the case...

Bluray (Sony) is in for a major market crash if they are banking on this new type of DRM... (it will be the Sony killer)
And if M$ Jumps on board with this in its own HD DVD's Then HD/BD DVD's will quickly become be a thing of the past 12 months and die, and that's that...

Be used for nothing but cup coasters and data holders...

They are playing Russian Roulette with a loaded pistol...

[Ajax_Undone]

The best way to defeat the watermark would be an open-source media player (for your HTPC) which can simply ignore the watermark.

If your player disables it's self then what. It's a hardware issue inside the DVD Player... If the player doesnt pick up the correct watermark audio signal from the disk that is in then you wont be able to play it anyway...

[mitsubishi]

If your player disables it's self then what. It's a hardware issue inside the DVD Player... If the player doesnt pick up the correct watermark audio signal from the disk that is in then you wont be able to play it anyway...
Wrong way around, the watermark is a signal to the player what protection should be present. It's not going to ever be an issue playing back rips, only copied discs on players.

[Ajax_Undone]

That what I was trying to say... My bad lol.

[noclip]

If worst comes to worst, we can create an application that encrypts the audio stream before it reaches the player. The player won't see a watermark and will happily output static, which we can then decrypt before it hits the sound card.

[noclip]

Or is it a Audio resident (high frequency echo) that will vacate the entire market for bluray disks and players period...

(No one wants any quality loss. Not even if its not noticeable) Bluray will sink like the titanic if this be the case...

Bluray (Sony) is in for a major market crash if they are banking on this new type of DRM... (it will be the Sony killer)
And if M$ Jumps on board with this in its own HD DVD's Then HD/BD DVD's will quickly become be a thing of the past 12 months and die, and that's that...

Be used for nothing but cup coasters and data holders...

They are playing Russian Roulette with a loaded pistol...

Some nice wishful thinking there, but audio quality loss will never spark a consumer rebellion. The average consumer still buys full screen DVDs and runs them over a composite connection to a widescreen HDTV, which stretches the 4:3 image horizontally to fill the 16:9 screen. To say that people like that will care the least bit about audio quality is downright silly.

[HyperHacker]

If worst comes to worst, we can create an application that encrypts the audio stream before it reaches the player. The player won't see a watermark and will happily output static, which we can then decrypt before it hits the sound card.Good thinking, but it'd probably be easier to just not send the player any audio and have your own program take care of playback entirely. And once you're that far, you may as well go all the way and make an open-source player.

[Ajax_Undone]

If worst comes to worst, we can create an application that encrypts the audio stream before it reaches the player. The player won't see a watermark and will happily output static, which we can then decrypt before it hits the sound card.

Seems a bit complicated and might throw off the audio video alignment, but I can see how your thinking...

To further this thought you might encrypt both Audio and Video so that they stay aligned ready to be decrypted and played...

Or it might be as simple as emulating or masking the copy-protection...


By the way when is the planed release of BD+...

[HyperHacker]

You know what, it might be even easier to patch the player in memory to just ignore the watermark entirely. :-/

[davinleeds]

Looks like watermarking?http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/AACS-to-counterattack-with-watermarks-and-encrypted-keys.html

[davinleeds]

Different take on the samehttp://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/95440

[davinleeds]

Maybe from the beginninghttp://www.drmwatch.com/drmtech/article.php/3687126
andhttp://www.drmwatch.com/drmtech/article.php/3667096

[CTH]

could it be possible to change the watermark? Put some audio on the same frequency and just make teh watermark dissepear in the noise. The player would hear something but not enough to know it is a watermark. Or perhaps put in another watermark that tells the player that there is no copyprotection :)

[davinleeds]

The last paragraph sounds communistic-like total tracking?http://www.digitaltvnews.net/content/?p=1275Watermarking on all entertainment and more?