News Pioneer announces first PC Ultra HD Blu-ray drives

Hmm. I'm betting there will be quite a few people (of the few who do actually buy it) who have missed at least one of the quite frankly stupid requirements and end up returning the thing.

 

Isn't the decoding on the iGPU only a thing because (afaik) no external GPU supports the AACS DRM system, whereas Intel does, it's interesting to not see AMD listed on the wiki for AACS, could that mean Ryzen isn't going to support it.

Either way like Pete J said those are some crazy system requirements.

 

Excellent news. Lets make playing legitimate content so absurdly difficult and expensive (to get all the right DRM hardware, which no doubt will be obsolete when they update it) and make pirating more attractive. Great plan.

 

Ryzen has no integrated Gpu.

(there will be some lower end APUs where the cpu part of it is a Ryzen derivative, but zero further details available, so in for a long wait).

And yes, it is indeed all about the DRM, which is of course stupid as it will only serve to annoy legit customers while the inevitable pirated versions of the media will just work out of the box.

 

So you need the right CPU/IGP, in the right motherboard, running the right OS to the right monitor/tv, the planets need to align and you have to stand on one leg and flap your arms before you're deemed worth of watching that film you just bought [or want to stream as doesn't Netflix have similar requirements for their 4k offering?].

No-one wants to watch Transformers in UHD that badly.

 

Good old DRM playing it's greatest hits: Make it awkward for typical consumers that actually pay while not making a blind bit of difference to the sort of people that might actually have a negative effect on their bottom line.

Have they not learned that if can see or hear it someone can make a copy irrespective of any DRM, and once that copy exists it will get shared.

Also streaming has shown that the way to compete with free is to go for convenience and ease of use.
This sort of thing just makes it more difficult and, by extension, illegal copies more tempting:
Don't meet the artificial DRM based system requirements but want 4k films on your PC that is actually perfectly capable of supporting? What are your options?

 

Frankly, if it was on 3D Holographic storage with Ultra 4D surround, on a 40 foot virtual reality display, that jacked into your senses - I still wouldn't want to watch Transformers again (watching it once at the cinema was bad enough)

 

If this flops they will blame piracy

 

TBH I'm amazed discs are still a thing.

 

You forgot the live chicken sacrifice by moonlight while summoning the elder gods of DRM.

N00b.

 

so basically - UHD drives will be on prebuilt systems or on the xbox 2?

 

That's to unlock the bonus features...

 

Hmm I don't know why people think that physical media is dead/dying. I have just upgraded our home theatre system to Denon Atmos and the Panasonic THX UHD Blu-ray player. Quite honestly, streaming services get no where near the picture quality provided by the UHD HDR discs and I'm not even going to mention sound - aint come across a 7.1 stream yet, nevermind atmos. I wouldn't wanna hazard to think what kind of ISP speed you would need to stream that.

As for the requirements of the drive - ludicrous!

 

i'm not one of those audiophile things but why exactly would a scratch/muck justify a £100 premium on an already expensive product ? serious question, i'm curious how digital media would suffer loss/skip rather than either read or not read as surely disc would spin up, file would stream to RAM then play ? internet streams pixellate and stutter if interrupted but can't see how that happens with a physical drive.

 

It doesn't justify a £100 premium. Audiophiles look after their discs and handle them with care, they don't get scratched.

 

The justification would be for collectors of extremely obscure stuff where a slightly damaged disc may be the only available source.

 

I'd assumed that existing drives would be fine so long as playback software was updated to support it. If I need a new drive, simply not interested.

 

I would imagine a similar result could be achieved with non-realtime ripping
I have a few CDs that have tracks that won't playback or playback with errors, but using software with error correction (EAC) and a bit of time (up to 8hrs per disc as I recall ) I was able to get perfectly playable and seemingly pristine audio files.

 

Isn't that illegal though, i lose track as it was illegal then wasn't then was again (iirc).

Besides from what I've read a developer of popular ripping/backup software has said they're not going to attempt circumventing AACS 2 as it would take to long due to the technicalities of it, from what i understand AACS 2 downloads and encryption key the first time the disc is inserted and stores it on the device for later decryption, by what i assume is the only hardware (kaby lake) able to run Intel's software guard extensions.