Warning about Warner-Brothers Archive DVD On Demand

[Groo The Perverted]

Recently I bought the dvd of "If Looks Could Kill" from Warner Brothers' On-Demand Archive shop. The movie is not available in stores (never has been, as far as I am aware) and I really wanted.

So I paid my 20 bucks (including shipping) for the DVD and it got here the other day. The packaging is not bad, and much better than I expected for an On-Demand job (images at bottom of thread), and I popped it into my PC to watch it.

It wouldn't play. At all. It reads constantly until finally locking up the PC.

Then I did some looking around and apparently WB's Archive on demand series uses some weird ass encryption that refuses playback on any device that does anything besides simply play. If you can rip a disc in a burner, that burner will not play it.

Now there are some online that have claimed to have played some of these discs on their drives, so perhaps its' drives with a specific functionality that allows them to play, but here in mi casa, the only thing that'll play it is my PS3 (admittedly I only have my PC and PS3, but still...).

I have a program that's an anti-CSS thing that runs in the background and even THAT wouldn't disable it and allow it to be played.

It plays fine in the PS3 but still...very shady shit here. I heard even the DL copies are DRM'd where you can only play it on the PC you downloaded it on.

So I found a thread online in another forum (tech help one) and I've pasted the info below. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN ORDERING ON DEMAND DISCS FROM WARNER BROTHERS.

If all you want is for it to play in your PS3 or straight DVD Player, then you should be alright. Otherwise....if you need to play on your laptop or PC or Mac, then you could be shit out of luck.

Also the images below are from that thread, and they are not able to be enlarged. That's exactly how I was able to see them on the other site.



Here is some info I found on another forum.

The Warner Archive distribution system, along with similar schemes pending from other studios and pending self-service kiosks, use a newer, modified DVD encryption method that was hacked around and munged for years before Warner finally said "screw it" and took the plunge into "burn on demand" distribution for its archives.

The problem was getting CSS onto a burnable disc: the recordable DVD spec forbids it so most DVD players and readers would reject or not recognize a DVD-R with CSS encoding. In a way, the studios were hoist by their own petard: they insisted the DVD-R spec exclude any possibility of CSS encoding, thinking this would cut down on piracy options, but it came back to bite them when they finally decided burn-on-demand might be a lucrative way to market their slow-moving back catalog titles. For the last five years the studios have done endless tinkering in tandem with suppliers like Sonic Solutions, hoping to conjure a back door way to encode CSS on burnable DVDs that would let them be recognized in existing playback hardware. They declared victory with the introduction of the Warner Archives system, but it isn't really 100% compatible, especially for PC or laptop playback. Drives and software decoders for the PC are extra-sensitive to protection schemes, the Warner mods that skate by on a forgiving dedicated dvd player may not fly with your existing reader and/or DVD software player.

Look into updating your PC player software, and/or try another reader in your PC. I haven't been able to determine which burner mfr won the contract for studio "burn on demand" services, if indeed there is such an exclusive arrangement (the details have changed so many times I lost track). If so I would think using the same brand reader in our PCs would up the odds of compatibility.

These discs are similar to the Amazon Video On Demand discs (Verbatim DVD-R MKM).

The CSS protection for burnable discs technology is used. Therefore a drive with burn capabilities can't be used to read the discs, a standard read only DVD drive is needed.

these kind of "burn on demand" disks use CSS-MR (Content Scramble System - Managed Recording), which is a completely different specification than the one for CSS. Consequently, special burners, special dvd-r disks, and special burning software are required.

Only "DVD Download" certified drives can read them, due to the differences between the two standards. If you have a certified drive, it should work. If your drive isn't certified for CSS-MR, you're likely to have problems.

The last I heard, only Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim were making the special disks, so it seems likely they are better than average quality, at least as far as the disks themselves are concerned. I have no idea how much effort they're putting into preparing the material destined to be burned to the disks.

My 3rd archive disc is set to arrive today, so I decided to look into this again. It's definitely the drives. I remember trying both my towers at the time and neither the Samsung in one nor the LiteOn in the other read them. The Pioneer in my laptop does though. I forgot about that one. All tested drives were DVDRW.

Edit: Dammit! It backed up one but not the other. DVD Decryptor started coming up with read errors at 40% despite the fact my PS3 played it fine. I want a backup of Captain Sinbad. I've been waiting to own that DVD forever! Incidently, AnyDVD doesn't want to rip either disc itself. I actually had to use DVD Decryptor.

WOAH! It looks like Captain Sindbad is burnt differently than Freebie and the Bean was. I can see some odd authoring lines on the data side of the disc. Not scratches. Solid circles around, kind of like those enhanced CDs from before, but this would probably be right around where those read errors are happening. Anyone have any ideas here? Freebie and the Bean was a perfectly uniform looking burn.

I just got the Warner Brothers 6 disc set "Big band, Jazz and swing short subject collection" with the non-standard DVD download format. It is dead in the water on my two year old Dell Inspiron computer system (with all dvd firmware updates installed). It doesn't play or even show up in the system. It even locks the pc up for an eternity. Geesh, what insanity by Warner to put stuff out in incompatible format.

And finally someone put one of the discs in and got it to read and analyzed it...this is some horrible shit, man. lol

Note: excuse the broken English translation by the user, as English may not be their first language.

Anti rip protection by TitleMatch found on "burn on demand" DVD-R discs from Imaginasian. How it designed and works. Protected disc easy loaded and played by DVD Player. Good, lets look it contents on PC. After first look on file tree on such disc we see enormous amount of VTS - 97!!! Most of vts are 1GB in size that gives approx 100Gb on 4.3Gb. Something really wrong here. If we try to rip this disc in iso mode very soon ripping will stop on unreadable sectors. But if look in this small iso, that have all file layout table, with iso editor that show LBA of files we can see the trick. Group of files share their locations. Each ifo have its own place, but in one LBA diapason lie up to 20 vobs. .bup also share place on disc. Big deal, we can rip any of this VTSes in file mode, or not? Not, vob rip immediately will fail on unreadable sector. Damn. But how they done such thing? Answer. Each main feature VTS_XX_01.Vob starts on unreadable sectors! You can see this unreadable rings on photo. But In one correct ifo for one vts in shared batch have written correct start position of first cell within the vob. Other ifos have first cell position on bad sectors. DVD player read correct ifo and starts play not from start of VOB And so not fail. Does anyone trust tales about 100 years dvd-r live? I'm not. So backup are needed.

And then in another thread the same guy posted this:

Rip and repair not "one button" task. You also need knowledge about dvd structures and commands, if you don't know that is VTS, VMGtitle, PGC, cell, ets.. this tutorial not help you. Used tools: DVDdecrypter, IfoEdit, DVDRemakePro. Lots of free HDD space are needed. First. They can't messed up VideoManager files, otherwise disc won't play. Switch DVDdecrypter to file mode and rip VIDEO_TS.IFO, VIDEO_TS.VOB, VIDEO_TS.BUP Load VIDEO_TS.IFO in ifoedit and search for PGC commands that have links to used titles or to VTS. Bingo, all 5 titles show up. Look on VMGtitle table to find corresponding VTS numbers. Second. We now have used VMGTitle numbers and their corresponding VTS numbers, write somewhere such table. (example) title VTS repair(Title&VTS) 41 4 1 42 28 2 43 52 3 44 76 4 45 97 5 We will use this table in rip and repair process. Third. To rip VOBs from disc, switch DVDDecrypter to ifo mode, go to VTS that we found and rip each of them. All must readed fine. switch DVDDecrypter to file mode and rip from good vts ifo, bup, and VTS_XX_0.VOBs to same folder. Remove unnecessary stream info files created by decrypter in ifo mode. Folder should look like this LAST. So we rip all data from disc, but current result are unplayable, we need to fix it. Best program to do it are DVDRemakePro. But it have some drawback, it can't import DVD with missed VTS. We need to create compliant dvd structure, take one VTS files (ifo, vob, bup), you can choose smalest VTS in row, and copy it to same directory, rename for another VTS number, repeat until all 97 VTS are present in folder. I know, this are BOOORING (Tried to use PGCEdit, but it give me shitload of warnings on load this folder, i lost patience closing it). Start DVDRemakePro and import our rip folder It starts importing, it will take some time. At end it will show some warning about errors, ignore it. By the way, DVDRemake fixed errors on our ifos on import. At last project was loaded, let call it 'donor'. (if project was not loaded, recheck project folder all 97VTS must be there). Make new project (our repair). Delete VTS_1 that was in here by default. Look for number of first correct VTS in our table, copy it from donor and add copied to repair project. Repeat for all remaining VTS in our table. In video manager create VMG titles for our new VTS. Next we need recreate video manager structure, Add Firstplay, Add LanguageUnit, Set it as English. Copy from donor video manager first play commands, and all menu PGCs. Now browse across all PGC in repair project and fix commands with incorrect linking, our table will help. If you not sure that all was fixed, run disc in debug mode and recheck again. Export repair project, now you have protection free disc rip, that can be easy burned. If you want repair another discs with such protection, don't delete donor folder. Next time you can simply copy paste new ripped VTS here and avoid boring copy rename task. Enjoy.

Here are some pictures I took of the packaging for the movie. Not bad. The actual case is a bit cheap and flimsy (the black dvd case) but everything else seems to be official, particularly for an on-demand title.

I'm kinda surprised that this looks like an actual DVD you'd buy in the store. I don't understand why this has never been officially released on DVD in the stores when it's not a bad release (at least as far as packaging goes).

Here are a couple pictures of the packaging and disc.

1. The Case.

Nice picture with the Warner Brothers "Archive Collection" Logo at the top. Average DVD paper material, doesn't seem overly thin or cheap or anything. Looking at the lettering and whatnot, honestly if someone told me they picked this up on Amazon.com or Walmart or whatever I'd never know otherwise.

It doesn't have the " Print-On-Demand" stink on it that other releases do *COUGH* JEREMIAH SEASON 2 *COUGH*



2. DISC

This looks, once again, like a real store bought dvd. Not bad. Nothing special but definitely serviceable. It doesn't have any lines where you could peel it up or anything like that, as it's printed on or something.



Overall (package wise) this is a decent release, and I think it definitely should be given a run at an actual dvd release. There's tons of shit movies that probably sell a couple thousand copies across the world, yet this movie which has a decent sized cult following, still has not received a proper release.

[EricJ]

It's a question of your player: If it can't play some DVD-R's, it won't play all of them, and you takes your chance.

My PS3, as noted, is pretty tolerant about formats; I've bought two Archive titles already (one from the Warner half and one from the Columbia half, and I've got "Legends of the Superheroes" on my AMZ list), they're better quality than most studio archives (ahem Disney Club barebones laserdisk updumps), and they've all played nice so far.

[Groo The Perverted]

Originally Posted by EricJ

It's a question of your player: If it can't play some DVD-R's, it won't play all of them, and you takes your chance.

My PS3, as noted, is pretty tolerant about formats; I've bought two Archive titles already (one from the Warner half and one from the Columbia half, and I've got "Legends of the Superheroes" on my AMZ list), they're better quality than most studio archives (ahem Disney Club barebones laserdisk updumps), and they've all played nice so far.

Actually it's not. The back of the DVD says the following: "This Disc is Expected to Play Back in DVD Video "Play Only" Devices, and may not play back in other DVD DEvices, including recorders and PC Drives"

And as was explained in the stuff I quoted, it's something in the encryption that they use on the discs.

Some have claimed to have gotten them to work, and apparently some have because they were able to analyze it and see all the crazy stuff that is going on on the disc.

But this isn't a case of "the disc is fine it's your drive", because it's CLEARLY the disc that is causing many drives not to play it.

This is the only DVD-R that has not played, as I've gotten DVD's from all around the world and have played in my Samsung DVDRW which is not that old at all.

It plays fine in my PS3, but the computer is a no-go

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Groo The Perverted

It plays fine in my PS3, but the computer is a no-go

And the two titles I have play well in my Mac...So go fig.

[P@t_Mtl]

I only ever got one of these but got it from Amazon, it's the movie Doc Savage. It play's with no problem in all my players I have

Sony 360 and LG Blu-ray and my Toshiba DVD.

So you got me curious and decided to try it in my LG Blu-ray player in my PC. It did star playing.

[Drewza89]

I've got around 10 Warner Archive discs and they all play fine on my desktop PC and my blu-ray players.

[Groo The Perverted]

Well I'm not sure what the deal is then. CLEARLY they are designed to play in "Play Only" devices, and someone mentioned (I think it might be in the stuff I quoted) that devices with a specific driver or functionality is able to play them, but any that do not have them won't.

Weird indeed.

EDIT: yep this section from what I quoted above seems to lay it out. Not sure how to know if a drive I buy is certified or not though.

these kind of "burn on demand" disks use CSS-MR (Content Scramble System - Managed Recording), which is a completely different specification than the one for CSS. Consequently, special burners, special dvd-r disks, and special burning software are required.

Only "DVD Download" certified drives can read them, due to the differences between the two standards. If you have a certified drive, it should work. If your drive isn't certified for CSS-MR, you're likely to have problems.