4K UHD Blu-ray Playback on PC Desktop is officially dead in 2021?

[usually_quiet]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

I have been wanting the BDA to use the T2 Security Chip in 2018-2020 Mac computers and have written to Macgo, the company who makes the Blu-ray player software for macOS. They just updated their software to fully support Apple Silicon, but they did not add Ultra HD Blu-ray, which I have wanted for months. I have been absolutely dying to be able to use my MacBook Pro as a portable Ultra HD Blu-ray player. This is one of two Ultra HD Blu-ray players I have been dying for. I have a bunch of discs but nothing to play them on. I was hoping it would be available by the end of this year. Also, Apple Silicon inherently has Apple's security hardware built in.

As for non-Apple computers, I can only imagine how CyberLink will react to Intel removing SGX once April comes and it's time for a new version of PowerDVD. I don't know what CyberLink will be able to do about it.

Cyberlink won't change anything this year.

I still say that the chances that the BDA will approve a technology that has already proven to be insecure and is only for Macs are not good. People who want to watch UHD Blu-ray discs with their Mac are a small fraction of the small and shrinking market made up of those who still want to watch movies on optical media with a computer.

The chances of Pluton being approved are only a little bit better and that is only because Windows PCs, are a much larger share of the PC market.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by usually_quiet

Cyberlink won't change anything this year.

I still say that the chances that the BDA will approve a technology that has already proven to be insecure and is only for Macs are not good. People who want to watch UHD Blu-ray discs with their Mac are a small fraction of the small and shrinking market made up of those who still want to watch movies on optical media with a computer.

The chances of Pluton being approved are only a little bit better and that is only because Windows PCs, are a much larger share of the PC market.

Then you would need a computer made within a certain timeframe, not something “too new.”

Also, isn’t the MacBook the world’s #1 best selling laptop?

Pluton is Microsoft’s version of the T2 Security Chip, so I would like the BDA to approve both.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by kristoffer

Well that really sucks for the future of the format! Luckily both PS5 and the next Xbox will support UHD BD.

These two will forever be the last and the greatest UHD players ever made. The next generation of gaming machines will no longer support optical media.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

These two will forever be the last and the greatest UHD players ever made. The next generation of gaming machines will no longer support optical media.

Well I wouldn’t say they’re the greatest Ultra HD Blu-ray players ever made as they are limited only to the basic HDR10 and only feature a single HDMI output. That honor goes to the OPPO UDP-203 and UDP-205, the Panasonic DP-UB9000 and the Pioneer UDP-LX500 and UDP-LX800. Also, the Xbox Series X is known to make OLEDs look like LED LCDs.

[Beezanteeum]

Who needs a disc playback in 2021 when you can stream virtually anything?

Especially when more and more PC lacks optical drive for price savings, noise reducing, and stream all the things

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by Beezanteeum

Who needs a disc playback in 2021 when you can stream virtually anything?

Especially when more and more PC lacks optical drive for price savings, noise reducing, and stream all the things

Anyone who wants to get the absolute most out of their computer and display, and watch films in the best quality possible. Streaming only gives you approximately 1/5 of the bitrate and lossy sound, not Ultra HD Blu-ray’s lossless sound. This is why I want to be able to play Ultra HD Blu-ray discs on my Mac.

[apollo828]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

Pressed discs do not degrade

Dude, do you just not understand when you're wrong and continuing to dig a hole? Every optical format is prone to rot, to varying degrees. PDO (UK pressing plant) was notorious for making CDs and LDs in the early 90s that rotted super fast. I bought three copies of a brand new CD release two years ago (not PDO), and not one of them would rip properly on a Plextor drive I own. (For those who don't know, certain Plextors from ~2000-2006 were workhorses that could rip just about anything you threw at them.) I have DVDs that have rotted and won't play right. Same for a few Blu-Rays. Some pressing plants just produce garbage that won't last six months, much less six decades.

As for your quixotic quest to get somebody to support legal UHD playback on Macs...well, you have fun with that. I guess you've at least accepted that Macgo didn't somehow slip UHD support out to the public, with no announcements and zero fanfare.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by apollo828

Dude, do you just not understand when you're wrong and continuing to dig a hole? Every optical format is prone to rot, to varying degrees. PDO (UK pressing plant) was notorious for making CDs and LDs in the early 90s that rotted super fast. I bought three copies of a brand new CD release two years ago (not PDO), and not one of them would rip properly on a Plextor drive I own. (For those who don't know, certain Plextors from ~2000-2006 were workhorses that could rip just about anything you threw at them.) I have DVDs that have rotted and won't play right. Same for a few Blu-Rays. Some pressing plants just produce garbage that won't last six months, much less six decades.

As for your quixotic quest to get somebody to support legal UHD playback on Macs...well, you have fun with that. I guess you've at least accepted that Macgo didn't somehow slip UHD support out to the public, with no announcements and zero fanfare.

None of mine have rotted. I have some discs from the early years of Compact Disc and they all look and play perfectly.

[LexInHD]

Originally Posted by usually_quiet

Cyberlink won't change anything this year.

I still say that the chances that the BDA will approve a technology that has already proven to be insecure and is only for Macs are not good. People who want to watch UHD Blu-ray discs with their Mac are a small fraction of the small and shrinking market made up of those who still want to watch movies on optical media with a computer.

The chances of Pluton being approved are only a little bit better and that is only because Windows PCs, are a much larger share of the PC market.

Pluton is used in the Xbox One and has already been approved for UHD-BD playback, via the Xbox One X. The BDA just has to approve it on the PC playback side. According to Microsoft, it already works with UHD-BD via it's incorporation of the current DRM and security measures used on PC, so it shouldn't be difficult to get it approved. The real issue is the optical drives, as companies that buy up drives from LG don't want to pay extra to have their branded drives certified for UHD-BD, so they are not shipping the firmware with the security hooks for UHD-BD, which is why people are buying the non-certified drives cheaply and flashing the firmware with the ones from UHD-BD models.

[apollo828]

I seriously doubt it's as simple as just approving the chip. There are certain security assumptions one can make about a closed ecosystem that rarely changes that one can't make about an open PC system. Re-certifying it for PCs probably wouldn't be that difficult, but as you said, nobody really buys the full UHD drives unless they really are committing to legal UHD playback. Judging by how optical drives are harder to find in general, and aren't even included with most pre-built PCs, I can't imagine there being much stomach at Cyberlink to shift gears and refactor their code to support Pluton.

That and anybody got a release date for motherboards with Pluton? Nope. Even assuming Cyberlink does push this, it'll probably be late-2021 at the absolute earliest (PowerDVD 22???), and virtually no one will have an interest in spending at least $1000 for all the hardware required to build something they could get in a standalone drive for half that at most, and almost certainly far less.

[LexInHD]

Pluton is a system-on-a-chip built into a CPU. It is as closed as it gets. It has it's own memory, operating system, and everything it needs to be independent from the CPU and it has nothing to do with whatever motherboard the CPU gets installed in. The only thing it gets from the CPU is data routed through the Security system-on-a-chip that is built into the CPU die, next to the Pluton hardware. When used on an APU or Intel's own CPU/GPU design, it gives you a closed security system that can't be compromised by side-channel attacks, because everything is contained on the physical chip itself. The real question is what that means for GPU cards, but current and future GPU designs will use "direct CPU access", which gives them a hardware secure pathway for sharing data between the CPU and GPU hardware, without using system RAM.

[apollo828]

Regardless of how closed it is, you still have to do things like decide on how exactly to talk to the chip. For example, it sounds like it'll be a TPM drop-in, but I'm assuming there's a specific Pluton API that can also be used. (Maybe I'm wrong? I hope not. TPM is a hot mess to program. Microsoft would be fools to not create a new, much friendlier API.) Do you approve one or the other, or both? If you approve TPM, do you approve it at a particular version? Maybe all that has already been considered and is part of the license. I doubt it, but again, I could be wrong.

[Bn43]

Originally Posted by apollo828

Dude, do you just not understand when you're wrong and continuing to dig a hole? Every optical format is prone to rot, to varying degrees. PDO (UK pressing plant) was notorious for making CDs and LDs in the early 90s that rotted super fast. I bought three copies of a brand new CD release two years ago (not PDO), and not one of them would rip properly on a Plextor drive I own. (For those who don't know, certain Plextors from ~2000-2006 were workhorses that could rip just about anything you threw at them.) I have DVDs that have rotted and won't play right. Same for a few Blu-Rays. Some pressing plants just produce garbage that won't last six months, much less six decades.

As for your quixotic quest to get somebody to support legal UHD playback on Macs...well, you have fun with that. I guess you've at least accepted that Macgo didn't somehow slip UHD support out to the public, with no announcements and zero fanfare.

One of the reasons I decided to get a cabinet with doors. I want to reduce exposure as much as possible.

[usually_quiet]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

Then you would need a computer made within a certain timeframe, not something “too new.”

Yes, but what I was getting at is that there isn't time to make any changes to PowerDVD. I know from statements Cyberlink has made in its forum that it needs at least one year to make significant changes to PowerDVD.

Originally Posted by BijouMan

Also, isn’t the MacBook the world’s #1 best selling laptop?

As I told you before when you wrote the same thing in another thread, Apple only sells about 9% total of the world's personal computers and only a tiny fraction of those sales are to buyers who care even a little bit about playing UHD Blu-ray on their computer with MacGo. Such a small market means very little to the BDA.

Originally Posted by BijouMan

Pluton is Microsoft’s version of the T2 Security Chip, so I would like the BDA to approve both.

The T2 security chip was cracked long ago. Why would the BDA approve a technology that has already proven insecure when doing so can only increase income by an insignificant amount?

[LexInHD]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

Pluton is Microsoft’s version of the T2 Security Chip, so I would like the BDA to approve both.

The T2 security chip is nothing like Pluton. The T2 chip is not on-die and is physically separate, which is why it can be attacked easily. The BDA would not approve it at this point, as it is definitely compromised. The new Apple ARM chips - used in their newest and upcoming computers - have their own security processor built into the chip, just like AMD and Intel will be doing with Pluton, and the memory used by those computers is built into the chip itself, adding even more security, which makes it immensely appealing for securing codes and encryption.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by LexInHD

The T2 security chip is nothing like Pluton. The T2 chip is not on-die and is physically separate, which is why it can be attacked easily. The BDA would not approve it at this point, as it is definitely compromised. The new Apple ARM chips - used in their newest and upcoming computers - have their own security processor built into the chip, just like AMD and Intel will be doing with Pluton, and the memory used by those computers is built into the chip itself, adding even more security, which makes it immensely appealing for securing codes and encryption.

The BDA and Macgo could make it so the player software cannot run on a T2 Security Chip-equipped Mac that has the exploit tool installed on it. It could check the machine for it and only run if it is not present. Before you ask if someone could install the tool while the software is running, I would assume the tool requires a restart.

How would I give them my ideas?

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by usually_quiet

Yes, but what I was getting at is that there isn't time to make any changes to PowerDVD. I know from statements Cyberlink has made in its forum that it needs at least one year to make significant changes to PowerDVD.


As I told you before when you wrote the same thing in another thread, Apple only sells about 9% total of the world's personal computers and only a tiny fraction of those sales are to buyers who care even a little bit about playing UHD Blu-ray on their computer with MacGo. Such a small market means very little to the BDA.


The T2 security chip was cracked long ago. Why would the BDA approve a technology that has already proven insecure when doing so can only increase income by an insignificant amount?

I see more Apple laptops than any other brand.

[apollo828]

Originally Posted by BijouMan

The BDA and Macgo could make it so the player software cannot run on a T2 Security Chip-equipped Mac that has the exploit tool installed on it. It could check the machine for it and only run if it is not present. Before you ask if someone could install the tool while the software is running, I would assume the tool requires a restart.

Do you really have nothing better to do than make up things and talk like you know what you're talking about? If this is such an easy thing to do, explain it to me. Sure, the exploit affects low-level code that's impossible to permanently fix, and sure, it allows all manner of system checks to be fooled along the way, but hey, it terms out there's some super foolproof way to check that the chip hasn't been compromised. Somebody call Apple! I'm sure they'd love to shut down the OS when the hack is detected.

[BijouMan]

Originally Posted by apollo828

Do you really have nothing better to do than make up things and talk like you know what you're talking about? If this is such an easy thing to do, explain it to me. Sure, the exploit affects low-level code that's impossible to permanently fix, and sure, it allows all manner of system checks to be fooled along the way, but hey, it terms out there's some super foolproof way to check that the chip hasn't been compromised. Somebody call Apple! I'm sure they'd love to shut down the OS when the hack is detected.

Well, how do you think antivirus software works? Doesn’t antivirus software scan for malicious programs? If so, they could make the player software scan for this exploit tool.

People just keep trying to convince me I’ll never be able to play Ultra HD Blu-ray discs on my much-more-than-capable MacBook Pro, just like how they’ve been trying to convince me I’ll never own a Pioneer universal disc player.

[ronboster]

Originally Posted by apollo828

Do you really have nothing better to do than make up things and talk like you know what you're talking about? If this is such an easy thing to do, explain it to me. Sure, the exploit affects low-level code that's impossible to permanently fix, and sure, it allows all manner of system checks to be fooled along the way, but hey, it terms out there's some super foolproof way to check that the chip hasn't been compromised. Somebody call Apple! I'm sure they'd love to shut down the OS when the hack is detected.

You don't want to go down the rabbit hole that is the Pioneer player thread, where after talking to a random CSR....he's logic says Pioneer must be releasing a new player. Why? Because they didn't say they whether they were or weren't. Which common sense says CSR's role is not making new electronics announcements...it's answering questions about existing products.

From that he's told other members that Pioneer will be making an announcement on a new player at CES. Would we like a new player?...we wouldn't spend time in the UHD hardware forums if we weren't fans/supporters.

Instead of just using some common sense and saying, "I hope or I wish" they'd release a new player, he continues his bull headed lack of credibility stance of insisting it's going to happen. ....based on absolutely no information from Pioneer saying it's going to happen.