HD DVD & Blu-ray not delayed, AACS back on track (updated Feb 16)

[zombie]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060214-6182.html

HD DVD and Blu-ray delayed again, as AACS is pushed back

2/14/2006 8:16:57 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

Remember all of the positioning about which next-generation optical format would hit the market first? Forget about it. It now appears that both formats will hit the market at the same time, because delays in the security specification that they both share have left everyone—device manufacturers, movie studios, and the leaders of the respective formats—in a holding pattern. The final specification of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) has been delayed again, meaning that the final specifications needed to produce HD DVD and Blu-ray products still sits off in the undetermined future.

According to a report at Heise online, the members of the AACS licensing authority could not agree on a final specification last week. The hold up must infuriate HD DVD backers, because the last sticking point apparently only applies to the Blu-ray specific BD+ anti-piracy measure. BD+ is part of Blu-ray's "we have more protection than you" approach to appeasing the studios.

When Blu-ray announced their additional protection measures in August of last year, it was largely thought that the extra lockdown was there to woo content owners, especially FOX. BD+ is a dynamic encryption scheme that allows for changing encryption schemes midstream. Should the encryption be cracked, the Blu-ray Disc group can update the encryption scheme and put it on all new discs, thus preventing a single crack from opening up the entire BD spec for the duration of its lifetime. The lack of a dynamic encryption model is what made DeCSS so disastrous in the industry's eyes: once CSS was cracked, all DVDs from then on were crackable. AACS attempts to deal with this problem, but Blu-ray's members believed that additional protection was necessary.

This particular delay could push the Spring 2006 launches of HD DVD and Blu-ray back by a month or more. HD DVD drives were going to hit US stores in March, while Blu-ray players where expected as early as April.

Sounds like good news, in a way.