HD-DVD and Blu-ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen

Like DVD's CSS before it, it appears that HD-DVD and Blue-ray have, at least partially, been successfully hacked by a relatively low-tech means that has been discussed in various Internet forums for the last few weeks. Specifically, Windows' PrintScreen function was used by a scripting program to capture each frame of both an HD-DVD and a Blu-ray movie. The resulting approximately 162,000 frames were stitched together in real time to create a viewable 324 GP HD movie. No word yet on whether they were able to successfully synchronize the movie's audio with the resultant movie. Presumably, this process could be further refined to compress the resulting file to a more manageable size. 

[January 1, 2007 Update:  Paul Thurott mentioned on one of his late 06 or early 07 Windows Weekly podcasts that Vista has disabled the "print screen" function when HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies are played at full resolution within Vista - thus removing this hack possibility from Vista-based PCs. But, this is hardly a solution. All it takes is for one person using an XP-based PC to hack an HD title in this way and it will be circulating the globe within minutes through BitTorrent and other P2P technologies.]

Sources: ars technica | HDTV UK

Related Posts:

• Arnezami Hacks HD-DVD/Blu-ray - Discovers the One "Processing Key" to Rule them All (February 14, 2006)
• BackupHDDVD & Doom9 Forum Create End-to-End HD-DVD Crack (January 13, 2007)
• HD-DVD & Blu-ray Cracked? (December 28, 2006)
• HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Reportedly Successfully Hacked via PrintScreen (August 2, 2006)

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