Tried to support the industry by buying a movie a watch a lot. Well, no more. If I need a pihole just to watch a movie I own, that’s ridiculous.
Piracy is now better and safer than using “real” discs. Well done, Sony.
Why is your Blu-ray player connected to the internet?
VLC on a Linux laptop. You think my Blu-ray player has the ability to take screenshots?
Yes, and I assume you wrote this message on your blu-ray player and typed it with your remote
You never heard of a capture card?
Can I introduce you to my friend MakeMKV?
MakeMKV handles my Blu-ray decryption for VLC
Never heard of HDCP?
HDCP is easy to bypass. Almost laughable really, there are tons of “Splitters” and Strippers on the market. I’ve also seem a few totally legal capture cards that can read it directly.
You can crack anything if you are remotely motivated.
Does VLC report this? Kinda seems like the sorta thing that only works on actual players.
It tried to. I use an opnsense firewall which caught it. I copied my logs and submitted the domains to a popular dns blocklist and they’ve already been merged.
Thanks!
Was this like an iso file of the disk that you played played in vlc? And you’re saying it tried to ping that telemetry domain? I’m not quite understanding the context here.
Physical disc in a cd/dvd/bluray drive
So you put the physical disk in and it plays through vlc player on your pc?
If so, are you sure it was vlc that pinged the domain and not the bluray player?
Both devices made ping attempts. Not hard to confirm with firewall logs bc of timestamps and internal IP addresses.
Disconnect from the internet while watching. Close it when you finished. Restart your computer, then connect to the internet and you should be fine I think
I’m all good. I really wasn’t asking for tech support. Just sharing something with the community. Don’t worry, Sony didn’t get my data.
Thanks for the helpful thoughts though.
VLC can play blurays?
VLC plays everything
I am sometimes surprised to find new things VLC can do, it’s awesome.
But for real, does it play blu rays? I was under the impression it did not and you had to get that $100 program.
It does. Last time I did it, though, it required a couple of files to get going. Have a look here for info: http://fvonline-db.bplaced.net/
It does but I use makemkv for the Blu-ray decryption
Not UHD discs. Those don’t play on windows.
Not out of the box, AFAIK, but there is a plugin. I never got it to work though, because you also need some up-to-date certification file.
Yeah it seems really strange. I know some Bluray players support Internet connectivity but unless they’re also a Streaming box I don’t see why people would connect them to the internet. Really it seems like the majority of people don’t so not sure how useful this feature is.
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The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source – we will block it at your cable company. We will block it at your phone company. We will block it at your ISP. We will firewall it at your PC ... These strategies are being aggressively pursued because there is simply too much at stake. - Steve Heckler, senior vice president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc, August 2000
quote from https://web.archive.org/web/20010201204600/http://www.nyfairuse.org/sony.xhtml
via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Wow I’ve never seen this quote. That’s something.
there is simply too much at stake
OUR MONAYS!1!!!
I’m still getting justified in my boycott of anything Sony that started in 2005, when they bricked my PC for daring to put a Sony CD in my computer’s CD player! Fucking rootkit.
Yes I’m still holding that grudge and I will not relent, for as long as I live.
Any movie I watch I make sure it’s not a Sony product, any music I listen to, I make doubly sure it’s not from a Sony studio. Any electronics I buy, I make triply sure it doesn’t contain any Sony product. Sony is not getting a dime from me ever again!
Fuck Sony!
Yes! I’ve never met anyone else who’s been boycotting Sony since the rootkit! Maybe there are dozens of us? Either way: fuck Sony!
That rootkit thing failed miserably, thankfully, and audio CDs have been DRM-free ever since.
Sure, but I’m not touching anything Sony with a 10 foot pole.
Sure, but I’m not touching anything Sony with a 10 foot pole.
That’s going to discount most of the camera market if not the entire camera market then because Sony makes basically everyone’s imaging sensors, plus a large portion of the anime genre given that company bought out Funimation.
Haha no it doesn’t.
unplugs NIC
rips blu-ray with blu-ray drive running old firmware
Or… Here me out, don’t do that.
By giving them money, from their perspective, you’ve accepted their t&c. If they get data or not, that’s just icing on the cake.
That doesn’t make sense.
The t&c relate to the data. If they don’t get it, it’s irrelevant. It’s not the icing, it’s the actual cake. The hardware is the icing at best. The way these companies act it’s basically a Trojan horse unless you’re careful. The market for dedicated Blu-ray players is unbelievably tiny.
You want my money for a piece of hardware? Sure. Fair exchange. I don’t see why we should object to that. It’s the everything else that’s the problem.
borrows blu-ray instead of buying it
can we find a way to spoof this so that they think legit physical disk usage is going up?
I don’t think it’s a good metric since most people using Blurays don’t have their players connected to the Internet anyway. Connecting Bluray players online is a very niche use-case. It might be more popular if they had built-in Streaming Apps or NAS playback but many don’t and are just Bluray players.
Or just any game console? Which is the normal Blu-ray player?
I’m not really sure if they’re they’re the biggest userbase of Bluray movies. I know lots of them do but also many don’t, especially with the promotion of Digital-Only Game Systems and Also Streaming services. Most people I know who buy and use Blurays just have a basic Bluray player and aren’t really gamers.
The only reason I had my bluray player connected to the internet was because the yahoo who dropped it off at the thrift store didn’t bother signing out of their pandora account, so I could listen to ad free music. Otherwise I would never connect to the internet since all the old applications ( including a blockbuster app of all things ) probably wouldn’t even work.
Knowing this could happen, I will definitely be sure to completely disconnect from the internet the next time I turn that thing on since last time I tried using pandora it wasn’t working.
Can you share which movie this was? I’ve never seen anything like that.
Gran Turismo
Farturismo
My Blu Ray player has never been connected to the web, its region free, but doesn’t do 4k-BD. My Linux HTPC is configured with an ASUS libredrive, and has MakeMKV installed. The Linux variant of MakeMKV is borked right now, in a good way! The 30 day trial period doesn’t expire!
If I wanna watch a 4k bluray I have to rip it and watch it on my PC, because I’d rather do that than get a BD player that needs internet
The author posts new temporary keys on the official forums regularly, in one of the stickies.
Havent needed them in months, I’ve been at 30 days remaining in evaluation period for 3 months.
The fact that they don’t give you the option to “refuse” but rather to “skip” annoys me to such an extent. Leave us alone, you never needed to do this.
I legitimately cannot remember the last time I paid for a movie or TV show, or music.
Digitally, or physically.
Even if you count streaming services, its been over 5 years since I laid for Spotify… stopped paying for any kind of on demand videos before even that.
Friends wanna watch a movie at my place? Oh, I have a 10 TB library.
Oh, at your place? Does your TV have a USB port? Tell me its model number and I can figure out what codecs it can actually read.
This isn’t a EULA in that it still allows you to use the product even if you decline…
This option is available with most modern games these days. They often ask you to click “approve” twice, knowing you won’t read either and knowing that you believe that you need to accept both to proceed. When in reality, the second one is almost always optional (perhaps even by law because of laws in the EU).
Still gross. And definitely a major dark pattern, but if people just took an extra 3 seconds to double check, they’d stop sending all of their data to these companies.
Does it still work by clicking skip?
Yes, it’s optional.
Are there any region-free 4K blu-ray drives available? I’m asking for a friend.
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“It also enables the delivery of advertising content”
They already paid for the product! Double-dipping assholes
triple-dipping, they also get your data.
No no, you see. You didn’t pay for the product but the license for the product. Now it makes sense, right?
I don’t understand. Maybe a set of adverts would help me?
I wonder if these people think everyone wants to be advertised to.
I don’t think they care
No, I am 100% certain they know that the vast majority of people don’t care and some people really really hate it, but nobody actually enjoys it.
Someone I know who is currently on a pseudoscience and conspiracy theory arc genuinely believes that personalized ads are good because then you can easily buy things you know you’ll like
Guess there’s no accounting for stupid.
Some people will bend over backwards for a nibble of the corporate boot
Some people are allergic to researching their purchases
sadly, i too heard that from somebody 🤷
