A hot subject in our forums is the upcoming release of software that is able to circumvent the Cinavia protection. This protection has become mandatory on Blu-ray players since 2012 and e.g. the Playstation 3 is able to detect copied discs that are protected by the Cinavia protection. While the protection has been broken by e.g. DVDFab, the developers of the protection have continuously been able to update it in such a way that it continues to protect the content of movie studios against illegal copying and thus also preventing the creation of personal backups.
The protection works by preventing playback of protected Blu-Rays and DVDs on newer Blu-Ray players by incorporating a watermark that is checked against a key which is part of the AACS protection. For example, if a pirate would use a camera to record a movie in a movie theater, the protection would see a movie theater watermark, instead of a consumer movie watermark and if it finds something else than it expects it will stop playback of the disc.
Besides the several hacks available, a more interesting news release came from a software company developing DVDRanger, they announced that they would have a version of their software that would deal with Cinavia in such a way that their hack is also future proof. According to them they found the solution by accident and their method works by changing the Cinavia signal is such a way that it become unreadable by a player, which according to them is a design error of the protection itself.
The software should have become available about a week ago (Halloween) but has not yet appeared which made a lot of people suspicious. The developers of DVDRanger gave them the ability to pre-order the software that would break the protection but unfortunately weren't able to deliver on the date they stated before. Many customers who bought the software in advance are currently afraid that they've lost their money.
Also the developers of DVDRanger felt they didn't live up to their expectations and posted a message on their website stating that the release is delayed. Anyone who has developed software knows that these things happen, very, very often.
To everyone who is suspicious, we're with you and keep an eye on it. However, we are in touch in with the author of the software, did some research and talked to insiders and think that 1) the claim of the Cinavia breakthrough is legitimate 2) the software will come out, but we don't know when. Of course you should keep an eye on our news and you'll be the first to know.
