The developers of DVD-Ranger have started a crowdfunding project to raise money for further development of Cinex, their Cinavia copy protection removal software. They posted their call for financial support on the website Indiegogo, a website that makes it possible to raise money from investors all over the world. With crowdfunding it's possible to raise small amount of money from a large group of people. DVD-Ranger hopes to raise $120,000 for further development of CinEx.
CinEx is a module for DVD-Ranger that makes it possible to remove the audio watermark based copy protection Cinavia. For the development of the software a load of testing is required. Currently the development is done in the spare time of the two developers that have a job on the side.
With the $120,000 they hope to raise, they want to quit their jobs and work fulltime on the software. In return for a financial contribution the CinEx developers give something in return.Ranging from a sticker for $10 to a license combined with website sponsorship and donor plaque for $1000.
If the the goal of $120,000 is reached, the developers promise to make the software open-source. They also call for people that in case they don't want to participate in the crowdfunding project to purchase a pre-release license to support development of CinEx.
The CinEx module from DVD-Ranger has proven to successfully remove the Cinavia protection but had a drawback, the audio quality has been degraded. The company promises that future releases will improve the audio quality while the Cinavia protection is removed.
Cinavia is a copy protection for Blu-ray that is mandatory on Blu-ray players since 2012. The protection is based on a watermark that is embedded in the audio stream of a Blu-ray movie. Blu-ray players, both hardware and software contain a Cinavia detector that checks for a valid watermark. If not found because e.g. someone tries to playback a backup of a movie, the audio is muted after 20 minutes and a Cinavia message will appear. Recent versions of the protection might also prompt the user to purchase a legitimate version online.
A pre-release of the CinEx module is currently available and can be downloaded from the DVD-Ranger website.
Discuss this release in our Movie Copy Forum, also check out our extensive article revealing all details on Cinavia.
