Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 25, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Caribbean software company SlySoft reported last week that version 6.4 of its AnyDVD software could circumvent the BD+ copy protection used on Blu-ray. Yet this had been touted as practically uncrackable and was considered one of Blu-ray Disc’s advantages over HD-DVD. With the new software version, it is now possible to make backup copies of Blu-ray Discs, SlySoft states – and, by its own account, expects a fresh boost for the HD market.
BD+ copy protection is essentially a virtual machine in the Blu-ray player that enables executable programs on Blu-ray media. The system is likely to have played a role in the HD format war in that the Advanced Access Content System used by HD-DVD had long been considered relatively easy to circumvent. Blu-ray copy protection, on the other hand, was regarded as effectively impossible to bypass. “BD+ probably won’t be cracked for ten years,” predicted Richard Doherty, Director of market research company The Envisioneering Group, in July 2007. Critics considered this forecast exaggerated and saw it as a challenge to hackers.
SlySoft now boasts that it has disproved Doherty’s assessment after only eight months. The company says it was even relatively slow about it. SlySoft had intended to release the new AnyDVD version in December 2007 but, for strategic reasons, decided to wait for the outcome of the HD format war first. “We are certain that the release will give the HD market a fresh boost,” SlySoft CEO Giancarlo Bettini now states. It could benefit Blu-ray that customers now know making backup copies is possible. On the other hand, film studios or Toshiba could give the format-war loser a breathing space. “HD-DVD certainly deserves a second chance,” Bettini says, pointing to its high hardware market share in recent months.
Although SlySoft itself presents AnyDVD 6.4 as a tool for making backup copies, the software is also considered a suitable means of producing illegal pirated copies. In Germany and many other European countries, the software may neither be advertised nor sold.
