http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=15046
What is interesting to me is the following line.
The ROM Mark is a unique and undetectable identifier embedded in pre-recorded ROM media such as movies, music and games. While invisible to consumers, the ROM Mark can be mastered only with equipment available to licensed BD-ROM manufacturers. The Blu-ray Disc Association intends to ensure that only disks that contain the ROM Mark will be playable on Blu-ray systems, rendering piracy meaningless.
Does this mean that once Highdef home video cameras come out, we can’t record our movies from the camera onto BD-R discs and watch them on our player? What about the widely touted “Bluray will replace VHS” claim where bluray BD-RE discs and recorders will be usable just like a VCR.
I do like that this appears to be more of a shot against the professional pirates rather than against consumers, but the above statement needs to be cleared up.
More technical information: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=15194
There’s also more information about the stuff in the comments of my last bluray post here:
http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=15145
Bluray association also replied to the same post I replied to, and said some of the same things. http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=15157
It appears that at least one of the features Microsoft is claiming they’re selecting against bluray for were actually first developed by bluray and later done by HDDVD, and the one big one that Intel was claiming as their reason not to support bluray was because of managed copy, which is actually a part of the copy protection standard that both formats have been slated to use for over a year.
Really, MS siding with HDDVD can be considered just an extension of their habit of being the last to join the winning party. Just like them waiting until the late 90’s to start shipping usable internet tools and ignoring it with windows 95. Just like them basically ignoring CD Burning until windows XP. Just like them not adding DVD playing capability to the OS until it had been out for a number of years. Third parties will step in to fill the gaps until the standard is clearly prevalent then MS will backtrack and eventually add support.