Cinavia DRM: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blu-ray’s Self-Destruction
by Ganesh T S on March 21, 2012 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- Blu-Ray
- DRM
- Cinavia
We briefly discussed watermarking schemes in the previous section. Cinavia, from Verance, is an audio watermarking scheme which has ended up inconveniencing a number of consumers. In particular, owners of the PS3 have been vocal enough to warrant the appearance of sites dedicated to bypassing the Cinavia triggers on the PS3. What exactly is the Cinavia watermark? How is it embedded in a soundtrack? When does a consumer encounter the watermark? What is the result when the encounter happens? These are some of the questions we will try to answer in this section.
Verance's DVD-A Watermark
Verance is no newcomer to the audio watermarking market. DVD-Audio adopted their technology in the late 90s. Audio watermarks can be robust or fragile, and Verance's DVD-A watermarking scheme as well as Cinavia belong to the former category. Robust watermarks can't be destroyed by digital-to-analog conversion, re-encoding or addition of small amounts of noise to the track.
In fact, Verance was one of the companies involved in the infamous Felten-SDMI Challenge case, where Prof. Edward Felten was threatened with legal action if he wanted to discuss how Verance's DVD-A watermark scheme (along with a host of other audio protection schemes) was deciphered and overcome. Readers interested in the full technical details of Felten's attack in the SDMI challenge can peruse this paper [PDF] presented at the 10th USENIX Security Symposium. In short, Verance's watermarking scheme involved frequency domain modifications, hiding multiple time-varying echoes. Note that the human ear is not sensitive to echoes involving speech and music where the delay is less than 50 ms. In fact, only echoes with a time difference of 100 ms or more become annoying. Verance's scheme involved echoes with delays varying between 0.5 ms and 1.75 ms, rendering them indecipherable to the human ear. By placing these echoes regularly in an audio track, it is possible to detect the watermark in any clipped segment.
Cinavia
In the DVD-A watermark discussed in the previous subsection, Verance could have different echo patterns to indicate different watermarks. Though we don't have the exact details, it is widely believed that Cinavia could be something similar. The fundamental requirement for Cinavia is the presence of a watermark detector in the playback device, i.e, when a Cinavia-infected audio track is being processed, the system must be able to identify the presence of the watermark pattern.
There are at least four different Cinavia watermarks to identify the following situations:
- Professional content (say, copies of movies made in a theater) being played on an unlicensed device (say, a Blu-ray player at home)
- Professional content being copied using an unlicensed device
- Content being played back on an unlicensed device
- Content being copied from an unlicensed device
Scenarios (2) and (4) result in copying being stopped. They are comparatively rare (not many users use devices with the watermark detector to copy content). However, scenarios (1) and (3) are more common. Currently, Cinavia audio watermarks are embedded in the audio track(s) of some Blu-ray movies and a number of theatrical releases. The type of watermark in each of these cases is different. While the watermark in the first case may lead to Scenario (1), the second case may lead to Scenario (3).
We set out to observe Cinavia in action. Our first two test cases involved Blu-ray backups of the movies 'The Losers' and 'Battlefield LA' with re-encoded audio and video tracks. The files were played back on a PS3. The third scenario was triggered in both cases. In the former case, the triggering was within a minute, but took more than 20 minutes in the latter case.
Cinavia - Message Code 03 - Battlefield LA - 20... by anandshimpi
The current PS3 firmware has the Cinavia watermark detection routines. When the audio track of a file being played back has the Cinavia watermark for Scenario (3), the PS3 usually waits for 20 odd minutes before muting the audio. This scenario is also triggered when lossless backups of Blu-rays are played back. For example, some Blu-ray players have the ability to play back unprotected ISOs (created with AnyDVD HD or DVDFab) or MKVs (created with MakeMKV) which don't even have re-encoded audio / video tracks. These are the most common form of backups used by legitimate Blu-ray consumers. I will touch upon the need for such backups in a later section, but suffice to say that any discs with Cinavia backed up in such a manner (i.e, with the AACS protection removed) will trigger the muting of the audio on Cinavia-enabled Blu-ray players.
Our third test case involved a 5 minute sample clip from a CAM print of the movie 'The Wolfman'. For those not familiar with scene releases, the Wikipedia article explains about the scene and the various qualities in which scene releases are available. A CAM print is made using a camcorder in a theater. The audio can be either recorded using a microphone or explicit line input. In the latter case, the audio track doesn't have a lot of noise. However, our sample clip had very noisy audio, and in all probability, the audio was recorded using a microphone. Within a few seconds of starting playback of the file on a PS3, Scenario (1) was triggered. Playback automatically stopped with the appropriate error message.
Cinavia and Blu-ray Players
One of the common aspects in the above three videos is the fact that both of them involved the use of a PS3 as the media player. Currently, Cinavia watermark detection is mandated only in the AACS licensing agreement. This means that only players which are licensed by the AACS are required to have this detection routine. An update to the AACS licensing agreement indicated that all players sent to the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) for licensing after February 1st, 2012 should have the Cinavia detection routine embedded in the firmware. There is no legal licensing requirement for previously certified players to include Cinavia in firmware updates, but, if the manufacturer wishes to do so, there is nothing to prevent them from doing so.
Note that the licensing requirement doesn't state that all players sold after February 1st, 2012 need to be Cinavia-enabled; it is only those sent for certification after that date. This means that a number of Blu-ray players (older models) will continue to be sold in the market without Cinavia for some months to come. The BDA certification process involves putting each applicant through a rigorous test suite to ensure that all Blu-ray features are properly supported. Since Cinavia is a recently introduced licensing requirement, it is not clear when the Cinavia tests will become part of the BDA certification test suite. We spoke to some industry insiders who stated (on the conditions of anonymity) that it will be at least another 8 - 12 months before the BDA certification test suite starts testing for Cinavia compliance. They also indicated that they fully expect players to be certified in the meanwhile without Cinavia in the firmware.
Cinavia is particularly worrisome for DMAs (Digital Media Adapters) that have also licensed Blu-ray capabilities. Examples of such units include the Popcorn Hour C300 from Syabas, the Dune Smart series from HDI, and players such as the Kaiboer K860i / Asus O!Play BDS-700. Fortunately, all of these units have already obtained BDA certification. However, it will be interesting to see how they tackle the Cinavia issue in the next generation units. DMAs are quite popular because of their ability to play networked media of all types (be it Blu-ray backups in ISO / MKV format or downloaded content). Cinavia throws a spanner in the works for such units. As we demonstrated earlier in this section, audio either gets muted or playback stops completely, depending on the media source.
In the next section, we will present some comments (in the hope that people in the AACS LA and BDA are paying attention), and leave it to them / readers to decide whether Cinavia really helps as an effective DRM measure.
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Valis - Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - link
DAT SCMS, DRM, SWG, Blu-Ray... The list goes on and on. Sony, hope it dies a slow an agonizing death. Will never buy a Sony product again, for as long as I live.jharper12 - Thursday, March 29, 2012 - link
My freshman year of college I downloaded music and movies. I went to a well regarded university with Tech in its name. That year, every person on campus had watched LOTR weeks before it came out. I was a pirate, for one year.I have always worked hard though, and after that first year I didn't have time to consume massive amounts of media. Convenience started to matter, and services started to pop up that legally offered a means to consume media for a reasonable fee. My pirating days were over, not long after they began.
Here's what bothers me. I have two HP LP2465 monitors hooked up to a nice home built computer. What do they lack? HDCP. I purchased AnyDVD HD for the sole purpose of playing my legally acquired Bluray collection on my computer. Someone should go to jail for that, and it shouldn't be me. Next up? I encountered that lovely little DRM issue with Silverlight while trying to watch movies on my paid subscription for Netflix. I have to run extra cabling to my Bluray players, so they can update to play discs that I bought... legally. I have to update, right as I'm excited to watch. The last time I didn't have to worry about DRM? My freshman year of college. Take note content industry, you didn't slow me down or even inconvenience me for that brief sliver of time in which I stole from you. No, only now, as a paying customer, do you make my life miserable. Thanks for that.
GoodToGo - Saturday, March 31, 2012 - link
I just wanted to say what an amazing read this was.*Tips hat*
PeTroL42 - Tuesday, April 17, 2012 - link
The majority of my friends aren't geeks like I am so most of them have no clue as to what DRM even is. While DRM is a major headache for a person like me where I'd like to have all my content in a central location, DRM isn't a major headache for the average consumer who just wants to buy a BD at Best Buy and play the movie when they get home and most of the time this works out for the average consumer who buys everything legitimately. Of course there are headaches for the average consumer such as firmware updates but c'mon, issues like these aren't common for the average consumer. One other thing unrelated to DRM, some of my friends LOVE to show off their massive BD collection.Also, the scenario where a consumer unknowingly buys a pirated BD is pretty ridiculous unless you regularly buy your BDs on the streets of Downtown LA or China.
I understand why the Studios are taking measures like using Cinavia to protect their content.
I'm not being an apologist for the studios but movies cost A LOT of money to produce. Just ask any independent film maker. I feel anybody who reads this article and then goes and spends 50 to 100 million dollars to produce a movie, I'd bet you'd want to get the maximum profits out of that movie which includes the sale of BDs.
Also, low budget movies don't rake in a lot of profit. That's why low budget movies like Blair Witch Project or My Fat Greek Wedding garner a lot of attention when they make lots of money at the box office. This isn't common.
There's no doubt that piracy hurts everyone except the people who pirate the material and the people who buy the pirated material or get it free if its made available such as when Napster was around. Take PC Games for instance. The PC Game piracy is so bad that the Publishers are currently using some draconian methods to combat it. This ONLY hurts the legitimate purchasers of the game. Back in the day, (like 1998) I'd buy a game, bring it home, install it, the game would ask me for the serial # on the Jewel Case, I'd enter it, wait a few more minutes and then I'm playing. Now, you usually have to be connected online to even play single player games. Now Big Brother knows when and how long I've been playing their game.
I'm for the argument that if the Music industry had embraced technological advances such as MP3s instead of trying to combat it, they'd probably be in a better position than they are today but there's no doubt that piracy hit the music industry hard.
The reason for this long post is this. I was just thinking the other day that there isn't a legitimate way to purchase movies in file format so I could put it on my NAS and play it through my Western Digital set top box. The only options for a person like me is to either download the content through P2P or RIP a DVD or BD myself and encode it into a format that my WD set top box could read which I am not admitting to. Because of the DMCA, ripping movies is illegal. And why was the DMCA written into law? Because of rampant piracy. CDs aren't encrypted so the DMCA doesn't apply to CDs so legitimate purchasers are allowed under law to RIP it to MP3 and play it on any device they choose. CDs don't have encryption because they were created in the early 80s and MP3s weren't even invented back then.
If the average consumer has access to free stuff and they know how to use it, then they'll use it but if that access gets cut off and it becomes too difficult for the average consumer to figure out, then they'll eventually buy the stuff they want. If Napster and Kazaa and all those other easy file sharing programs were still around today, I'd bet Katy Perry wouldn't be selling the same amount of downloads from iTunes or Amazon.
This sounds selfish of me but If piracy wasn't so rampant now and people would actually pay for the content they want, then there probably wouldn't be a bill written into law such as the DMCA and then I'd be free to RIP any movie that I legitimately purchased and enjoy it today on any device I please or I could've been buying movies in MP4 or some other format that my set top box could read. Thanks Pirates! (and I'm not talking about Pittsburgh)
DVDRanger1 - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
The developers of the DVD-Ranger software have the first future-proof solution for Cinavia free DVD and Blu-raySanta Ponsa (Spain), 09/21/2012 – Many DVD and Blu-ray users know this problem: the DVD or Blu-ray playback stops suddenly with a cryptic error message or remains frozen or silent. This is caused by the relatively new copy protection system Cinavia.
Shortly after the Cinavia solution of DVDFab has been once again made useless by the Cinavia producer, DVD-Ranger Software offers help. The developers of DVD-Ranger have eliminated the Cinavia’s signal during the development of other software by accident. The Cinavia’s signal has been changed so that it has become unreadable. They have not fought against the Cinavia’s system directly; it is more likely triggered by a design error of Cinavia itself.
Pixbyte has chosen the release date for the DVD-Ranger 5 with Cinavia module to be 10/31/2012 (Halloween). At the moment, the solution is being tested by well known people in the world of copying. Approx. 55% of all reported Blu-ray Region A/B disks and DVDs have been successfully tested so far. It will be also tested on PS3, various Blu-ray players and PowerDVD.
Pixbyte is known by the DVD neXt COPY Software and DVD-Ranger products line. Pixbyte has been present for about 10 years on the backup and copy software market.
Price and availability: DVD-Ranger 5 is currently available as pre-order at a price of $69.99. The final release price will be approx. $89.99. The Cinavia module will cost approx. $39.99 (included in pre-order).
About Pixbyte:
Pixbyte is a trusted and respected researcher and developer of CD/DVD and BD recording and conversion technology. Its products are sold worldwide and are utilized by end-users and companies. The products are designed to provide speed and quality of copy operations and are developed continually in accordance with technological progress.
Cypher1994 - Saturday, August 17, 2013 - link
I like your Stanley Kubrick reference.ceceliagibson - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Hi very useful info about cinavia errors, this will protect playstation devices against playing un authorized movies.Carole Harris - Monday, March 14, 2016 - link
Here is a bit more information on Cinavia, pertaining to what it is and how it functions: http://cinavia-removal.webs.com/But please, ignore the webmaster's link at the bottom of the article, as DVDFab can be used to remove Cinavia without question.
DVDRanger - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
Cinavia has been broken by a software company. I suggest to search for DVD-Ranger and CinEx to forget Cinavia forever.Marrie Hill - Sunday, February 13, 2022 - link
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