![]() The system boasted military-grade security, but it still drew a breach-of-contract lawsuit from a licensing body called the DVD Copy Control Assn. a group representing the studios, consumer electronics companies and high-tech firms. According to the DVD CCA, the license governing DVD technology doesn't forbid copying, but it does bar movies from being played without the DVD being present in the player. Kaleidescape won in California Superior Court, but last August the DVD CCA prevailed on appeal, sending the case back to Superior Court for another round. Tuesday, Kaleidescape announced that a new, $4,000 Blu-ray player/copier will start shipping on May 18th, enabling customers to add high-definition movies to their stored collections. Unlike the previous version, however, the new model won't allow Blu-ray movies to play from a Kaleidescape hard drive unless the disc is in the player. The point, company CEO Michael Malcolm said in an interview, is to address the studios' concerns about people copying movies that they rent or borrow, rather than just the ones they bought. "We’re making it impossible to import the disc and then take the disc and play it separately while the imported copy is still playable." "We're certainly hoping that they’re going to like this approach," he said. It's a big change for Kaleidescape, and it sacrifices one of the basic features of the system: the ability to sit down on your couch, browse through your collection and pick whatever movie strikes your fancy. Instead, after deciding what to watch, users of the new player will have to flip through their collection to find the matching Blu-ray disc in order to play the copy they have. Malcolm insists that the system still provides plenty of other benefits, such as the ability to jump immediately to the start of a movie. (The company also announced a $2,500 model that just plays high-def movies without copying them.) Still, the new player seems more like an interim step, holding customers' interest until the company comes out with a carousel model next year that can hold multiple Blu-ray discs. What's worse for Kaleidescape is that the group that holds the license to Blu-ray's anti-piracy technology, the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, doesn't acknowledge the legality of the company's compromise. When asked whether a licensee could rip Blu-ray discs, Michael Ayers, chairman of AACS LA, offered this statement: KALEIDESCAPE KPLAYER 2500 LICENSE ![]() The AACS technology and licenses do not permit ripping of Blu-ray discs unless the copy has been authorized by the content owner, either by setting the Copy Control Information appropriately (and nearly all BD movies are set for “Copy Never”, just like DVDs), or by individual authorization through the Managed Copy process, which we anticipate rolling out at the end of this year or the beginning of 2011. ![]() Just click the "Register" button in the upper right corner of this page, and follow the instructions there.Some studios provide Blu-ray buyers with a digital copy that they can download or rip onto a PC or Mac, but those aren't high-definition files. It's easy and free to register for the forum.
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