[geeks] Playstation 3 + HD-DVD

[Joshua Boyd]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2008 at 06:55:24PM +0000, Mark wrote:
> On 14 Jan 2008, at 12:06, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> 
> > I wonder how hard it would be to hack a Playstation 3 to make able to
> > talk to the Xbox360's external HD-DVD player.  I also wonder whether
> > anyone's already working on it.
> 
> My best suggestion would be that if the XBox360 drive is USB, which I  
> believe it is, the *hardware* may work with PS3 Linux, but that alone  
> won't play the movies as you require H.264 support (not an issue on  
> it's own AFAIK) AND the codec to play back material protected by the  
> HD-DVD DRM.
> 
> Looking at it from that POV make it look difficult to me as any HD- 
> DVD, or for that matter Blu-Ray, player for Linux will need  
> proprietary code to play the discs. I don't know how this would sit  
> with Linux hippies, and also if studios and software vendors would  
> even support the idea for fear of reverse engineering.
> 
> I believe there is a CSS support package for CSS encrypted DVDs. I  
> don't know of any HD-DVD/Blu-Ray support packages of a similar type.

There is a utility backupHDDVD that will run on Linux and allow you to
read Blu Ray or HD-DVD and output unencrypted files that can be played
with Mplayer or VLC.  I don't know about current menu or subtitle
support from those players.  There are several variations of audio and
video allowed, and I don't think that Mplayer at least supports all of
them yet either.

backupHDDVD insists that you find the encryption keys by your own
means, so you have to get a config file for elsewhere to use it.

Playing this stuff is still a long ways away from where DVDs are where
you add a config line, run an update then install command, and have DVDs
just work on linux. 

BTW, the new encryption used instead of CSS is AACS.