[Standard Deviations]

DVD Detour Damage Control: Not Fixing the Wrong Problems

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Dana J. Parker
EMedia Professional, April 1997
Copyright © Online Inc.

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Any solution to a problem changes the problem.
--R. W. Johnson (b. 1916)

As the more obvious technical difficulties to implementing DVD are overcome, the remaining obstacles are turning out to be, if anything, more complicated.
Back in 1994, when intimations of a possible new format for delivering video on disc were first whispered in industry circles, obstacles to implementing the new format seemed largely technical. How could a disc technology be designed with the capacity and throughput necessary to contain and display high-quality digital video?

At the time, this task seemed daunting but quantifiable: the solution to the problem was developing a higher density disc with new hardware, improved optics, and better video compression algorithms. Today, however, with a new high-density standard, DVD, and its attendant hardware well on the way, impediments to delivering digital video on disc remain. As the more obvious technical difficulties are overcome, the remaining obstacles are turning out to be, if anything, more complicated.

Our more sanguine early expectations are fading as the real tasks before DVD developers and potential users become ever clearer. For example, the regional coding of DVD discs as a solution to DVD Video's perceived distribution control has sparked controversy not only of whether regionalization was the right solution, but of whether distribution control was even a valid problem to address. That and other early missteps have left DVD developers faced with an odd sort of backtracking. In essence, DVD's greatest obstacle today may be in finding solutions to the wrong solutions to the wrong problems.

WRONG PROBLEM: CONTROLLED DISTRIBUTION
WRONG SOLUTION: REGIONAL CODING

One of the primary issues that has prevented DVD from moving from the drawing boards to the retail shelves on its original schedule has been the defining of regional codes for discs and players, also known as "country lock." The country codes were deemed essential to ensure that a first-run movie in a theater does not face competition from the version on disc. The impact would be that a movie released on disc in one of the six world regions would not play on a player sold in any other region. For Region 1--North America-- this provision would not, perhaps, cause much deprivation, unless one were an aficionado of Japanese animation. But for the rest of the world this regional regimentation is an outrage.

The good news is that a company in China recently claimed to have devised a way to break the country code lock and allow any DVD player to play any DVD disc from any region in the world. The lock-breaker will reportedly be available in the form of a chip that will plug in easily to any DVD player on the market. If this chip works, will the country codes be abandoned as the bad idea they've always been, or will there be an attempt to outlaw the chips or redesign the country lock? Stay tuned.

WRONG PROBLEM: ILLEGAL COPYING
WRONG SOLUTION: ENCRYPTION, MACROVISION, FEDERAL LAW

Early in DVD's development, to thwart the perceived threat of grand-scale piracy of DVD Video content, the format's proponents--driven by the video format's Hollywood contingent--developed a copy protection scheme supported by accompanying federal legislation. The approach devised and currently in place imposed no more than a curb-high barrier to those determined to defeat it, and no deterrent whatsoever to those "pirates" who make their living plundering content on the high seas.

However, DVD copy protection will prevent digital-to-digital copying, at least temporarily. The digital-to-analog solution will use Macrovision technology to degrade the quality of and descrambled video stream sent from a computer to a television set. However, that same signal could be captured between the RGB output and the computer screen by an RGB-to-NTSC converter and used to make a high-quality VHS copy from a computer. One way to circumvent this restriction where necessary would be to force the makers of such devices to use a Macrovision encoder. Even so, the version of Macrovision currently employed in VHS cassettes to degrade the video signal can be overcome by legally available Macrovision decoders. It's only a matter of time before such a decoder will be available for DVD, just as sooner or later an engineer with an oscilloscope will discover the point in a DVD player or MPEG-2 decoder where the descrambled signal is unprotected, or succeeds in breaking the encryption algorithm.

The proposed copy protection legislation to enforce the ban on the manufacture or import of encryption-defeating devices may be less of a threat than the legislation's backers originally believed. The courts have upheld the consumer's right to make a copy of a copyrighted work for his or her own use. In 1976, Sony Corporation of America was sued by two major television and movie producers who alleged that Sony's home videotape recorder was intended to be used to tape copyrighted TV programs and movies shown on TV. In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that neither the sale of home video recorders nor their use to record from television was a violation of the copyright law. Since those days, wide use of the videocassette recorder has been a bonanza for the owners of televised and filmed works, rather than the disaster it was envisioned to be. One wonders how many times the movie industry can cry wolf, only to discover that the perceived wolf is a cash cow.

Meanwhile, the right of fair use--the legal copying of portions of a copyrighted work for private, educational, or journalistic purposes, which was included for the first time in the Copyright Act of 1976--is completely abrogated by the copy protection policy endorsed for DVD. There is no fair use provision possible, because there is no copying allowed. It is entirely possible, however, that any new law that specifically banned devices intended to defeat copy protection would stand only as long as it took to attempt to prosecute the owner of the device.

WRONG PROBLEM: UNDEFINED APPLICATION LEVEL
WRONG SOLUTION: EXISTING MODELS

DVD's Hollywood contingent is errantly pursuing solutions to ill-chosen problems, and thus producing new problems which require new solutions. The computer-camp Interactive Multimedia Association recently formed several technical working groups to address the problem of a lack of application-level standards for DVD-ROM. If they succeed in doing so, the feared CD-ROM multimedia incompatibility problem, at least for applications on DVD-ROM that fit the IMA's model, may not materialize.

However, no matter how well the DVD-ROM application level is defined, it will not solve the problem. Operating systems and device drivers will change, as will the applications that will be enabled by DVD-ROM. A case in point is the Windows 95 device driver for SCSI devices, which affects CD-ROM, and specifically, the Enhanced CD formats.

In December 1995, Microsoft distributed a new SCSI driver for Windows 95. According to Microsoft representatives, this driver was intended to improve the playability of CD-Audio discs on a computer running Windows 95. However, what the device driver does is force a CD-ROM drive to ignore the first index point (index 0) on a disc and proceed to read the contents of a disc from index point 1. Unfortunately, this "fix" also renders Enhanced CDs that use a hidden-track format--those that place computer data in an extended pregap between index 0 and index 1--unplayable. Interestingly, hidden-track discs are the only type of Enhanced CDs in use that don't require royalties to be paid for use of the format. The other is the Blue Book-compliant CD Extra, which is the only type not affected by the "fix."

THE LESSONS OF DVD'S (EARLY) HISTORY: PICK YOUR BATTLES WISELY

What is seen as a very desirable convergence format with the potential to replace an earlier, well-established format may well be fated to continued uncertainty by failed attempts to "fix" the wrong problems. In each of DVD's wrong problem/wrong solution scenarios to date, it's becoming easy to see a pattern forming; what may be more difficult is to break the pattern.

So the moral of the story of DVD's early diagnostic woes is that not only does every solution create new problems--not fixing the wrong problem creates new problems entirely.

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Dana J. Parker is a Denver, Colorado-based independent consultant and writer and regular columnist for Standard Deviations. She is also a Contributing Editor for EMedia Professional. She is the co-author of CD-ROM Professional's CD-Recordable Handbook (Pemberton Press, 1996) and is at work on a DVD book for Prentice Hall.

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