LAS VEGAS Guess what? Your DVD player might now be obsolete.



HewlettPackard and Philips said Wednesday that they have developed a contentprotection system for DVDs, designed to protect users from burning DTV broadcasts. The encryption system will be built into nextgeneration DVD players as well as media.



Without a player and disc using the new Video Content Protection Scheme (VCPS), DVD burners won be able to record digital video under the new regulations. That will mean that the enormous installed base of DVD players and burners may be forced into obsolescence, executives said.



The new Video Content ugg bailey button boots Protection Scheme scheme is designed to work handinglove with the new FCC flag initiative, scheduled to begin on July 1, 2005. The FCC wants to try and protect content from being passed indiscriminately among private individuals via the Internet and other means. VCTS has been approved by the FCC, the CableLabs consortium of cable providers, and is under consideration by the Japanese ARIB standards body.



Even the VCPS solution is not foolproof, however.



For example, the VCPS the DRM solution will only work with the single and duallayer versions of DVD+R and DVD+RW media, not the bailey button uggs counterparts. On the other hand, if either digital video or a digital connection is used, the VCPS scheme will be used. That will also include PCs, where content could be piped over the Internet.



primary goal if you read FCC regulations is to create a situation where it is not possible to randomly, indiscriminately distribute content over something, said Kevin Saldanha, HP DVD+RW program manager, speaking at a press conference here.



For example, the system is designed to prevent users watching a locally out football game in New York from viewing a video stream sent to them from friends in California, who are not subject to the blackout restrictions.



The VCPS scheme will also be built into nextgeneration media, which will slowly replace the nonDRM encoded DVD+R discs over time. The new discs will be somewhat more expensive than their DRMfree counterparts, explained Jun Ishihara, a product manager for Mitsubishi Chemical Media Co., also known as Verbatim. Likewise, the new players will probably be priced somewhat higher than conventional players, HP executives said, although pricing will be up to individual manufacturers.



Although it is still too early to tell what consumer reaction will be, customers have generally rejected schemes like Divx, the Digital Video Express initiative backed by retailer Circuit City. DivX allowed users to watch the disc for 48 hours before it was rendered unusable. The Divx program was killed off in 1999.



large part, the issue with the new players will solve itself, said Chris Buma, an A/V program manager with Philips Consumer Electronics, at a press conference held by the DVD+RW Alliance here. is a restriction, but a restriction that can be overcome.



Furthermore, the DVD market is still plagued by incompatible standards. Although most drive manufacturers support both the DVDR and DVD+R standards, the two formats are nevertheless incompatible. players also neglect to include DVDRAM, a third standard in wide use in Japan for recording digital video broadcasts. According to attendees of a press conference held by LG Electronics here, a significant portion of DVD players are returned to retailers because of format confusion.



While DVD players will not be able to be upgraded, PCs might be, Saldanha said. Even DVD burners aren free from content protection, however. Most DVDROM drives include some sort of region encoding that allows a user a certain number of opportunities to change the region to watch foreign discs.