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Avatar smashes Blu-ray sales records, has some owners ready to smash incompatible players
Well, well. Our friend Jimmy C.'s (who cancelled on our planned interview last week, but it's cool) little indie project has taken the all-time Blu-ray sales crown for North America in just four days. That's how long it took for Avatar to move 2.7 million Blu-ray discs, ahead of The Dark Knight's 2.5 million number, showering viewers with that incredibly high bitrate audio and video (other than some pleading for more low end thump, we haven't heard any complaints.) The downside for a few, including one Crunchgear editor, is that the movie shipped with a new version of BD+ encryption and has had trouble playing on certain Blu-ray players, including the BD-UP5000, BD-C5500, as well as several Pioneer units (fixed after a firmware update.) Some owners have found a way around the issues for the BD-C5500, but there's no word when an update to take care of things completely may be incoming. If you're wondering how much time the extra DRM bought Fox & co. before the BDRips started floating around, DVDFab claimed to break it the same day the movie launched, while Slysoft's AnyDVD HD has offered compatibility with some, if not all, region releases the day after. So much for that ten year prediction.
DVDFab: Now with HD DVD backup support, enjoy!
Another day, another all-in-one solution for copying AACS-protected HD DVDs hits the streets. Fengtao Software has thrown support for the next generation format into the latest beta version (3.0.9.0) of its DVDFab copying software. Following in the steps of Slysoft's AnyDVD HD, the maker of DVDFab HD Decrypter says Blu-ray backup support is "coming soon", and that it's capable of copying an HD DVD to the hard drive -- sans any copy protection restrictions -- in less than one hour. Of course the changelog doesn't provide details on how DVDFab does it's unDRMing thing, but with so many methods available, does it really matter which one? Still no word on how AACS LA plans to respond to the growing availability of easy hacks and DRM-free HD editions of Hollywood's latest, but at this rate we'll have a war between various makers of one-click backup software to rival Blu-ray vs. HD DVD.[Via AfterDawn]
