Blu-ray players to "punish" users who hack their gear?
Of course the looming next-gen optical format war about to go down between Blu-ray and HD-DVD might be kind of interesting if it weren't taking place, well, in your very livingroom. But with talks broken down and devices starting to crop up, it looks like the first blows will soon be felt—but aren't they supposed to be hitting one another and not the end user? Because this little bit in a Reuters piece this morning left us a little unsettled:
On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely.
Are they talking about PVP-OPM techniques and rejected HDMI keys, or something else far more sinister? Because apparently "A hacked player is any player that is doing something it's not supposed to do," which open to a pretty fair amount of interpretation—most of which egregious.
