Month: November 2015

Mit der Phantom 3 Professional hat DJI sein erstes Quadcopter-Modell mit 4K-Videokamera vorgestellt. Golem.de hat getestet, wie es sich damit fliegt, was die Aufnahmen taugen und ob die Drohne leicht zu bedienen ist. Sie hat die Tortur überstanden - wenn auch knapp. (DJI, Technologie)

Unser Retroformat geht in eine neue Runde. Die zweite Staffel startet mit einem Blick auf Super Metroid und die Faszination hinter dem Begriff Metroidvania. Viel Spaß! (Golem retro_, Nintendo)

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has launched a new promotional website extolling the benefits of the new Ultra HD (UHD) Blu-ray disc format over existing Blu-ray and SD movies.

Ultra HD Blu-ray movies will start appearing on store shelves in early 2016, and apart from having four times as many pixels as standard Blu-ray movies, the BDA was also keen to point out the other improvements over HD and SD.

For example, UHD Blu-ray movies are capable of storing and displaying more than twice as many colors compared to Blu-ray, up to 76% of the colors the human eye can see.

The website also features interactive comparisons showing off UHD Blu-ray's High Dynamic Range support and support for 60 fps content.

A spokesperson for the BDA told website TWICE that the group is committed to educating consumers about the key benefits of UHD Blu-ray.

"The BDA is working on both retail and consumer education programs that will speak to not only Ultra HD Blu-ray but more generally to some of the more critical aspects of UHD such as HDR and wide color gamut, among others," the spokesperson said.

While the average consumer is generally not equipped to play 4K content on their TV or computer, many video geeks are looking forward to every new release.

Thus far the physical offerings have been limited to adult content mostly, with just a handful of mainstream productions. However, with the adoption of a Blu-Ray standard for Ultra High Definition video more releases will follow soon.

4K streaming releases have been available for a while already though, with Netflix and Amazon as the two key vendors in this market.

These online streams were always well protected against pirates. The High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) version 2.2 or higher is still believed to be secure today, but there are signs that pirates have found a way to bypass the protection.

Earlier this year the first 4K Netflix leak surfaced. After that it went quiet. However, a few days ago something changed, as many more releases started to appear online.

TorrentFreak spoke to a release group insider who confirmed that this is a significant change.

“Many groups started releasing 4K rips recently and they are working perfectly. I expect that 4K resolution releases will become more popular now,” TorrentFreak was told.

The new 4K leaks come from both Netflix and Amazon, suggesting that there’s a general loophole that allows pirates to circumvent the copy protection on both services.

Up until recently this was impossible to do. There were a handful of upscaled releases floating around with a lot of pixelation and low bitrates, but these don’t come close to real 4K.

The new releases are true 4K and include Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle as well as the recent pilots Edge, Good Girls Revolt, Highston, One Mississippi
and Patriot.

Amazon’s 4k leaks

Another series of high-profile 4K leaks that came out this week are of Netflix’s Jessica Jones. As with the other rips the file-sizes are much larger than traditional HD-releases, well over 10 gigabytes for a single episode.

Netflix’ Jessica Jones 4k leaks

The media info for one of the Jessica Jones leaks show that it’s 4K, at a 32.5 Mbps bitrate. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the video quality is always exceptional.

“For example for Marvel’s Jessica Jones new TV series from Netflix the 4K captures look bad, because the master from Netflix is probably bad,” we were told by an insider.

Jessica Jones 4k (large)

Downloading a 4K release from Amazon or Netflix and getting a pirated copy out is not something that’s easily done. The original rips are often well over 100 gigabytes in size. Still, many groups are jumping on the 4K bandwagon.

The main question that remains is how the groups are able to circumvent the copy protection. Our source says that Amazon’s Fire TV and Roku 4K are likely sources, as they may not be as well protected as some believe.

Amazon’s Fire TV uses the weaker HDCP 1.4b protection and 23.976 frames/s, which only supports Amazon 4K releases and not Netflix.

Roku recently released their new streaming player with 4K support and native refresh rate switching, which can play Netflix’s 4K library. It arrived in stores early November, just before the 23.976 frames/s 4k rips started coming out.

Whatever the source is, the stream of new releases is unprecedented and marks the start of a new era of high quality video releases.

In recent years many people have been downloading higher quality rips already, but it will probably take a few years before 4K becomes the new standard. Overall, however, pirating video geeks will be happy with the news.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Es gibt einen Hinweis darauf, dass Sony den siebten von acht Prozessorkernen der Playstation 4 für die Nutzung durch Spiele freigegeben hat. Das dürfte die Leistungsfähigkeit der Konsole spürbar erhöhen. (Playstation 4, Microsoft)

Adobe beschränkt den Zugang auf die Installationsdateien für seinen Flash Player ab Ende Januar 2016 auf Lizenznehmer. Privatanwender müssen beim Einrichten der Runtime dann grundsätzlich über eine Internetverbindung verfügen. (Flash, Adobe)

Der App-Store des asiatischen Spielzeugherstellers Vtech ist gehackt worden, Informationen von rund 200.000 Kindern sind in die Hände eines Unbekannten gelangt. Auch Kunden aus Deutschland sind betroffen. (Security, Technologie)

Islamische Extremisten sollten im Internet stärker kontrolliert werden: Das will EU-Digitalkommissar Günter Oettinger. Gleichzeitig fordert er eine andere gesellschaftliche Einstellung gegenüber den Geheimdiensten. (Günther Oettinger, Internet)

For several years Hollywood studios and international recording labels have engaged in legal action to have ‘pirate’ sites blocked in the UK.

The injunction applications were all filed at the High Court with the earliest example dating back to the 2012 blocking of The Pirate Bay at the hands of the BPI (British Recorded Music Industry).

Since then more than 20 injunctions have been handed down targeting a range of content but it took until May 2015 for the book publishing sector to land its first victory.

In an injunction application targeting major ISPs including BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk, the Publishers Association successfully argued that their rights were being infringed by a number of e-book download sites.

Shortly after, Avaxhome, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwap, Libgen, Bookfi and Bookre were all blocked at the ISP level, with Internet users in the UK confronted with a message similar to the one below.

Of course, blocking a handful of sites was never likely to achieve long-term results, especially with fresh domains, proxies, mirrors, and other workarounds being deployed on a regular basis. No surprise then that the Publishers Association has recently applied to have yet more URLs blocked by ISPs. (full list below)

All appear to relate in some way to sites that were blocked in the earlier court order, including Avaxhome, eBookee, FreeBookSpot and Library Genesis. This means that the Publishers Association won’t have needed to start a fresh process and will have simply added these URLs to the existing injunction.

This latest expansion is only the latest in a long line of applications made by a wide range of entertainment industry groups.

Earlier this month the UK’s blocklist silently expanded with the addition of around 170 sites, an effort that was preceded in October with the blocking of dozens of new domains, including those relating to Popcorn Time.

Updated Publishers Association blocklist

avxhome.se.prx2.unblocksit.es
avxhome.unblocked.la

ebookee.co
ebookee.unblocked.la
ebookooabc.org
ebookooawe.org
www.pdfbooksplanet.ru

freebookspot.unblocked.la
freebookspot.unblockme.co
freebookspot.unblockme.net

libgen.unblocked.la
libgen.unblockme.co
libgen.unblockme.net
libgen.unblock.al

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Wir haben diese Woche versucht, unser Heim smart zu machen - und aus gegebenem Anlass unseren Trekkie als Yedi verkleidet. Sieben Tage und viele Meldungen im Überblick. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Internet)