It’s really quite amazing how quickly Advanced Access Content System (AACS - HD content protection for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs) got defeated, especially considering how much money the industry and Hollywood movie studios putting into protecting their HD movie content.
It might not be a hack like regular DVD decryption DeCSS, but it seems very unlikely that this workaround will ever stop working as it means that all current HD DVD and Blu-ray players would either need a firmware upgrade or become obsolete when it comes to playing newer movies.
But how do you take advantage of this? Well, first of all you need the required hardware, which is a Blu-ray or HD DVD drive. With HD DVD this is quite an affordable option thanks to Microsoft and the external Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. This connects to your PC via USB, just as it would to the Xbox 360 and it’s the drive that was used for this tutorial, but any compatible drive should work just fine.
The next step is to get hold of some software that makes it easy to strip the AACS copy protection from the video files and then copy them to your hard drive. For this we used AnyDVD HD 6.1.3.3 of which you can download a demo of from the SlySoft website. Once you’ve installed AnyDVD HD you have to reboot your PC, as otherwise AnyDVD HD won’t recognise your drives. Once you’ve rebooted you’re ready to start the time consuming part of stripping the AACS copy protection from your movies.
There are several advantages to doing this, but the most obvious one is that you can playback your HD movies on systems that lack HDCP support. We’re could go into a very lengthy debate about DRM and copy protection but basically it was a scheme employed to try and stop people copying and re-distributing their HD materials. This meant that AACS was introduced which bought with it HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) that requires certain parts of your system (and software) to be HDCP compatible such as monitor, graphics card and VGA driver. With Blu-ray media, AnyDVD HD will also remove the region coding, perfect for those importing discs from abroad to try and save a few bucks. Other benefits include the ability to remove those annoying FBI warnings and trailers that you cannot usually skip past.
Move onto the next page for the quick and easy step by step guide!
