Qflix is a proprietary technology developed and licensed by

Sonic Solutions Sonic Solutions was an American computer software company headquartered in Novato, California. In addition to having a number of offices in the U.S., the company also maintained offices in Europe and Asia. It was acquired by Rovi Corporation in 201 ...

and

Pioneer Corporation commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair s ...

to add

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on ...

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement militai ...

to recordable DVD-R media. Qflix is an implementation of the

DVD Forum The DVD Forum is an international organization composed of hardware, software, media and production companies that use and develop the DVD and formerly HD DVD formats. It was initially known as the DVD Consortium when it was founded in 1995. H ...

's DVD-Download specification, including extensions to the optical drive command set defined by the Mt. Fuji group of the IT industry. Sonic hopes to establish Qflix as a standard for recordable

and charge

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset o ...

for its use. Recordable CSS (also known as CSS Managed Recording) was first announced by Sonic Solutions at the end of 2005 and was enabled by the

DVD CCA The DVD Copy Control Association (DVD CCA) is an organization primarily responsible for the copy protection of DVDs. The Content Scramble System (CSS) was devised for this purpose to make copyright infringement difficult, but also presents obstacles ...

in an amendment late in 2007. By using recordable CSS, movies can be burned to

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

in encrypted form just as on regular mass-manufactured DVDs. With the Qflix system, writing CSS to recordable DVD requires special DVD writers and special-made recordable DVD-R media. The first Qflix drive and special Qflix media became available end of 2008. Prices of drives and media are higher than standard DVD drives and media. Dual-layer Qflix discs (DVD-9s) became available in the second half of 2009. Recordable CSS DVD media are not writable in standard DVD burners and will not be recognized as blank media. Using Qflix technology with DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW is technically possible but has not been pursued by the companies involved. The Qflix media is able to be written with a DXE Protected Disc Recorder (PDR). It has been proven possible to use standard DVD recordable media to record CSS with more advanced disc writer technology, such as the DXE PDR. This removes the redundant requirement for the use of expensive custom media and all of the related infrastructure and royalty costs.

Usage

Qflix drives, media, or software are available from or used by Allied Vaughn, Amazon CreateSpace, Blockbuster, CMC, CinemaNow, Dell, Pioneer, PLDS, Plextor, Primera, Rimage, Ritek, and Verbatim/MKM.

Alternatives

An alternative including

and anti-ripping for recordable

s is ProtectBURN Video or SecureBurn from Protect Software. Non-CSS alternatives for recordable DVDs, primarily incorporating anti-ripping, are available from Fortium,

Macrovision TiVo Corporation, formerly known as the Rovi Corporation and Macrovision Solutions Corporation, was an American technology company. Headquartered in San Jose, California, the company is primarily involved in licensing its intellectual property ...

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

, XProtect and others. The only true working alternative to the Qflix system that correctly writes the mandated CSS protection as per the DVD-CCA amendment is offered by Australian company DXE Limited. DXE Limited : Home
/ref> It relies on a special DVD recorder named the PDR (Protected Disc Recorder) that is capable of writing not only CSS content to standard DVD recordable media, but it is also able to perfectly replicate almost all optical disc anti-piracy protection systems. As it doesn't require any kind of special media, there are no additional costs or requirements for new media types. Furthermore, the higher burning speed and reliability (including playback compatibility) of the discs produced by the DXE system have been proven to be superior of that as provided by the Qflix system.

Notes and references

{{reflist
engadgetpaidContent.orgReutersCrunchGear

External links

DXE Limited SiteFortium Technologies SiteQflix Product SiteFluxDVDNeroProtect Software GmbHDVD Copy Control AssociationDVD-CCA Managed Recording AmendmentMt. Fuji standard
Digital rights management systems

Usage

Alternatives

See also

Notes and references

External links