Content protection technology in new DVD-R media from Toshiba, Maxell and Taiyo Yuden

September 29, 2004

The Japanese website AVWatch reports that Tayo Yuden and Hitachi Maxell will release DVD-R
media with CPRM support, a quick search reveals that also Toshiba will start the sales of this media. The discs enter the
market as in Japan there are more and more broadcasts scrambled with CPRM. These
broadcasts can now be stored on DVD-R or DVD-RW discs that are formatted for
Video Recording (DVD-R VR). CPRM limits the amount of copies that can be made
from the original recording. More technical information on CPRM can be found here.

Digital broadcasting in Japan, including the
terrestrial broadcasts that began in December 2003, BS, CS110Â° and 'SKY
Perfect TV!" digital broadcasts, increasingly use CPRM to protect content.
CPRM scrambles broadcast programs and allows copy-once recording only to
DVD-R or RW discs formatted for Video Recording (VR). Saving content to
DVD VR requires both a VR compatible disc and digital video recorder
(DVR).

[..]

In addition to recording copy-once content, the DVD-VR format allows
recording of bilingual sound tracks for recorded programs, when available,
for both analog and digital broadcasts, a capability not supported by
conventional recording to DVD-R. Before a recording is finalized, users
are also free to write data to the disc management area. This allows
checking of edited content by frame and rewriting of program titles,
chapters and thumbnails.

A quick search learns that also JVC, Sony and TDK sell DVD-R media that is advertised with CPRM support. At
the moment there are not many DVD recorders that support CPRM but it is expected
that this number will raise the coming years. When and if this technology
comes to the rest of Asia, Europe and the United States is
unknown.

Source: AVWatch