AfterDawn has noticed a June 9th announcement on the site of the DVD Association regarding another layer of security for Blu-ray discs from German DRM firm X-PROTECT. Augmenting AACS renewable encryption and BD+ programmable security,
X-PROTECT blueTM is of no impact to the end- consumer and works on both HDMV and BD-J Blu-ray Discs. One of the key advantages is the high flexibility of the solution, as it can be easily and frequently updated to stop new piracy attacks in its tracks. It supports all Blu-ray profiles, as well all existing and future stand-alone Blu-ray players, PC players and Playstation 3, securing the quality of the material and compatibility.
Since it's unlikely that hardware manufacturers would agree to support a third party security layer if modifications to player firmware were required, it would seem that X-PROTECT blue is leveraging the player's Java interpreter to accomplish its goals. As of a few minutes ago, there is no mention of x-protect on either the Blu-ray or BD+ sites.
