Living With Apple's MacBook: An Optical Imbroglio

Continued from ‘Living With Apple’s MacBook: File System Access Alternatives, Startup Sound Muzzles and Expansion Options‘…

A bit over two weeks ago, I documented my travails trying to get standard-definition MPEG-2 playback working on the MacBook. At this point, I’m able to play back DVDs in CyberLink PowerDVD, Nero ShowTime and Windows Media Player (the latter via CyberLink’s DirectShow filters), and I’m also able to watch encrypted TiVo content through WMP in conjunction with TiVo Desktop. Successful playback of HD DVD material still eludes me…but not for lack of trying on my part.

Back on September 7, I told you that CyberLink informed me that the latest version of PowerDVD Ultra supported Intel graphics subsystems after all. However, when I upgraded the program and again tried to play the King Kong HD DVD in conjunction with the Xbox 360 drive, I got the same ‘incompatible graphics driver’ error message pop-up as before. Finally, CyberLink figured out what’s going on (I’ve grammar-corrected the original message I received):

Intel’s drivers cannot support print screen protection for Windows XP, which is essential for Blu-ray and HD DVD playback. So it is expected that the playback would fail. You will need to update to Vista and use a new driver like v15.4.50.1.1318 or newer to playback BD and HD DVD…It’s not an application issue. Intel doesn’t support print screen protection on Windows XP (at least not yet).

By ‘print screen protection’, I’m pretty sure CyberLink is referring to this supposed DRM ‘hole’. Putting aside the practical infeasibility of doing a frame-by-frame PrintScreen capture of an hour-plus long Hollywood movie (which admittedly could be automated via scripting, but seems especially silly when much easier and faster homebrew and commercially available AACS hacks exist), it looks like I’m out of luck until I eventually upgrade to Windows Vista or Intel adds the necessary hooks in its software. I briefly discussed the issue with Intel today and will follow up as I learn more about the company’s plans in this regard. For reference, the image above shows the Intel graphics driver version that comes with Boot Camp v1.4.

A week back, I had an a-ha moment when I remembered that ShowTime (part of Nero 7 Ultra Edition) also supports Blu-ray and HD DVD playback. My first attempt was unsuccessful, as you see above.

After obtaining a registration key for the necessary plug-in, I tried again. As you see, I didn’t get much further. First thinking that PowerDVD Ultra (which I installed after Nero 7 Ultra Edition) might have enabled its DirectShow filters as the defaults, I re-installed Nero 7 on top of itself (note, I didn’t try completely uninstalling the program, then reinstalling from scratch). No dice. Next, following suggestions such as this one, I tried manually enabling several Nero audio and video filters via the command line. Again, no luck; the cryptic ‘cannot build graph’ error (which I assume refers to DirectShow’s filter graph, viewable by GraphEdit although I haven’t yet pursued this particular debug route) persisted.

Nero hasn’t (yet) gotten back to me with a definitive ruling on the root cause of (and a fix for) my HD DVD problem. My sneaking suspicion is that I’m again dealing with a graphics driver limitation, although Nero’s error message sure doesn’t make it obvious. I did hear back from the company regarding my earlier-reported inability to find the highly regarded Fast Burning Plug-In. The response, alas, was what I feared; the previously free download from both Microsoft and Nero’s websites, which ‘broke’ as part of the Windows Media Player 9-to-10 transition and was subseqeuently fixed and exclusively bundled with Nero 7, has again broken as a result of the WMP 10-to-11 evolution. In the company’s own words:

Nero’s Fast CD/DVD Burning Plug-In does not support WMP11. We are evaluating our WMP plug-in strategy but for the time being, no such plug-in is planned.

And regarding my earlier-reported inability to use Nero’s filters for generalized MPEG-2 content playback within Windows Media Player, the company had this to say:

We have been obliged by 3rd party patent holders not to share certain DirectShow filters with any non-Nero applications. MPEG-2 will be available with future versions of Nero 8.

So now you know.