Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
If the studios find out a player is compromised, and they tell Sony to pull the plug on that model, Sony has to comply. (I know Sony is one of the "Studios", but they aren't the only one.) Future player updates will be mandatory for new keys, and it is the consumer that will have to pay for them. There are echoes of DIVX here.

Which is what would kill it completely. Both formats are really struggling to take off right now (despite sales figures, I'm sure they're nowhere near what's needed for critical mass). If they kill a player, that'll be the end of it. No one in their right mind is going to replace their player everytime one gets compromised. The more time goes by before one gets compromised, the greater the chance of the studios having no choice but to leave the players alone or risk millions of people with useless machines.

Of course, the advantage to that happening would be that it would put DRM front and center to Joe Public. Right now, most people don't "get it". Disable their hi-def player and force them to buy a new one and they'll get it real quick. In fact, I'd venture to guess that if that did happen, the US government would introduce new laws to keep it from happening again so fast that Hollywood's head would spin.

So far, Sony has tried to introduce new copy protection mechanisms that have only really affected people that want to make copies of their movies. They have yet to seriously cripple any hardware. The moment they, or anyone else, do, it's over.

Divx failed before, it will fail again if they try to do something similar.