www.cdfreaks.com/news/12061

When DVD-Video's encryption had been broken about 6 years back, the next generation of the Audio CD, DVD-Audio had been delayed for several months. It was originally to use the CSS2 encryption scheme, but the breaking of CSS meant the music industry no longer wanted anything to do with CSS in the new upcoming DVD-Audio format at the time. As a result, DVD-Audio took on Content Protection for Pre-recorded Media (CPPM), a much more advanced copy-protection system, which includes Key Blocks and watermarking and allows revocation (for compromised devices).

It was not long ago that DVD-Audio playback software came to the PC. For example Creative's SoundBlaster Audigy 2 comes with a DVD-Audio as well as WinDVD 's DVD-Audio add-on. So, rather than try to compromise the DVD-Audio's encryption itself, someone has succeeded in making a patch that uses WinDVD to perform the decryption and playback, but instead pipes the decrypted audio output to the hard drive instead of the sound card. The patch which includes several tools requires WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 to work.

Several tools to work with DVD-Audio (read: ripping)
They require WinDVD 5, 6 or 7 installed, as they don't do the decryption themselves, and instead patch WinDVD to output the decrypted stream to disk instead of the sound card.
The tools are:

* DVD-A ripper: Intended to decrypt CPPM protected AOB and VOB files on DVD-Audio discs.
* PPCM ripper: Intended to capture Packed PCM (MLP) stream (stereo or multichannel) to .WAV files.
* DVD-A Explorer: Intended to peep&grab on DVD-Audio tracks (PCM and Packed PCM).

This tool is available at Rarewares here.

While InterVideo is likely to update its software to block the use of this patch, it appears that DVD-Audio’s CPPM has been compromised at least in DVD-Audio discs up until this time or until the keys used in the current versions of WinDVD that this tool works on are revoked in upcoming DVD-Audio disc releases. However, this would also mean that WinDVD users would be forced to update their software to play future DVD-Audio discs.

Discuss this in our Audio Forum .