With all advanced copy protection going into Blu-ray and HD-DVD, this supposed copy protection hole is pretty funny. Could you imagine using the print screen key to dupe a movie?

Digital output only reaches the monitor via connections encrypted by means of High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP). This copy protection chain is designed to ensure that no unencrypted data can be grabbed.

But this security chain has a giant hole. Computer magazine c't has discovered that the first software players running on Windows XP allow screenshots of the movies to be created in full resolution. To do so, you only need to press the Print key on your keyboard while the movie is running. Such a screenshot function could then be automated to produce copies of HD movies both from Blu-ray Discs and from HD DVDs picture by picture. As c't calculated, the performance of current PC systems is sufficient for a clean recording using this procedure. Once a pirate has all of the individual pictures, they can be put together to create a complete movie and mixed with the audio track that is grabbed separately.

This copy protection hole affects both Sony's first Blu-ray PC Vaio VGC-RC 204 and Toshiba's first HD DVD notebook Qosmio G30. Both of them use special OEM versions of Intervideo's WinDVD player software. When asked to comment, Toshiba confirmed the security hole found by c't, which affects the computers already sold, and announced updates for the player software and graphics card driver. These new software versions should disable the screenshot function.