[vlc] Protected/Encrypted/Encoded .avi DivX5 files in VLC?

[François Lopes]

Hello there,

It looks like DivX.com (aka DivX Networks) have devellopped a merely "new"
way to encrypt DivX5.x encoded files as requested by adult websites to do
VOD (Video On Demand).

The scheme is the following;

You get on a pay per view site, you will pay for example $9.99, once paid it
will prompt you to a small 500bytes average .tix file.

The .tix file can *only* be opened by DivX Network's player: DivX Player,
once the file has been opened, the DivX player will connect to the adult
website and verify you have paid to properly view and download the .divx
file, once the authorization has been granted the DivX player will download
the .divx file to your hard-drive.

Once the .divx file has been downloaded to your hard drive, it can be opened
by DivX Player and played normally just like any other DivX.

The trick is, in this protection scheme, if you attempt to open the
downloaded .divx file with any other players than DivX Network's, like VLC
or Windows Media Player, you might get partial sound but you will get fully
garbled video.

Basically, they have somewhat encoded the downloaded DivX files so they
cannot be played back by any other players, they're virtually forcing users
to use THEIR player...

Also, their player is only available for Win32 platforms which leaves other
OS like Linux, *BSD, BeOS, etc, etc, etc, out of the loop...

But on top of that, since it needs to check if you still have a valid
authorization in order to playback the file, you also need an internet
connection.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not specifically after adult/pr0n contents but
still I believe that encoded files are somehow an interesting challenge,
while forcing the users to use THEIR player *and* a SPECIFIC OS, this is
pretty much a crappy job from them, also the used process could be used as a
working Video On Demand for any kind of media in the future and not be
specifically limited to adult entertainment.

VLC has been known and is well reputed for being a multi playback format and
a cross platform opensource player, I, as a user believe it would be a great
addition if VLC was able to play these encrypted files as well...

I'm not much of a coding guru, but here is what reports the "file" utill
under Linux:

myfile.divx: RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 512 x 384, 29.97 fps, video:
DivX 5, audio: MPEG-1 Layer 3 (stereo, 44100 Hz)

Pretty much a "normally" encoded .avi DivX5 file to me.

I've added a sample encrypted/encoded DivX5 file on a fast HTTP link so you
can download it for free and attempt to give it a look at the following URL:

http://217.174.196.215/zelia/avi/myfile.divx

PS: Due to the nature of the file contents I'd say it is NOT "work safe"...
I have yet to find another website or company which offers NON adult based
contents encrypted DivX5 files, so this free sample is the less audience
offensing one I've found and mirrored for "cracking & reverse engineering"
purposes, however it is still not work safe... make sure you cut off the
sound and nobody is next to you before opening the link in your favorite
player...

-- 
FL.

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