The subject of Cinavia removal has once more come to the fore here at MyCE, and somehow I have been roped into…er…volunteered to examine the three main choices on the market today.
For those who may not be familiar with Cinavia, it is a digital rights management tool in the form of an audio watermark, placed in commercial movies. First seen in Blu-ray, Cinavia is now found on an increasing number of DVD’s as well. Cinavia does not prevent making copies of the movie, but when played on a device that recognizes the signal embedded in the movie’s audio stream, it will cause the audio to be muted after approximately twenty minutes of play. Cinavia has been made an official part of the Blu-ray DRM specifications, and detection of the signal is required on all Blu-ray players that have been released to market since February of 2012.
Not all Blu-ray movies have Cinavia, in fact, only a small percentage of them have it. This is because Cinavia is not required for use by the studios, no, its simply an option they can use in controlling their content. Cinavia can be a nuisance however, for those who wish to play their movies from backup discs in Blu-ray players or in authorized software players.
The three programs I will be examining are DVDFab, CloneBD (in combination with AnyDVD HD) and CinEx HD. Long time members here will be very familiar with these three programs, though perhaps not that many use all of them for Cinavia removal. All of these are commercial programs, with some limited free usage in trial modes.