I watched in horror as a favourite DVD froze the other evening in mid-scene. Having tried all the usual restarts and disc cleaners, it occurred to me that it would be great if one could just download a patch of data to allow the player to bypass the damaged area.
Only very small sections would ever be downloadable so this would not be a way to get hold of a whole movie, but it would allow realtime repairs to a damaged disk.
Today’s invention takes this a stage further. By arranging that each new disc surface be deliberately scratched in the factory (in an invisible, but unique pattern).
A viewer could then only see the digital content if their machine requested and downloaded several patches which were unique to the particular disc in question.
Only one set of such patches could be downloaded per disc, making copying a disc, without access to the patch server, impossible (and futile).
