And noticed something in the article about Alder Lake CPUs (Intel 12K models):
The CPU family no longer features Intel SGX which is a requirement for playing UltraHD Blu-Ray discs.
So if you've never fucked with optical media on a PC, it can be a surprisingly annoying chore. Even a lot of DVDs have fucked copy protection that requires software workarounds (VLC maintains those libraries, thanks yall) and I can only imagine blu-rays are even more fucked.
So without having read more into this at all, obviously there has to be ways to play back newer blu-ray disks with software workarounds, though I'm curious if it's similar to DVD copy protection or if there's more hoops to jump through. The fact that, officially, playback is limited to CPUs that have a hilariously flawed security feature is pretty absurd. Given when this became a thing there's a good chance AMD CPUs were never officially supported too.
Again I'm writing this without looking any of it up past what I initially read here, because I enjoy the conversation. So I may be very wrong about a lot of this.
Physical media is cool and all that but IMO the end game is having a DRM free digital copy every time. Ideally one that's been put in a torrent somewhere so it's being maintained on a few dozen people's computers.
