So where did the competition go ??

[NewMelle]

My domains are clieintTransferProhibited also but that was my doing. They are also private. Nothing about client update.

[Sebastian001]

Seriously, that's some Olympic level stretching, and it still falls short. You could basically claim that AS knew "it was only a matter of time before fab stopped working" at any point in the calendar year, given that DRM changes aren't once-a-year events and SF was almost always slower to fix them than AS, so that any changes to their price structure could be seen as being punitive if your objective is to get a good smear going. IIRC, we didn't learn that our two mods had been exhorting SF to get out ahead of the revocation until after they failed to drop a working version in February, so there's no way anyone from RF could have read about SF's foot-dragging before that.

My point is that you claimed AS changed their licensing structure because "they knew StreamFab was no longer working" when it's simply not true - it was actually functioning at the time. Think about it - they operated for 8 solid years with that lifetime license structure, through CDM revocations that could have taken out SF anytime after 2019, and didn't change it until early in January this year. It argues that it simply wasn't economically feasible any longer to keep their devs paid by selling one-and-done lifetime licenses.

OK, let's leave it at that. Everyone has their own guesses. I mean, you have yours...
Neither of us knows 100%!

[slottedpig]

So is fab already looking to the next cdm so they can crack it before it comes out so there is little to no downtime this time around?

[artsunlimited]

OK, let's leave it at that. Everyone has their own guesses. I mean, you have yours...
Neither of us knows 100%!

Not 100%, agreed. Mine is due to the fact that I was on their forum when the license change was announced, as I wanted to know if it affected my lifetime license. You can believe me or not, your choice, but no one there was gloating that it served SF users right not have bought sooner because they wouldn't be able to download after the DRM change as that hadn't happened yet. It was all about maintaining a revenue stream that could pay the devs to maintain the product's functional.

Since SF already has your money and mine, there actually isn't a helluva lot of motivation on their part to deliver the direct downloader we paid a lifetime license for - not until sales of their substituted overpriced screen recorder start to suffer, that is. Which could be why you're only able to download new content 6 months later after the January CDM revocation.

[Cats4U]

as I don't think AnyDVD software works without connecting to the companies servers, which renders it useless.

Just food for thought... Neither does DVDFab software work without connecting to the company's servers, which could also render it useless. Our ship could go down just as easily.

[Cats4U]

there's some news on the competition - https://torrentfreak.com/redfox-disa...eamfab-240610/

You're welcome. I got in touch with Ernesto at TorrentFreak back on the 5th and filled him all in on what was happening. TorrentFreak is very good at investigating this type of stuff because they have many connections in high places, but it looks like they hit the same roadblocks that the rest of us did.

[VeiledCipher]

Redfox was already working on the new DRM in the fall. Fab didn't do it. They knew that, so they also knew that it was only a matter of time before fab stopped working..

Do you really think Redfox isn't looking in here and reading along?

AnyStream wasn't working on a solution before the January 25th revocation occurred. Like the rest of us, they didn't know that it would happen on January 25th. Before this date, AnyStream was also using the ChromeCDM. When it got revoked, they searched for the next best option. They knew they couldn't crack the ChromeCDM as they hadn't been able to crack it before either.

(If I mentioned that before January 25th, AnyStream was also using a proxy of StreamFab's underlying ChromeCDM API, some of you might get mad at me. Well, I can't say with 100% certainty that this is what they used because, unlike StreamFab, the license requests happen on the server side with AnyStream. So, there's no way to know exactly what they were using, but I have good reasons to believe that AnyStream was also proxying Fab's ChromeCDM API on their server side to extract content keys.)

So, when the revocation happened, their next best option was to go for a PlayReady API, as quite a few PlayReady API sellers were emerging at that time. As some of you may remember, when the revocation happened, there was a gap before they fixed the Amazon module. It was during this gap that they switched to PlayReady. This is the reason they couldn't get Netflix to work either. As I mentioned here, for Netflix, you need a special code when using PlayReady, which they did not have.

[jpp72]

So is fab already looking to the next cdm so they can crack it before it comes out so there is little to no downtime this time around?

Pretty hard to crack something that doesn't exist yet

[Jaynator495]

Pretty hard to crack something that doesn't exist yet

I kid of course, but couldn't resist the opportunity.

[jpp72]

I kid of course, but couldn't resist the opportunity.

Lol i love that meme... Used it myself several times... My wife asked me to stop sending it to her when she shuts anything down

[slottedpig]

AnyStream wasn't working on a solution before the January 25th revocation occurred. Like the rest of us, they didn't know that it would happen on January 25th. Before this date, AnyStream was also using the ChromeCDM. When it got revoked, they searched for the next best option. They knew they couldn't crack the ChromeCDM as they hadn't been able to crack it before either.

(If I mentioned that before January 25th, AnyStream was also using a proxy of StreamFab's underlying ChromeCDM API, some of you might get mad at me. Well, I can't say with 100% certainty that this is what they used because, unlike StreamFab, the license requests happen on the server side with AnyStream. So, there's no way to know exactly what they were using, but I have good reasons to believe that AnyStream was also proxying Fab's ChromeCDM API on their server side to extract content keys.)

So, when the revocation happened, their next best option was to go for a PlayReady API, as quite a few PlayReady API sellers were emerging at that time. As some of you may remember, when the revocation happened, there was a gap before they fixed the Amazon module. It was during this gap that they switched to PlayReady. This is the reason they couldn't get Netflix to work either. As I mentioned here, for Netflix, you need a special code when using PlayReady, which they did not have.

in your opinion, do you think going forward they will be able to maintain the software or do you think after the next revocation they will be finished, again in your opinion I know nothing is certain in this cat and mouse game.

[artsunlimited]

Just food for thought... Neither does DVDFab software work without connecting to the company's servers, which could also render it useless. Our ship could go down just as easily.

And has. They memorably crashed at 8pm Beijing time at the end of 2022, I think, and weren't up again until late the next afternoon because no one knew about it for at least 12 hours. The difference was that this forum was still up so we could all commiserate with each other and wonder why the hell everyone at SF quit monitoring everything at 5pm. Good times, man.

[VeiledCipher]

in your opinion, do you think going forward they will be able to maintain the software or do you think after the next revocation they will be finished, again in your opinion I know nothing is certain in this cat and mouse game.

As a word of the wise, this is an endless cat-and-mouse game. No matter how much "protection" these cats add, someone somewhere will find a way to break it sooner or later. They can't make it impossible; all they can do is make it harder so that it takes more time.

If we talk about StreamFab, the way they do things are through cracking the ChromeCDM. Now if we talk about the ChromeCDM, extracting the private key of the ChromeCDM is nearly impossible. If you want to understand how difficult this is, I recommend reading this and this. These links describe the processes of two different people attempting to extract the ChromeCDM's private key in the past. You'll see how incredibly challenging it is. The person in the first link I mentioned is the only one I know who managed to extract the complete 2048-bit private key of a ChromeCDM. The guy in the second link only managed to extract half of it despite all his efforts. These were processes done for the past versions of the ChromeCDM. Extracting the private key of the newer versions are going to be 10x harder. Each new version changes obfuscation methods and related functions, so you won't be able to repeat the same process again.

However, StreamFab uses a slightly different method. They (most likely the individual reverse engineer they are paying to do this), do not attempt to extract the private key completely or even partially. Instead, they use a method similar to this one. In the readme, it is mentioned as a "universal method," meaning it can be applied to any future versions of the ChromeCDM. Note that StreamFab does not use that exact method. The principle is the same, but StreamFab's actual approach is very different and quite smart. They were able to do this for the ChromeCDM versions 2209,2392,2449,2557 and now 2710. So yeah. They will surely be able to do it for the future versions too. (Assuming they don't lose their reverse engineer.)

The challenge is time. With each new version, it becomes increasingly harder to apply this process. For this process to work, the widevinecdm.dll has to be reversed and some specific values from some functions inside it needs to be extracted. However, because of the obfuscation methods and the needed functions themselves in the newer versions becoming more and more complex, it is going to take more and more time to reverse it each time. (Unless someone finds an easier way which is extremely unlikely btw.)

Many people might be mad with the amount of time StreamFab takes each time. However, they need to understand that being able to do this is a sort of miracle, and people should appreciate StreamFab a little more. (At least the person behind reversing these.) He has my absolute respect!

[hizbf]

in your opinion, do you think going forward they will be able to maintain the software or do you think after the next revocation they will be finished, again in your opinion I know nothing is certain in this cat and mouse game.

The current known situation is that anystream plus has been shut down, and now streamfab is the only option

[artsunlimited]

The current known situation is that anystream plus has been shut down, and now streamfab is the only option

I'm particularly bummed because I had some good friends (and fellow dog lovers) on that forum, and now I have no way to contact them unless they own a DVDFab product to access this forum, or they find my profile on VideoForum. I'm currently enjoying a 3-month free membership to Apple+ from Best Buy thanks to one of them posting about it. Bleagh, I feel like an idiot because it never occurred to me that it could just vanish - even when SlySoft was shuttered, the forum was still up.