WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.110 --> 00:00:04.360 When Sony released the PlayStation, the first commercially successful game console to use 00:00:04.360 --> 00:00:08.940 the compact disc as its storage medium, they had a problem on their hands. 00:00:08.940 --> 00:00:14.900 Using a CD gave them all sorts of advantages, but the CD burner and CD-R presented a challenge. 00:00:14.900 --> 00:00:19.570 What’s to stop someone from making illegal copies of our precious intellectual property? 00:00:19.570 --> 00:00:21.070 Well, they thought of a solution. 00:00:21.070 --> 00:00:25.531 If I take this copy of Parappa the Rapper and pop it in my computer’s CD drive, it 00:00:25.531 --> 00:00:26.710 can see what’s on there. 00:00:26.710 --> 00:00:28.820 And it will gladly make a copy. 00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:31.460 My duplicate disc has exactly the same files on here. 00:00:31.460 --> 00:00:32.460 Awesome! 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:33.460 It should work! 00:00:33.460 --> 00:00:34.460 And yet, it doesn't. 00:00:34.460 --> 00:00:38.250 The PlayStation knows that this is a counterfeit disc, and it won’t play it. 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:39.250 Why? 00:00:39.250 --> 00:00:42.930 Well, the data on these two discs may be exactly the same, but this disc is missing something 00:00:42.930 --> 00:00:45.489 which cannot be replicated by a CD burner. 00:00:45.489 --> 00:00:48.329 Now, it’s actually pretty easy to get around this. 00:00:48.329 --> 00:00:52.950 Mod chips and disc swapping were two well known ways to bypass this copy protection. 00:00:52.950 --> 00:00:57.510 And of course these days, there are emulators, so using the console itself isn’t even required. 00:00:57.510 --> 00:01:02.090 Now I’m not going make a comment on the pitfalls of DRM or the people who circumvent it. 00:01:02.090 --> 00:01:05.560 Sony has valid reasons for using it, and there are also perfectly legitimate reasons for 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:10.470 an individual to use a copied disc--for example to provide a backup of your software library. 00:01:10.470 --> 00:01:13.900 But in this video, I’d like to suggest a way that Sony could have made the PlayStation 00:01:13.900 --> 00:01:16.110 discs almost impossible to copy. 00:01:16.110 --> 00:01:19.790 There’s a certain quirk in the design of these consoles that suggests they might have 00:01:19.790 --> 00:01:22.090 had this in mind, but abandoned it. 00:01:22.090 --> 00:01:25.619 So first, let’s take a quick look at the history of the console, as well as how the 00:01:25.619 --> 00:01:27.730 copy protection actually works. 00:01:27.730 --> 00:01:31.790 The original Sony PlayStation was a groundbreaking product in a number of ways. 00:01:31.790 --> 00:01:35.950 Though not the first video game console to use the compact disc for data storage, it 00:01:35.950 --> 00:01:38.130 was the first to achieve widespread success. 00:01:38.130 --> 00:01:42.450 There’s a fascinating history as well as a juicy tale of corporate backstabbing behind 00:01:42.450 --> 00:01:45.900 the PlayStation’s creation which I won’t go into here in much detail. 00:01:45.900 --> 00:01:50.330 But if you weren’t aware, the PlayStation started as an accessory for the SNES. 00:01:50.330 --> 00:01:55.870 Yep, Nintendo hired Sony as a hardware accessory partner, and after deciding that the terms 00:01:55.870 --> 00:01:59.850 of the contract weren’t to their liking in regards to software rights, Nintendo just 00:01:59.850 --> 00:02:04.320 shoved Sony aside and instead announced a new partnership with Philips. 00:02:04.320 --> 00:02:08.149 Rather than just abandon their work, Sony decided to make their own game console as 00:02:08.149 --> 00:02:10.619 the ultimate F.U. to Nintendo. 00:02:10.619 --> 00:02:16.070 Using optical storage for game data had tons of advantages over the then standard ROM cartridges. 00:02:16.070 --> 00:02:20.319 They were cheaper to make, could hold MUCH more data, were smaller, more versatile, and 00:02:20.319 --> 00:02:25.690 due to that extra data, allowed for things such as CD-quality audio alongside gameplay. 00:02:25.690 --> 00:02:30.670 The CD-ROM’s biggest disadvantage was that of a slow load time, as the data being read 00:02:30.670 --> 00:02:33.770 from the disc isn’t coming in particularly quickly. 00:02:33.770 --> 00:02:38.250 A ROM cartridge could be read at any point randomly and with higher data throughput, 00:02:38.250 --> 00:02:40.270 allowing many games to load nearly instantly. 00:02:40.270 --> 00:02:44.720 Oh, and the CD was also pretty fragile, so there’s that, too. 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:49.000 And, uh, early consoles suffered from a poorly designed CD reader, so… 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:50.280 well they weren’t perfect. 00:02:50.280 --> 00:02:54.580 Even though the original PlayStation only has a measly 2 megabytes of RAM, a normal 00:02:54.590 --> 00:02:58.170 CD only outputs 1.2 megabits per second. 00:02:58.170 --> 00:03:02.540 The CD-ROM drive in the PlayStation could operate at 2X speed, but even then it would 00:03:02.540 --> 00:03:05.530 take 6.5 seconds to fill the RAM completely. 00:03:05.530 --> 00:03:09.110 But of course, it usually took longer than that, as the laser would have to dart around 00:03:09.110 --> 00:03:12.730 the disc to get all of the data it needed to load the next environment. 00:03:12.730 --> 00:03:14.900 Want to play a skirmish in Twisted Metal 4? 00:03:14.900 --> 00:03:19.540 You’ll be staring at this screen and listening to this for a good while. 00:03:19.760 --> 00:03:33.140 [Sound of console seeking data on CD] 00:03:34.560 --> 00:03:38.879 Anyway, though there were downsides, the CD-ROM is arguably what made the original PlayStation 00:03:38.879 --> 00:03:40.209 so successful. 00:03:40.209 --> 00:03:43.450 But it also introduced that unique problem for Sony. 00:03:43.450 --> 00:03:47.300 All cartridge based video game systems are essentially immune to counterfeit copies being 00:03:47.300 --> 00:03:48.620 made of their games. 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:52.870 You’d need to have awfully specialized equipment to duplicate one of these, and then you’d 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:55.239 need to track down a blank cartridge with writable memory. 00:03:55.239 --> 00:03:56.959 So, it was pretty much never done. 00:03:56.959 --> 00:04:00.200 But the CD-ROM, well that’s easy as pie to copy! 00:04:00.200 --> 00:04:03.980 Although they were pretty expensive at the time, the CD Burner was very much a thing 00:04:03.980 --> 00:04:08.909 when the PS1 was released, and so was the CD-R. Obviously worried about the potential 00:04:08.909 --> 00:04:13.330 for piracy, Sony engineered a pretty clever trick into the system to ensure only legit 00:04:13.330 --> 00:04:15.090 discs could be played. 00:04:15.090 --> 00:04:17.440 However, it wasn’t actually that clever. 00:04:18.320 --> 00:04:21.780 OK, well, the actual feature is, but the implementation wasn’t. 00:04:21.789 --> 00:04:25.560 Like I said before, in reality it was pretty easy to get around the copy protection. 00:04:25.560 --> 00:04:28.699 So then, how does the copy protection on the PS1 discs work? 00:04:28.699 --> 00:04:32.529 First, let’s get it out of the way and say that the black color of the disc has nothing 00:04:32.529 --> 00:04:34.749 to do with it, whatsoever. 00:04:34.749 --> 00:04:39.500 Though one promo video about the PlayStation suggests that this could be the purpose, it isn’t. 00:04:39.500 --> 00:04:41.000 This is just for looks. 00:04:41.460 --> 00:04:46.560 [NARRATOR: Black ink is added to the plastic to give the CD its distinctive, “cool PlayStation-only look.” 00:04:46.560 --> 00:04:49.480 This also helps protect the CD from illegal copying.] 00:04:50.500 --> 00:04:54.340 Actually, it’s not even black, it’s a very deep purpley-blue. 00:04:54.349 --> 00:04:58.159 This is a similar color of plastic to what's commonly found in front of infrared light 00:04:58.159 --> 00:05:00.689 sensors on a device with a remote control. 00:05:00.689 --> 00:05:04.849 It’s completely transparent to infrared light, but mostly opaque to visible light. 00:05:04.849 --> 00:05:10.369 There was nothing special about the PlayStation’s CD-ROM drive that allowed it to read these discs. 00:05:10.369 --> 00:05:13.580 The infrared light of a normal CD laser will read it just fine. 00:05:13.580 --> 00:05:17.300 Side note--In my last video, I made an error in suggesting that DVD players don’t have 00:05:17.300 --> 00:05:21.160 an infrared laser, and use their red laser to read a CD. 00:05:21.160 --> 00:05:25.759 This is not true, in fact many early DVD players have two complete laser pickups on a single 00:05:25.759 --> 00:05:29.629 sled, and later devices used the same laser with two diodes. 00:05:29.629 --> 00:05:33.599 The wavelength of light is pretty important for reading an optical disc correctly--it’s 00:05:33.599 --> 00:05:37.759 tuned to the size of the pits--so a second infrared laser diode is necessary to read 00:05:37.759 --> 00:05:38.819 a CD. 00:05:38.819 --> 00:05:42.680 I had completely forgotten about the importance of wavelength, and thankfully the comments 00:05:42.680 --> 00:05:43.710 set me straight. 00:05:43.710 --> 00:05:48.020 One commenter noted that CD compatible DVD laser pickups usually have two adjustment 00:05:48.020 --> 00:05:51.900 pots on them, one for the IR laser, and one for the red laser, and sure enough, 00:05:51.900 --> 00:05:53.100 there they are! 00:05:53.100 --> 00:05:53.600 Anyway, 00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:57.560 What Sony actually did was to add two things to the disc during mastering that weren’t 00:05:57.569 --> 00:05:59.949 normally there on a garden variety compact disc. 00:05:59.949 --> 00:06:04.389 Well, actually, it was one addition that accomplished two tasks. 00:06:04.389 --> 00:06:08.409 To understand what they did requires a little bit of knowledge into the laser pickup system 00:06:08.409 --> 00:06:10.419 of any optical disc format. 00:06:10.420 --> 00:06:17.160 It’s impossible to produce a CD, DVD, Laserdisc, Blu-Ray, or economic policy that is exactly perfect. 00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:19.500 There will always be some imperfections. 00:06:19.509 --> 00:06:23.219 The discs aren’t usually completely flat, so the distance between the disc and laser 00:06:23.219 --> 00:06:25.319 lens is constantly fluctuating. 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:29.979 The disc is also never exactly centered, so the pits usually move back and forth with 00:06:29.979 --> 00:06:30.979 each rotation. 00:06:30.979 --> 00:06:35.800 To handle this, the objective lens is sort of floating, and electromagnets can lift it 00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:40.129 (or lower it) as well as wiggle it left and right it to make sure the pits are in focus, 00:06:40.129 --> 00:06:42.059 and that it’s following the data spiral. 00:06:42.059 --> 00:06:45.550 To see this in action, it’s actually easiest to look at a Laserdisc. 00:06:45.550 --> 00:06:49.469 This disc is badly warped, and towards the edges the laser is bouncing pretty wildly 00:06:49.469 --> 00:06:51.899 to keep its focus distance constant. 00:06:51.899 --> 00:06:56.870 Though almost never this extreme, a CD player or PlayStation needs to do this, too. 00:06:56.870 --> 00:07:00.659 In fact, here’s the laser of a PlayStation wiggling back and forth ever so slightly to 00:07:00.659 --> 00:07:03.229 read the data from this Audio CD. 00:07:03.229 --> 00:07:08.349 This clip also shows how the laser carriage only moves for coarse tracking in steps. 00:07:08.349 --> 00:07:12.700 Notice how it moves outward, but the position of the lense relative to the disc doesn’t change. 00:07:12.700 --> 00:07:16.280 Now, the laser’s movement is only there to maintain tracking on the data stream. 00:07:16.289 --> 00:07:19.340 A CD player couldn’t care less about what the Laser is doing, 00:07:19.340 --> 00:07:21.479 it just wants to see the data. 00:07:21.479 --> 00:07:25.781 Any wobbliness of the track is irrelevant to its goal of reading the data; so as long 00:07:25.781 --> 00:07:29.770 as the wobble isn’t too extreme, its presence is of no consequence. 00:07:29.770 --> 00:07:35.029 Generally, the circuitry in charge of this tracking and focus is part of the laser pickup assembly. 00:07:35.029 --> 00:07:39.020 This task is done at the hardware level, and can be considered automatic from the perspective 00:07:39.020 --> 00:07:41.909 of the circuitry that actually processes the data itself. 00:07:41.909 --> 00:07:46.009 There’s a really great paper linked in the description that goes over how this is actually 00:07:46.009 --> 00:07:47.009 accomplished. 00:07:47.009 --> 00:07:51.819 What Sony did was introduce a way to actually keep track of how the laser lens moved. 00:07:51.819 --> 00:07:55.789 The hardware would monitor the horizontal movement of the objective lens, and it was 00:07:55.789 --> 00:07:59.179 looking for a specific wobble in the data it’s reading. 00:07:59.179 --> 00:08:03.739 As part of the mastering process in PlayStation discs, the very first sectors of data in the 00:08:03.739 --> 00:08:07.679 pregap are recorded with a wobble of a specific frequency. 00:08:07.679 --> 00:08:11.429 Rather than a smooth spiral, the track looked something like this. 00:08:11.429 --> 00:08:15.489 The wobbling was also used for encoding which region the disc was for. 00:08:15.489 --> 00:08:20.059 The region code was amplitude modulated into the wobble itself, and if the code on the 00:08:20.059 --> 00:08:23.119 disc didn’t match the console’s BIOS, it would not play. 00:08:23.119 --> 00:08:27.639 The reason this worked was that any ordinary CD drive would just ignore this wobble. 00:08:27.639 --> 00:08:29.690 Actually, ignore isn’t quite the right word. 00:08:29.690 --> 00:08:31.689 It was unaware of the wobble. 00:08:31.689 --> 00:08:35.440 The tracking circuitry in its laser pickup would just do its job and keep the laser in 00:08:35.440 --> 00:08:36.789 line with the data stream. 00:08:36.789 --> 00:08:40.680 It didn’t matter how the data wobbled, or even if the data wobbled. 00:08:40.680 --> 00:08:42.959 Its job was just to get the data. 00:08:42.959 --> 00:08:46.339 When you made a copy, that copy would be missing the wobble. 00:08:46.339 --> 00:08:50.450 When the CD drive is reading the disc to make an image file for burning, it isn’t even 00:08:50.450 --> 00:08:52.060 aware of the wobble. 00:08:52.060 --> 00:08:55.790 The data captured during the disc read is all that matters for burning the disc. 00:08:55.790 --> 00:09:01.209 Now, a CD burner is looking for a wobble on a CD-R, but for a very different reason. 00:09:01.209 --> 00:09:06.079 A CD-R has a premade wobble molded into the polycarbonate--that’s the plastic the disc 00:09:06.079 --> 00:09:07.170 is made of. 00:09:07.170 --> 00:09:11.440 This wobble contains the ATIP, which tells the CD burner the properties of the disc such 00:09:11.440 --> 00:09:15.519 as its capacity and maximum write speed, and throughout the rest of the disc it wobbles 00:09:15.519 --> 00:09:17.089 at a constant frequency. 00:09:17.089 --> 00:09:21.550 A CD burner is looking for this wobble as it writes to a disc both to maintain proper 00:09:21.550 --> 00:09:26.069 tracking as it writes on it, as well as to maintain the proper writing speed. 00:09:26.069 --> 00:09:30.970 Because this wobble is already there on a CD-R, even if a CD drive could detect the 00:09:30.970 --> 00:09:35.220 region-encoding wobble on a PlayStation disc, it couldn’t recreate it. 00:09:35.220 --> 00:09:40.040 To recreate the wobble of a PlayStation disc would require jumping in and out of this premade 00:09:40.040 --> 00:09:42.540 groove, which the burner can’t do. 00:09:42.540 --> 00:09:47.009 Even if it tried, by crossing the premade lines, the data would likely be impossible 00:09:47.009 --> 00:09:48.410 to read correctly. 00:09:48.410 --> 00:09:53.139 Where Sony failed was by being a little lazy with how disc authenticity is checked. 00:09:53.139 --> 00:09:57.310 With few exceptions, the console only looks for this wobble at bootup. 00:09:57.310 --> 00:10:01.399 People figured this out, and by defeating the lid switch and carefully watching a disc 00:10:01.399 --> 00:10:06.170 spin, you can see when it’s checking for the wobble and swap in a burned copy for a 00:10:06.170 --> 00:10:08.579 real disc with a little practice. 00:10:08.579 --> 00:10:12.440 The reason this worked is that Sony built in a healthy bit of tolerance for damaged 00:10:12.440 --> 00:10:17.350 discs; so as long as you are fast enough, it will just pass the disc off as being scratched, 00:10:17.350 --> 00:10:19.730 thus needing multiple attempts to read the data. 00:10:19.730 --> 00:10:24.279 But disc swapping was annoying and also could damage your discs and perhaps even the console, 00:10:24.279 --> 00:10:28.280 so the other option was to install a modchip that would inject the code into the system 00:10:28.280 --> 00:10:32.330 at the right time, so even though the laser wasn’t seeing the wobble, the processor 00:10:32.330 --> 00:10:34.250 would think that it did. 00:10:34.250 --> 00:10:38.589 Game developers eventually created ways to detect a modchip, so this wasn’t completely 00:10:38.589 --> 00:10:43.180 infallible, but it was still a relatively easy way to play a burnt disc. 00:10:43.180 --> 00:10:46.959 So now that you know what the PS1 does to determine the validity of a disc, as well 00:10:46.959 --> 00:10:51.529 as why it was so easy to get around it, here’s where my little theory comes into play. 00:10:51.529 --> 00:10:54.060 I had mentioned there’s a design quirk. 00:10:54.060 --> 00:10:58.230 When you open up the lid of a PS1, you might notice that the area that holds the CD is 00:10:58.230 --> 00:11:01.880 MUCH larger than the CD itself. 00:11:01.880 --> 00:11:07.360 Could it be that Sony had originally intended for PS1 discs to be larger than a standard CD? 00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:12.060 Some people think the PS1 discs contain data outside the range of a normal CD’s laser 00:11:12.060 --> 00:11:15.550 carriage, and that this is how the copy protection works. 00:11:15.550 --> 00:11:18.819 While this isn’t the case, Sony could have done that. 00:11:18.819 --> 00:11:23.139 And if they did it by going outside the normal readable area, they could have really locked 00:11:23.139 --> 00:11:24.440 this down. 00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:28.930 Imagine that the PlayStation discs were an extra 3 centimeters across, making it a 15 00:11:28.930 --> 00:11:30.879 centimeter disc rather than 12. 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:35.139 If Sony had extended the rails on their CD drive in here, the laser could read all the 00:11:35.139 --> 00:11:37.920 way to the edge of this slightly larger disc. 00:11:37.920 --> 00:11:41.379 Not only would this have increased the amount of data on the disc, but it would have made 00:11:41.379 --> 00:11:44.269 copying them almost impossible. 00:11:44.269 --> 00:11:48.680 Almost every CD drive has a second insert for 8 cm discs, and top loading drives can 00:11:48.680 --> 00:11:50.509 of course handle them, too. 00:11:50.509 --> 00:11:53.930 The physical size of a CD can be smaller, and it will still work. 00:11:53.930 --> 00:11:58.529 But if Sony had gone bigger, you could not physically fit a PlayStation disc into the 00:11:58.529 --> 00:12:01.410 standard five and a quarter inch CD burner in your PC. 00:12:01.410 --> 00:12:05.699 If would fit fine in here, but there’s no way it will make it in here. 00:12:05.699 --> 00:12:09.509 If they had done this, the PS1 could still play audio CDs just fine. 00:12:09.509 --> 00:12:12.290 It wouldn’t remove any functionality from the system. 00:12:12.290 --> 00:12:16.379 It’s already more than capable of playing an 8 cm CD OK. 00:12:16.379 --> 00:12:20.420 And if they had always ensured that some of the game data was written outside the 12cm 00:12:20.420 --> 00:12:25.760 diameter of a normal CD, even on smaller games which needed less than the 700 megabytes of 00:12:25.760 --> 00:12:31.740 data available on standard CD, a copy would be impossible to make without the console noticing. 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:36.840 If Sony had gone this route, can you imagine how difficult it would be to make a duplicate disc? 00:12:36.840 --> 00:12:41.519 No one was making CD drives capable of reading a disc that large, and there would be little 00:12:41.519 --> 00:12:44.060 incentive to start doing so. 00:12:44.060 --> 00:12:48.740 Even if a CD burner appeared on the market which could handle a 15 centimeter disc, how 00:12:48.740 --> 00:12:52.420 easy do you think it would be to get your hands on a 15 centimeter CD-R? 00:12:52.420 --> 00:12:54.680 Now, it’s obvious why Sony didn’t do this. 00:12:54.680 --> 00:12:59.209 The whole point of using the CD was to make manufacturing games quick and cheap. 00:12:59.209 --> 00:13:04.069 To make a 15cm CD is really to make an entirely new format. 00:13:04.069 --> 00:13:08.490 That would require new disc pressing machinery, or at the very least significant retooling 00:13:08.490 --> 00:13:09.980 of existing machinery. 00:13:09.980 --> 00:13:14.879 Also, a new case design would be needed, with a physically larger disc being more difficult 00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:15.879 to store. 00:13:15.879 --> 00:13:20.399 The standard CD jewel case already had the support of countless storage systems. 00:13:20.399 --> 00:13:24.550 But if they had decided to just make the discs a tiny bit bigger, which the design of the 00:13:24.550 --> 00:13:30.140 early consoles suggests was possible, if not intended, mod chips and disc swapping couldn’t 00:13:30.140 --> 00:13:31.519 have done a thing. 00:13:31.519 --> 00:13:35.060 A burned PlayStation game simply couldn’t exist. 00:13:35.060 --> 00:13:37.029 Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this video. 00:13:37.029 --> 00:13:40.540 If this is your first time coming across this channel, please consider subscribing so you 00:13:40.540 --> 00:13:41.699 won’t miss the next ones. 00:13:41.699 --> 00:13:45.259 And, you can now follow me on Twitter @ TechConnectify. 00:13:45.259 --> 00:13:48.560 That’s what happens when you’re late to the party. 00:13:48.560 --> 00:13:51.589 Of course, I’d like to take the time to thank my Patreon supports. 00:13:51.589 --> 00:13:53.580 Patrons of the channel are what keep these videos coming. 00:13:53.580 --> 00:13:57.529 If you’re interested in becoming a patron as well, please check out my Patreon page. 00:13:57.529 --> 00:14:01.269 There’s a link on your screen, or you can find one in the description. 00:14:01.269 --> 00:14:03.840 Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll see you next time! 00:14:11.760 --> 00:14:14.300 [Snaps fingers] And That!... is the end.