http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/early_hdtv_adopters_screwed_by_hddisc_rules.html

I don't like this rule. As a matter of fact, my anamorphic HDTV (1080i), which I shelled out $1000 for just two years ago, only has component-in, so I will only see half the resolution. BOO!!! And the security features are hurting the consumer, much like what happened with Sony late last year. I don't like theft anymore than anyone else, but I don't like being hurt.

heath

I wonder if anyone is considering making component to DVI converters/adapters...?

I wonder if anyone is considering making component to DVI converters/adapters...?
It won't be that simple. The digital signal will be encrypted, so only a AACS licensed TV will be able to decrypt it; a straight-forward digital-to-analog converter won't work.

And, even if a company wanted to make a converter with AACS decoding, they wouldn't be allowed because converting to analog violates this part of the AACS license agreement.

It's a very ugly situation.

BOO!!!

So, if I've got HDMI am I automatically spared or is this something that has to do with EVERY HDTV produced to date ... I assume not, however, my DirectTV uses that HDMI port so do I now havge to choose between which digitial signal I like more ... ?

Frustrating.

So, if I've got HDMI am I automatically spared...?
I believe so. It appears AACS supports a function called ICT (Image Constraint Token), which works in HDMI. Best to do some searching on Google to find out for sure. (Many of these issues are being hammered out as we write, so there's still a lot of confusion.)

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/early_hdtv_adopters_screwed_by_hddisc_rules.html

I don't like this rule. As a matter of fact, my anamorphic HDTV (1080i), which I shelled out $1000 for just two years ago, only has component-in, so I will only see half the resolution. BOO!!! And the security features are hurting the consumer, much like what happened with Sony late last year. I don't like theft anymore than anyone else, but I don't like being hurt.

heath

There are at least two Chinese DVD format alternatives, one called AVS, which I think is now being standardised, though getting the right content on them in English will be interesting.

HDMI, I would Google it to, there has been much changes in security algorithms since HDMI was introduced.

It won't be that simple. The digital signal will be encrypted, so only a AACS licensed TV will be able to decrypt it; a straight-forward digital-to-analog converter won't work.

And, even if a company wanted to make a converter with AACS decoding, they wouldn't be allowed because converting to analog violates this part of the AACS license agreement.

It's a very ugly situation.

Hmmm...
http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/15/spatz-techs-dvimagic-killing-on-hdcp/

Argh! They can't just get rid of component just like that! I bet there'll be adapters in the future but 2013 may be a bit early.

Anyway, this was a decision based on the piracy going on, I understand that. But the pirates are just going to break through the HDMI-only plan just like everything else they've broken through. There will always be thieves and one of the big problems is those file-sharing websites where you can trade anything. If anything there should be some sort of government control over those so they can cut people off from stealing all sorts of media digitally and instead save it for pictures, web videos, and startup rock band songs. What else needs to be traded really?

But this sort of thing is like putting metal detectors in theatres, it's alienating the consumer. Though that eventually may not be a bad idea either if things keep progressing in piracy.

This has the collateral effect of making the consumer upgrade or buy sooner.

We are facing a similar thing with a whole bunch of mobile phones becoming redundent in 2008 over here. When analogue phones were scrapped, we paid for an inferior service.

This cashcow is not going to be stockwhipped. I'll make do with the existing technology and if support for it is prematurely terminated, I'll do without.

Okay, so I am a luddite by nature and only migrated from vinyl audio when I needed a CD-R for the computer. But the suits in the boardrooms better take care. "Less is best" is also becoming fashionable among a younger generation.

Self-sufficiency in entertainment, driven by financial stringencies introduced to the world's collective workforce and the downright societal benefit of communties doing it themselves, may herald a collapse of the vertically integrated entertainment industry as we know it.

It could be interesting times ahead and an opportunity, albeit a limited one for independents.

Globalisation is a two way street which has only been travelled one way yet.

Just wait until they have to change the security standard, and make you buy all new equipment again, and they don't have to wait for pirates to crack the old one to do it, either. Pity it is political in nature, so we can't talk about it. Still, I think the, admittedly most likely weak, boycott of equipment supporting this security standard is the only thing we can do, vote with our feet.

This is why I waited a full year until the HDMI/HDCP interface was included on the sets. I have Sony Bravia 40" LCD, and it has both HDMI and component. So I can use both new and old equipment.

My fear is that tommorrows sets might actually drop the component/composite connections altogether. Very frustrating. I want to upgrade to HD/HDV, and it looks like a complete sweep across the entire pipe-line. Fine. However, I may have to wait it out another 6 months or so, until Vista (one of six flavors) rolls out, and has the HDMI/HDCP hardware onboard (i.e. Nvidia cards that actually support the spec). But with that spec being a moving target...

I'm a fan of the Westinghouse Digital 1080p sets:

http://westinghousedigital.com/c-7-1080p-monitors.aspx

hwm

ps-There's now an HD boycott at a site I go to:

http://writersblocklive.com/boycott/

Interesting. A friend of mine equated for me the rules for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD; essentially, if I bought a copy of the new Harry Potter book, my wife would have to buy her own copy. That's basically how these rules are working.

hwm

There is a silver lining to all this copy protection.....

They won't be able to blame pirates when their sales continue to decline.:)

You know, despite all this keeping-the-honest-person-honest crap, what's gonna stop a pirate from locking off a high-rez cam in front of a studio quality monitor and making a new master? Certainly the quality won't be quite as good as a direct digital transfer, but the effect will be just as damaging.

Good point.

hwm

Self-sufficiency in entertainment, driven by financial stringencies introduced to the world's collective workforce and the downright societal benefit of communties doing it themselves, may herald a collapse of the vertically integrated entertainment industry as we know it.

It could be interesting times ahead and an opportunity, albeit a limited one for independents.

I can give you an interesting example of this right here in UT. There are all kinds of billboards all over the SLC area promoting the local release of mormon themed and produced movies. Usually comedies, but there are some dramas too. They seem to do pretty well and are in multi-plexes all over the area.

It's a market that seems like it would only appeal to the small metro area here, but there are something like 12-15 million Mormons worldwide who might buy their DVD. It's a cottage industry that seems to be thriving...in a micro sense.

Any idea if the HD DVD component outputs will be similarly crippled? Maybe that will tilt the race to the good guys or at least the less bad, bad guys :)

I would think the people with older HD sets will be the early adopters who would now be looking at HD DVD and Blue-Ray.

I understand why they are doing this but they are only contributing to the eventual failure or at best, slow slow slow, rise of their technology. So you are going to sell a format that most people cant even see the difference in from normal viewing distances (480p compared to 1080i on movies) and then tell half the people that are already in the minority that it wont work on their expensive TVs?

Stupid... this tech will not take off until there is ONE format and it is as cheap as current players and medias, period endstop...



ash =o)

The pirates will find alternative means, the most obvious is to optically reproduce an exact copy of a legal disk, not a cracked data stream, onto a new master, then manufacture a whole slew of "legal" disks from that.

Defeatable - Yes. A coat of blackbard paint would just about do it but DVD players have to be able to see the data pits or they simply can't work.

Will take the whole encryption game off the table and the big players who are suckered into adopting the new techology will have themselves been ripped off. Unfortunately, this loss will be passed on to us cashcows.

Like I've said before, these rules are not for the pirates. These are for the adverage joe consumer, to prevent him or her from making their own (pirated) copies. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. This whole thing relies on an expiring physical distribution model that is giving way to digital broadcast and internet downloads, and history reminds us how easy it is to circumvent that.

However, it will prevail in the interim. The adverage Joe knows little about DRM, trusted computing, and HDCP. He just want's things to work. So for everyone one of use whom march out of the Best Try store in digust, there will be ten folks standing in the register line with bigs smiles on their faces, completely oblivous.

I remember an interview with a kid whom circumvented the DVD CSS, wearing a T-Shirt that had the crack code silk-screen upon it. When asked why he was doing it (and I don't remember the exact words), he remarked that smart people will never have to pay for their media.

I don't support piracy, I pay for my media. However, I feel all this paranoia will only hurt the consumer. A wars at hand, and we'll get caught in the cross-fire.

Smart people may not have to pay for their media, but they'll certainly have a bad afterlife to look forward to depending on their religion. Download a music MP3 off the net from a brand new album without paying for it, it's still stealing. I don't know where people's morals have gone.

But yeah, it ultimately hurts the Average "plug-and-play" Joe. Overall, I'd wish they'd come up with some sort of cable design other than DVI, HDMI, and component that combines the best qualities of all of them that will last for twenty years at least. The format thing needs to be fixed too, make an uber disc design and keep it going for longer than VHS has lasted. This copy protection stuff is whack, if even we on this forum can come up with dozens of ways to simply copy this stuff without it even coming out then they're certainly going in the wrong direction. Make burners more expensive or require people to have a business or licensce for them, don't just let anybody get an HD-DVD or Bluray burner.

Just wait until they have to change the security standard, and make you buy all new equipment again, and they don't have to wait for pirates to crack the old one to do it, either. Pity it is political in nature, so we can't talk about it. Still, I think the, admittedly most likely weak, boycott of equipment supporting this security standard is the only thing we can do, vote with our feet.

Problem is, to boycott the equipment you'll have to forego the content that requires the equipment to view. It's like someone who prefers (for whatever reason) VHS tape over DVD. Try renting the latest titles on VHS - they're going the way of the dodo. When your neighborhood rental shop only stocks HiDef DVDs and all of them require an HDMI/AACS equipped deck and TV to view, you simply won't be able to rent movies anymore. We just finished paying off a Sony 57" HD set we bought a few years ago - guess, what - no HDMI terminal. Pisses us off, but we like movies so it's either buy a replacment set this year or be stuck with being only able to view reruns of "Friends" and "Frasier."

This is really nuts.

This sort of thing doesn't even slow down the big pirating operations. Counterfeit DVDs are mass produced in factory like setups, and it won't be long until these disks are too. It's not the little guy hurting Hollywood at all. More often than not, when John Q. Public buys a counterfeit movie, he doesn't even know it (he's neither stealing or profiting).

This sort of nonsense only hurts the average guy, from Joe six-pack construction worker to the guy fixing engines on airliners, who wants to watch a good looking movie after a long day of work, that he paid for with money he worked hard to earn, on a nice television that he worked just as hard to pay for. So he gets dished up this crap instead? What are these people thinking?

DVD Jon has already registered the site deaacs.com. :D

DVD Jon has already registered the site deaacs.com. :D

Hehehe, I'm sure he has. He must have been the first of a huge queue...

I'm not an early adopter myself, but what those corporate puppets are doing to their BEST customers is plain-jane-jaw-dropping absurd.

Jack, those morals are comparable to those of our politicians (that we aren't speaking about). At that level however, the damage is much worse.

FWIW, I love the sharpness of HD, but I'm still content enjoying SD. And enjoying SD's content. When Capote makes its way to DVD, I won't be concentrating on how sharp Hoffman looks. (yeah, alcohol in my system:)

These rules are stupid.I mean ,if really wanted to get an analog out with full res in order to copy something I'll just feed it into my pc and export in via one of the 3 types of analog out I use for previewing.
They're just hurting the consumers.

They're just hurting the consumers.

They may hurt themselves pretty badly too, if all the issues with the new HD players cause people to avoid buying them and the whole thing flops. I heard an estimate that the recent debacle with Sony's DRM screw-up for their music CDs will cost them and the industry as much as $1 billion in lost sales. You'd think someday corporations would wake up and realize that pissing off consumers is bad for business, but so far that doesn't seem to have happened.

Maybe we should all go back to wax clyinders for music and flip-books for video. Who's with me? :-)

I wonder how aware consumers are going to be? Most people don't know the difference between s-video, composite and component right now. Will they realize when they spend $2000 on a Blue Ray player that they're only going to get the same quality as a regular DVD? Sony isn't known for publicizing things like this very much. I would almost think there could be class action lawsuit over this.

Maybe we should all go back to wax clyinders for music and flip-books for video. Who's with me? :-)

Yeah, WAX WHACKS... :-)

I would almost think there could be class action lawsuit over this.

I hope so.

It occurred to me, that by setting the flag for downgrading the res of a movie, when played via analog component output on a HD-DVD player, the movie industry could actually be fertilizing a market for pirated disks that remove the dang flag, not to mention, providing an incentive for ticked off customers to exchange uncrippled HD video files on the internet, once HD-DVD burners are affordable and common.

If John Q. Public is given the choice of having to purchase an expensive replacement for his first HDTV, the he already paid through the nose for, and never saw an HD movie on, or just buying pirated disks on the cheap that actually work better than the legal ones, or downloading pirated files off the net, I gotta think a few otherwise honest, law abiding citizens are going to become criminals, and probably feel absolutely no remorse about it after being screwed like that by the video entertainment industry.

Having brought an upconvert DVD player, I've found that the player states that copy protected DVDs will not upconvert to hd, even on component out.

Non-copy protected DVDs will be allowed to upconvert to your TV set.

Thank goodness I have an HDMI connection. I think it's a rip to buy the cables at $60 or more, just to get the benefits you should have.

As to HD-DVD's and Blu-Ray discs, I think I'll wait till the Beta-Vhs debate ends before my purchase.

One other info that you guys might not have heard about. Remember Divx players? Well, the same sort of scheme is in the works for HD discs. They will have time crippled discs, that you would have to pay for to view. They can send movies out ahead of time and won't have to worry about anyone playing the movie till the set date of release planned. An internal clock in the player will work off of the data encoded into the discs.

This works both ways, as I understand it. They can set a time to open the disc to play after a set date or not to play after a set date.

Modern technology, gotta love it.

I have been thinking on one thing that has been in my noggin' for some time.
I was thinking what would happen if somebody used a component out to a SIMA color corrector? I'm not a tech guru so I'm not sure if the RGA component of the Sima Color corrector would work with the component for HD, but if you have three Sima Color correctors that each component is connected to, would that increase the levels in each of the three colors and give you a better output?

My opinion is that HD will gain since Sony's Playstation 3 is set to arrive late, even if Sony claims that they will make their planned scheduled launch.

The other issue with DVD's and HD's that I see is that all this movie companies are saying the sell of DVD's are dropping. Well, I havn't purchased any new DVD's lately, and why should I purchase them when I know a new player is set to arrive and I'll have to repurchase new discs? Am I of the wrong opinion that the consumers are waiting, just like me or are the marketing guys and bean counters at the movie companies know something that I don't.

The movies are set to be priced around $39.00 or so. I won't be purchasing any of the movies for a while. I can't see them selling something at that price. I think it's a fair price to purchase from 12.99-25.99. Am I wrong in this opinion.

Remember Laserdiscs? I owned it and loved it. It was a lot better then VHS and the prices for discs were steep. I've learned my lesson. Wait till prices drop.

Having brought an upconvert DVD player, I've found that the player states that copy protected DVDs will not upconvert to hd, even on component out.

Non-copy protected DVDs will be allowed to upconvert to your TV set.

Thank goodness I have an HDMI connection. I think it's a rip to buy the cables at $60 or more, just to get the benefits you should have.

As to HD-DVD's and Blu-Ray discs, I think I'll wait till the Beta-Vhs debate ends before my purchase.

One other info that you guys might not have heard about. Remember Divx players? Well, the same sort of scheme is in the works for HD discs. They will have time crippled discs, that you would have to pay for to view. They can send movies out ahead of time and won't have to worry about anyone playing the movie till the set date of release planned. An internal clock in the player will work off of the data encoded into the discs.

This works both ways, as I understand it. They can set a time to open the disc to play after a set date or not to play after a set date.

Modern technology, gotta love it.

I have been thinking on one thing that has been in my noggin' for some time.
I was thinking what would happen if somebody used a component out to a SIMA color corrector? I'm not a tech guru so I'm not sure if the RGA component of the Sima Color corrector would work with the component for HD, but if you have three Sima Color correctors that each component is connected to, would that increase the levels in each of the three colors and give you a better output?

My opinion is that HD will gain since Sony's Playstation 3 is set to arrive late, even if Sony claims that they will make their planned scheduled launch.

The other issue with DVD's and HD's that I see is that all this movie companies are saying the sell of DVD's are dropping. Well, I havn't purchased any new DVD's lately, and why should I purchase them when I know a new player is set to arrive and I'll have to repurchase new discs? Am I of the wrong opinion that the consumers are waiting, just like me or are the marketing guys and bean counters at the movie companies know something that I don't.

The movies are set to be priced around $39.00 or so. I won't be purchasing any of the movies for a while. I can't see them selling something at that price. I think it's a fair price to purchase from 12.99-25.99. Am I wrong in this opinion.

Remember Laserdiscs? I owned it and loved it. It was a lot better then VHS and the prices for discs were steep. I've learned my lesson. Wait till prices drop.