Battle over HD video formats will be bloody

[Boyd Ostroff]

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Stor...eid=mktw&dist=

Curiously until the Samsung pullback I believe that most of the tech writers were unaware of the restrictive license provisions. In fact I suspect that as part of the agreement the restriction itself cannot be discussed. These are the kind of non-disclosure deals that are being drawn up nowadays designed mostly to keep the public in the dark.

[J. Stephen McDonald]

One big difference between Beta/VHS and Blu-ray/HD-DVD, is the power the manufacturers/content producers will now have to thwart copying and playback between the two formats, by home users. It seems likely that even with non-copyrighted material and self-produced HD footage, that they may embed non-defeatable anticopy or copy-restriction codes in the machines and in the blank disks. I expect that this all-out competition could be so intense, that home users may find an unprecedented number of boobytraps in all sorts of equipment, that will have the format-specific codes in them. This could mean that even the makers of TV sets might be forced to choose sides and encode them to block the showing of some or all of the other side's programs. You could count on this happening in the TV sets made by the main players in the blue-laser DVD war, if things escalate enough. Certain pieces of equipment might be blocked from working with others. Perhaps gameplayers could connect with only half the TVs being sold.

There might be restrictive codes on HD copying on blue-laser DVDs by home videomakers, even if all their equipment and media is made by one side or the other. Many of these codes have already found their way into the pathways users of SD-DVD recorders need to store their own personal videos. Even analog footage is blocked for conversion to digital form, in some cases. Are the manufacturers stupid and greedy enough, to alienate their customers to this much higher degree? I believe we know the answer to that. Am I getting too edgy about this and describing a worst-case scenario? Or could what I've suggested only be the first round?

The content-producers, with mixed participation by the equipment manufacturers, that also had ties to them, tried very hard in the 1980s to kill the goose that laid their golden eggs, by banning home VCRs. They lost and became very rich, because of it. Will they again be prevented from becoming their own worst enemies?

[Marvin Emms]

I think you are a little over worried.

HDMI/HDCP solves the uncompressed compatability problem. The problem of copying home made video will be solved by the licencing issues surrounding the protection. You want noone else to be able to copy your disk, it won't be free.

[Laurence Kingston]

Originally Posted by Marvin Emms

I think you are a little over worried.

HDMI/HDCP solves the uncompressed compatability problem. The problem of copying home made video will be solved by the licencing issues surrounding the protection. You want noone else to be able to copy your disk, it won't be free.

Yeah, I agree. Give it a year and there will be a bunch of dual format cheap Chinese players from manufacturers like Cyberhome and Daewoo.

[Raza Ahmad]

give it a year and some bloke will write out a whole series of software designed specifically to copy bluray and hd discs....

such is the nature of the world, methinx.

-raza

[J. Stephen McDonald]

Originally Posted by Marvin Emms

I think you are a little over worried.

HDMI/HDCP solves the uncompressed compatability problem. The problem of copying home made video will be solved by the licencing issues surrounding the protection. You want no one else to be able to copy your disk, it won't be free.

I was thinking in terms of being able to copy my own videos onto disks, without using much more expensive professional equipment or a duplicating service. I'm concerned that with high-definition blue-laser DVD recorders, the ability of home users to simply and freely copy their own material, might be a collateral casualty of the restrictions intended to block copying of copyrighted videos. I hope that this right doesn't have to depend on the efforts of hackers to bypass the overzealous restrictions.