DVD Player With DVI Output

ffierling writes "Why are there no big name DVD Players with digital video outputs? With all the available digital displays (LCD, plasma, DLP, etc) and the obvious benefits of an all-digital connection, it's easy to conclude the threat of litigation from copyright holders is holding up the big name manufacturers. So how is it V Inc. can sell their Bravo D1 DVD Player with DVI output? Are they below the MPAA's radar, or just quicker to market?"

Comments

sweet

[squarefish]

and it's only $199. very nice!

DVI has copy protection

[molo]

Fool! DVI is an encrypted data stream!

See this PDF for more information:


http://www.ddwg.org/if/data/0830991.pdf

-molo

Re:DVI has copy protection

[dschuetz]

Fool! DVI is an encrypted data stream!

Fool! DVI is an all-digital video connection standard, that supports optional encryption! (well mostly all-digital, if you ignore the optional analog compatibility connection)

(though I will agree that most likely any DVD player supporting DVI will be using encryption).

I think it's called HDCP, or High Defintion Copy Protection, or somesuch.

More interesting is a DVD player that up-converts to 1080i -- I've read conflicting reports on whether those are "allowed" by the DVD manufacturer's agreement. But get that, and support for the MS (ugh) HDTV-lite codec (like on the new T2 disc) and you're in busines. Sort of.

Re:DVI has copy protection

[InsaneGeek]

Technically, just because DVI's involved doesn't mean that it's encrypted. When it's boiled down, DVI isn't encrypted it's the medium the encryption (HDCP) travels on, almost like SSL travels on ethernet.

Another Review

[NeoMoose]

If you pick up last month's Official Xbox Magazine they did a review and gave it a 9.0 out of 10 score. Apparently they loved it. If you want more information on it, track down someone with the magazine.

The main problem I have with this DVD player is that it DOESN'T seem to be available in many, if any, retail outlets.

SDI hacks

[Anonymous Coward]

There are additional boards available to hack most decent DVD's players so they output SDI, which is a raw professional 270Mbps standard for digital interconnects. Most broadcast quality Plasma screens include an SDI input, and companies like Delphi produce them for the consumer market, and I've seen DVB-s digital tv set-top-boxes also hacked for SDI output, they look very good since the needless D>A>D process is removed.

Other DVI Players

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - Samsung has the DVD-HD931 which has been out on the market for a few months now. It has DVI output.

The Bravo D1 is better, but hey.

Expect other large consumer electronics manufacturers to have their models out within a few months.

More at Home Theater Forum

[abischof]

To some of us following the home theater scene, the Bravo D1 may be old news ;), but I can understand that it may not be common knowledge. In any case, the Home Theater Forum is a great resource in general and it has a couple threads on this player as well. Of note from that second link is that the Bravo is not the only DVI player on the market:

The only DVI-out DVD players on the market at the moment are the V Inc. Bravo D1, the Samsung 931, and the Momitsu DV-880. If you will not be using the DVI-out on these players, all of them are said to give relatively subpar quality via all the analog outputs.

Re:More at Home Theater Forum

[Osty]

Lovely! Those links are referred right back to Slashdot. That's one way to avoid a slashdotting.

Other good home theater sites:

• AVS Forum
• Home Theater Spot (some useful reviews and links, but more importantly a great set of forums)
• Digital Connection, the place to find high-end PC/home theater equipment.
• Magnolia Hi-Fi. Okay, I only threw this one in here because it's my preferred place to buy A/V equipment.

My mac has DVI output already.

[goombah99]

I use a projection (dlp) video system. I can play my DVD movies either as DVI, VGA (RGB) or as S-video using my mac powerbook the s-video has the resolution of a VCR or ordinary television. But the VGA output is massively better, roughly 8 to 16 times the independent pixel density (4 X spatially and 2x in time and another 2x for truly independent pixels). Unfortunately I cant use the DVI out becaue my lowly projector does not have DVI input.

However even if it did I dont expect the result to be much superior than the analog RGB VGA output for the simple reason that the DVD disk doesn't have any more info than that.

for example if you try to play a dvd on an XGA or SXGA system it looks WORSE(!) than on the lower resoultion SVGA. the reason is very simple , the dvd has to interpolate the pixels and does a bad job when the image is changing quickly. SVGA is optimal for DVD , and XGA is optimal for HDTV.

wrong conclusion

[poptones]

the "industry agreement" is that no DVD players will have RGB outputs - and this one doesn't have those, either. DVI is "secure" and component has been on players for ages. And it would be pretty well pointless to have a high rez player (as this one is obviously intended) that wouldn't support contemporary hi rez displays.

What's most funny is that no one today would likely think of "ripping" a DVD from a capture card, just because all it takes is a $50 DVD drive and a braindead piece of software. And yet the manufacturers stick by their "no RGB" guns as if it actually means something.

BTW my "DVD player" does have RGB outputs. It also has a macrovision-less s-vid output.

Duh...

There are others

[cheinonen]

Samsung, for instance, makes their 931 player which has DVI w/ HDCP output and can upconvert to either 720p or 1080i with the DVI output (but only 480p thru the component outputs). However, the main reason I think other manufacturers are holding back is because while HDCP is a standard, it doesn't seem to work perfectly yet. The Samsung 931 won't work correctly in 1080i mode with Sony or Toshiba HDTV's currently, though I believe it does work in 720p mode with the Samsung DLP sets.

The reasoning behind using DVI and upconversion is that many HDTV's will upconvert 480p to 1080i or 720p internally (this is most common on DLP, LCD, Plasma, LCOS and other non-CRT technologies). By converting it internally before the digital stream is converted to analog, you should get a better conversion, or in theory you can add an external scaler (say an iScan or anything from Faroudja) and output a digital 480p signal for it to scale instead of an analog one.

The Bravo D1 is the first, and currently has better quality than Samsung, but it won't be the last for long. Popular rumor has Denon coming out with a universal DVD player (DVD, DVD-A, SACD) with DVI output (with HDCP) by the end of the year, but if the HDCP compatibility issues keep up, I wouldn't be surprised to see it be delayed. Of course, HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) is what I can't wait for. One cable the size of a USB connector that can carry an HDTV signal and 8 channels of audio, so long cable mess!

below radar?

[di0s]

Are they below the MPAA's radar
Uhm, not anymore.... (that's assuming MPAA reads /.)

always watch at your proj.'s native resolution.

[ferrocene]

I'm guessing the reason it looks worse is that your projector can't handle those resolutions, therefore it's the PROJECTOR which is trying to down-scale the image to fit it to SVGA, etc.

I have a XVGA DLP and it looks much better @ 1024x768 than at 800x600 because PowerDVD does a very nice job upscaling the image. If I try to send 1600x1200 to the 1024x768 DLP then it looks like ass, not because of the player, but because of the DLP down-conversion.

ALWAYS watch at the NATIVE resolution of your DLP for the best picture quality. Period.

Re:DVI is no problem. How about Firewire/Component

[-tji]

Typo Correction: the first line should read "As other have mentioned, DVI can be copy restricted, using and encrypted in transport. Also, it's a high bandwidth, uncompressed data stream, which is not easy to copy." (substiture DVI for Firewire).

The difference being: DVI is an uncompressed digital output - for connection to a display device. Since it's uncompressed, it runs at gigabit/second speeds, and is difficult to copy.

Firewire runs at 400Mbps (the new apple PC's have 800Mbps firewire), and is typically used for transferring compressed data streams (usually MPEG2) and for general networking between devices. Some displays have built-in HD tuners, and take firewire as input. For example, the Mitsubishi HDTV's. In this case, DVI is not needed, because the HDTV stream is sent over the firewire, and decoded in the internal tuner. It is then passed internally to the display, so protected DVI is not needed.

If the display does not have an internal tuner, it would have an external HD Set Top Box (STB). The STB is connected to the TV via DVI, and connected to a recorder, or other A/V devices, via firewire.

Re:Macrovision? Pshaw.

[Mister Transistor]

Not true. If you look at the spec for Macrovision, it encompasses about 7 or 8 layers (features) some of which are analog in nature (twisting chroma phase, screwing with the black level) and some are purely digtal and are present as detectable signatures in a decoded stream of digital video. Take a look if you don't believe me.