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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?"
and it's only $199. very nice!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
The ignorance, But why is that such a bad thing for the movie companies? Are they worried someone will use the signal from the DVD player to rip it?
Fool! DVI is an encrypted data stream!
See this PDF for more information:
http://www.ddwg.org/if/data/0830991.pdf
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
When this thing is offered in the USA with Macrovision disabled, all regions playable at any time, and no forced chapters, then I'll whip out my VISA and buy one. But not until then.
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I have a DVD player with DVI out. The fan is a little noisy and the case is kind of ugly. Also I don't have anything with DVI in.
As usual, Homer says it best.
"I'm a White male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are." -Homer eating Nuts 'n' Gum
If the market demands it, the features will be there.
Not anymore...
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
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.
because I want to watch movies on a 35" tv and not a 17" LCD thats comparable in price to a 93 honda civic.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Get it while it lasts, whatever your motive is, because it is only time before this becomes controversial. I'm surprised that the company is willing to risk it. I'm sure the EFF is on their side, which is a great thing.
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.
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.
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:
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
To add an extra output a manufacturer has to incorporate additional technology, redesign circuitry and the backpanel, test the whole setup, etc.
This isn't a fantastic amount to do - after all, this is probably a minor upgrade to most manufacturers - but it is rather pointless if 99.99 percent of your target audience won't even know what the port can be used for, let alone actually use it.
And why spend the time and effort incorporating an $5 (for argument's sake) upgrade if it makes next to no difference on how many units you'll sell? Right now, that $5 pe4r unit is lost profit in what's already a very cut-throat industry.
As DVI is a fairly new development (at least to the average home electronics consumer) it'll be a while before there's a major demand for DVI outputs on DVD players, etc. Gradually though, the major manufacturers will add DVI support, initially at the top of their ranges, then later throughout their catalogues.
In the end, it comes down to supply and demand. Right now, there's very little demand for DVI support. But you can bet the farm that by the time there actually is critical mass demand for DVI support it'll be there across the board.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Why are there no big name DVD Players with digital video outputs?"
You mean like a computer?
Sorry, go fish.
The DVI standard includes a digital mode and this player is using it.
-Dave
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...
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!
Until a large percentage of TV's start having DVI input, DVI output for consumer grade DVD players (or any other video player) is pointless from the economic standpoint.
In addition, component optical output is already far and away high enough quality to render the need for DVI moot.
The only TV-class displays that I know of which feature DVI inputs are flatpanel LCD and some flatpanel plasma displays... which are far more expensive than I can justify when compared to a comparably priced rear projection or CRT set.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
As other have mentioned, firewire can be copy restricted, using and encrypted in transport. Also, it's a high bandwidth, uncompressed data stream, which is not easy to copy.
The MPAA still does exert some control here, as you can tell from the lack of DVD players with FireWire interfaces. mitsubishi has been talking about them for years, to fit into their cool Havi system. But, because of the all the MPAA usage restriction hysteria, they can't bring one to market.
Also, they block any analog outputs over 480P (e.g. component video, YPrPb, outputs at 720P or 1080i). These are analog outputs, which are not easily copied (try recording your VGA out). But, they still won't allow them because of the CSS license restrictions and lack of Macrovision.
This is also closely related to why you cannoy buy an HDTV DirecTV receiver with a Firewire output, and thus cannot record HDTV programs off satellite. The technology has been viable for years, D-VHS recorders are available and cheap, but the content providers prevent DirecTV from adding this feature. This slows down the adoption of HDTV, and stifles innovation. Don't you just love the MPAA?
I suffer from a disease known as Munchausen syndrome by open proxy. It causes me to accept stray network packets, and purposely inject crc errors, just to get the NAK attention that I crave. But this is no worse than suffering from the affliction that ffierling struggles against. We read that since there are not (yet) many DVI capable dvd players, "it's easy to conclude the threat of litigation from copyright holders is holding up the big name manufacturers."
Easy if you're a paranoid tin-foil hat wearing geek, that is. Absent from ffierling's conclusion is a factual foundation. He's twisted facts to suit his theories.
It does not take a great deal of effort to imagine where there are not (yet) DVI capable players on the market. First among them is the economy. People aren't buying fancy schmancy toys, and in the DVD market in particular, low-cost players rules the roost. In other words, the focus in the industry has been to compete on cost, no features.
A second reason that comes to mind is that, well, not many people want to shell out the monies for a DVD player with DVI capabilites. But now that DVI displays are catching on, that's going to change. The chicken had to wait for the egg to show up first, if you will.
TVs are actually analogx525, at least in NTSC (PAL is something like 600 lines, I forget, since I don't work with it). Due to the way color is added, horizontal resolution is limited to about 720, which is why that's the resolution we work with when we digitize NTSC video.
Some of the 525 lines don't carry picture info and are cut off by your TV. They occasionally carry program information, or in some cases, Macrovision stuff designed to fool the auto gain correction on your VCR. In any case, the lines that aren't recorded end up making 480 a good vertical resolution to use for digital NTSC video.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Actually, televisions are not like 640x480. Televisions are not digital, at least not completely. The electron gun starts at the top of the frame and paints one line at a time. By the time it hits the bottom, it's painted about 240 lines (in NTSC, that is). While painting a line, it's demodulating an analog signal into analog values of red, green, and blue. The horizontal resolution is NOT in terms of pixels or anything shaped like a dot; it's an analog signal whose resolution simply depends on the bandwidth available.
Vertical resolution is a different story. It is actually discrete and it's fair to express it as a specific integer. This is because, once the electron beam has finished traveling across the screen painting one line, it travels across again and paints another. There is a fixed number of these per frame. (And, there is an extra quirk -- you always have 60 frames per second, but you have the option of having 30 of them in a slightly different vertical position than the others, so that the two sets of horizontal lines interlace with each other.)
My point in all this is that the DVD's 720 pixel horizontal resolution is perfectly reasonable and perfectly compatible with traditional NTSC televisions -- it's not necessarily an improvement at all. Some (most) TVs will not have the bandwidth in the signal to convey that many separate pixels, but even so the result is just a little horizontal blurring of pixels. You can even think of that as a DVD being a little overengineered and using a higher sampling rate than necessary to reproduce the analog signal.
Having said all that, the day is coming when the only reasonable thing will be to record the movie at some high resolution (like 2048x1536, or maybe the 1920x1080 standard that Star Wars, episode II used) and throw only that on the disc. Then, the data can be transferred to the TV; if it doesn't have that many pixels on the screen, it can include a chip that allows it to scale and smooth the image. Of course, televisions will have to be rated in pixels, but they already are in some sense: HDTV implies 1920x1080, actually, IIRC...
Yeah, they're not like that godawful amazon search engine. EVERYTIME I try to search for something it tries to sell me stuff.
A: Because the movie/tv industry is deathly afraid of it.
The promise of FireWire is a single cable, and an intelligent system, connecting all of your electronics devices together. Not just final output (like DVI), or tied to a host (like USB), but a peer-to-peer, universal, high speed bus that can carry content as well as control data. Any of your devices can communicate with one another, and, where applicable, control or send information to one another - all the while sending pristine digital content.
DVI is more attractive to some because it's a final output format, with less fundamental chance of being manipulated or captured by anything else. And copy protection can be enforced in the "monitor" or display device, if need be...FireWire could connect all of your equipment, including your computer, appliances, and more. It could even do it wirelessly.
Imagine one single, intelligent cable chain connecting all of your entertainment equipment - no more rat's nest of endless cabling, no more dumb devices unaware of anything but themselves...that is one of the purposes, and the promise, of FireWire.
Are they below the MPAA's radar /.)
Uhm, not anymore.... (that's assuming MPAA reads
Details here...
More on that unit...
SGtHT did a review with a couple of DVD players using DVI. Their conclusion: for 480p it just doesn't matter.
When DVD's are 720p or 1080i, then it may.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
DVI output from a DVD player? What kind of CUPS driver do you need for this thing? But more importantly, how much paper would you need?
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
The cable I CAN plug into my "box", is DVI. I have a new ATI All In Wonder Radeon. it has DVI OUT. Imagine that.
Also, there is a reason to stay digital as LONG as possible. You want the analog distance to be kept SHORT.
If you do have to have a D->A->D process, keep the A part SHORT. Use lots of long digital wires if you need to, you'll get a better picture in the end.
Take it to the extreme... Send an analog signal around the world on a copper pair.... Look at the result... Now send a digital signal around the world on a copper pair (or anything else), look at the result.. Ohhh, Digital is pretty picture.
- Voxel.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
I recently (Saturday) purchased a rather nice 46" sony projection TV. It's 1080i (HDTV) compatible and has a single DVI input. I'm planning on attempting to configure my computer to output DVI to the TV before I resort to s-video. Apparently it's difficult to get one's computer's DVI output to sync properly with a TV's input. Does anyone know of any resources to help plan this? Or any tips?
Also, the other thing I'm wondering. I've heard that the DVI inputs that are now being placed on most "high end" (lets say $1500 - $2000 +) TVs are intended to be used for the cable/sat/whatever HDTV boxes of the future. If that's true and DVI is being put on TVs with one specific purpose in mind, I wonder if over the next five or so years we're going to see more DVI inputs on our TVs to handle more devices. DVI cables are cheap (compared to, lets say, those $100+ monster component cables) and wouldn't be subject to interference since they're digital. If I was making decisions while designing those TVs, I'd love to keep everyone stuck on component where companies can suck up hundreds of dollars on 4' cables. So what do you guys think the industry is planning on doing with DVI? I've yet to see more then one DVI input on a TV. If they were planning on replacing everything with DVI, I'd expect to see at least two (DVI and your broadcast television). But I'm only seeing one... hrmm. Thoughts?
That is incredibly understated.
For you to make a DVD player, you have to get permission to use CSS. For you to get permission to use CSS, the MPAA can make you sign any sort of contract they want, or you don't get to use CSS legally. That's all there is to it.
I don't think there is any "threat of litigation" keeping DVD players back, I believe it much more simple and direct than that.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
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.
so, you can print vidcaps using dvi2ps?
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.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Alternatively you could start working on building yourself an HDCP pass through dongle right now. Can't be all that hard.
The motion picture industry is certainly concerned about you making copies of DVD's but let's face it those have been cracked already. They are a somewhat lost cause. What they are now attempting to guard against is people making copies of High Definition video. The content that will be coming out on blue laser equiped DVD's at 720p+ resolutions. The notion is, that end to end encryption is the answer. By putting the decoder in the display you are screwed. OK not really but it does become ever so slightly harder.
BTW Samsung makes a VERY nice DVD player (DVD-HD931) with DVI out that additionaly does scaling to 720p and 3:2 pulldown using the Faroudja chip. Now at $250 that is a bargain and a half. If only the damn thing would put that signal out RGB so I could watch it on my Sony 1271 projector... I'd be a happy camper. We need the Europeans to put out 720p on SCART connectors (OK so maybe just I do). Curious that none of European market machines include the Faroudja chip.... Actually really irritating is more like it (once again possibly editorial).
So.... this is all FULLY above the Radar and be prepared to grab your ankles because you know what is coming...
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much
Here's a thought. Why can't some manufacturer use DeCSS or qrpff or one of those bad boys.
Because it's in a consumer player, with no mass storage or connectivity save the A/V outputs, the MPAA would have a damn hard time making the argument that it's piracy. And they wouldn't have to pay the license fee to the DVD-CSS consortium either!
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
This is probably a good player. But it's just another incarnation of the Sigma Designs DVD kit.
See: Sigma Designs DVD Kits
And remember that Sigma Designs hasn't been too forthcoming with the OSS Community?
DivX Networks Press Release
XVID also has comments (look for "Sigma")
Anyway, there are several players out there already using these kits.
KISS Technology
Revoy -- to name a couple.
I bought one of these players myself (the KISS DP-500) and they are great, but still full of little bugs and the community is just building now to get into the GPL part of the source - just not sure how much of it we will be able to modify and now much will remain closed-source.
Here is a community of KISS owners so you can see what types of issues people are dealing with on these Sigma players.
I dont think this player is that hot. Check out the KiSS DP-500 which additionally supports DVD-RW and DVD+RW (the Bravo only supports DVD+-R), OGG and Divx 3.11, 4 and 5. The DP-500 also comes with a 10/100 ethernet port so that you can stream audio, video and jpegs directly from your computer. There's also a webradio feature to stream directly from the internet.
Yes there are still a few bugs in the software, as someone mentioned above, but they are slowly being worked out with new software releases.