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Toshiba HD-DVD Player Planned to Enforce HDMI
CCat writes "Digital Spy reports that at a recent Toshiba road show in the U.S., Toshiba demonstrated their upcoming HD-DVD specification. The most interesting thing for people buying TVs at the moment is that Toshiba has stated that their HD-DVD Player will ONLY output high Def on the player's HDMI output (plus other digital connections) with the analog output downrezed to 480 lines. Prior slashdot disussion talks about the copy prevention angle and HDCP guidelines."
There have been recent surge in HDTV. Recently ATI technologies also annouced cheap HDTV... though wondering why would Toshiba support only high def??
This sig doesnt exist.
If the PS3 hits early 2006, and the XBox comes out sans HD-DVD, you can kiss this stupid format goodbye. There's no great motivation for most consumers to buy these drives yet, so they're a bit early. And their players really can't compete with a gaming machine, so I don't know what their strategy is here.
- sigs are for wimps.
And Blu Ray will probably do the same thing.
How many of us have more than one HDMI (or DVI+HDCP) jack on our TVs? Not me.
Three capacitors on my DVD player are all that stand between me and a working DVD player - but they'd be charging for it instead of fixing what is obviously them using shit to make it.
So I just refuse to give them another cent.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm being punished for being an early adopter; my HDTV has composit input only.
I guess I'll just by the Sony standard.
BC
So Toshiba's HD-DVD player will not display HD video on the millions of Toshiba HDTVs that were produced before DVI and HDMI were common? Awesome!
The funniest part is that no one would want to bootleg over the component connections anyway. I don't know of a signle component capture card that's priced remotely near what a normal consumer could afford. The big piracy houses will find a quick workaround anyway. But they'll stave off all four casual pirates with access to professional capture devices, at least until the HD-DVD encryption is cracked.
We're all used to ludicrous DRM systems, but I've never seen an electronics company (without a major stake in the film/music production business) so willing to shoot themselves in the foot.
"And I would buy this why?"
"Well, since I'm in marketing, I'm assuming it's because people are stupid!"
"Well, if I were surrounded by that much stupidity, I'd think people were stupid too."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If D-Theater had Component Out why not HD-DVD ?
How many D-Theater movies are floating around the net? nil
By the time these come out, (somewhat)affordable HD camcorders will also be hitting the market. Maybe they will have to make tripods illegal under the DMCA.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
boooooooooo! hisssssss!
intentionally crippling consumer electronic devices to try and lockout the analog loop hole...booo!
*sigh*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
HDCP is currently required by the DVD licensing group for all players that output at greater than 480p resolutions.
If you take a look at all the major dvd players out there that have scalers built into them you'll find that currently the only way to go above 480p on them is to use a dvi or hdmi output with hdcp. This is not new and Toshiba is not doing anything different. The problem is truly the standards bodies bowing to pressure from the MPAA and Hollywood to not allow unencrypted signals in high def off of players.
The old argument remains that Hollywood says they will not release movies in that format unless they can't be protected from copying and thus the technology giants bow to them in order to sell their product. I am still awaiting a technology giant to dare Hollywood to not support a format and thus lose the sales that way. Of course with companies like Sony running their own music and movie divisions that probably will not happen any time soon.
I sure as shit won't be purchasing one, and neither will an absoloute boat load of HDTV (CRT) owners without digital inputs.
Good luck to them indeed.
Currently, all players that upconvert their video and use HDMI or DVI can only view that 720/1080 video via the HDMI/DVI. They can get 480p out of the component video outputs, but that's it. I don't know why this is such a special announcement.
There's only two players I know of that can do 720 or 1080 via component video (or RGBHV): Krell's DVD Standard and something from Ayre. Both cost more than $8,000, without the "upgrade" that enables the RGBHV output, and aren't worth it compared to Pioneer's superior DV-59AVi.
people may just stick with normal DVDs. maybe both formats suck!
Blu Ray is expensive, and you if more companies follow Toshiba's example, HD-DVDs won't play on 99% of TVs. Are these companies half retarded?
Don't they realize that to 99.9% of the world DVD quality is pretty damn good even for some of the largest HDTVs?
The article says that HD output is provided not only by HDMI, but also by firewire. Does anybody know what security measures would be taken to secure the firewire output? What would happen if I just plugged the DVD player into my firewire port and tried to import video?
We have a Motorola HD cable DVR connected to a Sony HD TV using a DVI (DVR) to HDMI (TV) cable that doesn't pass the DRM signal. The only digital input the TV has is the HDMI input. The digital signal is visibly cleaner and sharper at 1080i than using Component video cables, but there are rare glitches. Occasionally the picture will get out of sync and you see two torn noisy SD images on the screen. You can fix that by simply changing channels and coming back. That gets the 1s and 0s in sync again.
Outside of that the DVR/TV connect is wont to have other head glitches once in while. During one of those the TV displayed a blue box over 2/3 of the screen with the message along the lines of "DEVICE NOT AUTHORIZED for digital connection. Please switch to analog inputs." Power cycles all around cleared that nonsense.
This what we have to look forward to - TVs that will decide if your other devices are authorized to be seen. Support the EFF to stop this madness...or vote with your wallet. Are you ready to pass on watching movies or other HQ content when the day comes soon that all devices work like this?
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Just don't buy it.
The market will teach them to stop doing that.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
But what does it matter anyways? Will there EVER be something that will take full use of the resolution? For example, take the cleanest looking 720p ESPN baseball game, how much higher can the resolution get? There must be some relationship between screen size and the perceptible difference. For example, can people see more detail on a 42" screen if one is 480p and the other is 720p? Maybe on a 120" projection screen it becomes noticable, but how much?
Truth be told, I would be more happy with the current 480p that DVD can play now if the studios treated customers better. No more re-releasing a DVD 3 times, with the first release being shitty and a buy it for $29 or have nothing attitude. Then 18 month later is the re-release "ultimate edition" which cleans the picture up. Coulnd't the studio release a clean picture the first time? And do away with fraud, for example the season 2 boxed set of Magnum PI has a bonus episode of the A-Team, and this episode looks fantastic, very clean. But if you get the boxed set of the A-Team, the other episodes don't look like they have as much resolution. Did the studio spend all their time making the one "free" episode look as good as possible, and neglected the rest because the studio knew the free one was going to sell the set?
And while we are at it, NO MORE FUKING "COPYWRITE" WARNINGS THAT CAN NOT BE FAST FORWARDED AND NO DISABLING OF THE MENU BUTTON DURING PREVIEWS!!! I fucking hate studios that lock me into 5 minutes of copywrite warnings, previews and the studio logo.
And here is a shocking idea. If the studio made a product the way people wanted it, then maybe there would be less copying. If a $30 dvd was not released 3 times, maybe the first version would not be copied like crazy because nobody wants to get fucked with a crippled version.
And I have a long memory. I have a bunch of music CD's with rot. I have one DVD that pixalates, and it did not do that in the past. None of my VHS tapes lock up or pixilate, they keep playing.
I almost wish the S-VHS caught on with near dvd quality. It would be hard to control an analog source. But that is why studios lie and tell us things like DVD's last forever, when in truth they get rot, or lies like no anaolg source could have the same resolution, which it could.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
What does HD-DVD offer the average user? Most people like DVDs not only because they have better image quality than VHS, even if you connect to your TV with an RF cable or RCA composite jack and also because they're smaller than VHS tapes, more durable and easier to fast forward and frame by frame. Exactly what does HD-DVD add to this? Well, you get more data storage, so if you wanted to have a bunch of movies on one disc you could, but I don't think Hollywood is going to go for that. Or you can have super duper high definition movies, which most users don't have the equipment to take advantage of anyways. Cripple it with idiot DRM schemes and you make it even less attractive.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
The playstation 3 will connect to anything, PS3 will also play Blu-Ray DVD. So instead of getting a new expensive dvd player that wont play games and wont work with your current tv, you can get a expensive game system that is the latest and greatest and supports Blue Ray dvd that will support HDTV if you ever decide to upgrade....doubt this will take long to be sorted out on the free market. I am a gadget freak and a technoholic, but I dont own a HDTV, their to expensive, as buy a second car expensive. I will wait until they drop to about 500 for a nice 32 incher before I shell out my rent and food money for one...the tv I got now is adequate and Im not going to upgrade it just to watch blue ray dvds...heck I cant even maximize my enjoyment of regular dvds so both formats are a waste of time to worry about for me and 90% of Americans.
I have seen plenty of Authors & reporters trying to publish these issues in mainstream news, but unfortunatley not many people pay attention because our basic rights & privilages arn't that important when Terrorism is much more glossy and sells a lot better.
When this war on Terror eventually gets old, people are going wonder what happened to all their basic civil liberty's, why mega corporations dictiate what they do, why health & education aren't working etc etc.
It'll work but it'll be 480i. I think HD is fantastic, but nobody will cry for blood. They probably won't even realize it's not 1080.
All I can say is, good. As soon as the general population is forcefully exposed to DRM in the form of movies they can't watch and technologies they can't take advantage of
Seriously, a bunch of early adopters of HDTV (no, only DTV is being forced soon, not HDTV) is limited to 480p, many of which are only 720p LCD/plasma/other screens. While I understand it is somewhat frustrating, I doubt this is "the general population". Some will not even care all too much about an upscaled 480p.
The fact of it is, the "general population" aren't going to take it in the balls (yet). It is the tech users, those pushing the technology to the limit which are going to feel the introduction pains, and only once it is saturated will they tighten the vice on the rest.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yes, consumers will take a certain amount of working over.
But this is TV. When the TV starts screwing up, the other folk in the household get pissed off. They start to ask "why did you buy this piece of crap"? And then it gets returned.
It's easy to screw around with peoples freedoms where they do not notice. But when you start causing issues with peoples entertainment, they take notice and put a stop to it right quick.
If consumers are so easily duped, how come DVD-A didn't take off? Or perhaps DAT? When formats are not free in all ways a consumer cares about then people will not buy them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The purpose of HDMI is to provide both digital video and audio in the same cable. However most digital TVs don't have the necessary speakers to really take advantage of digital audio (DTS, AC3, etc). People who buy a digital TV most often have a receiver that handles the digital audio. Maybe for high end receivers using HDMI cuts down on the amount of cables, but on TVs, I can't really see much of an advantage over DVI.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Step 1 - Create format war...
V D.html
Step 2 - Include outdated interactive capabilties...
Step 3 - Add overbearing copyprotection...
Step 4 - Lose tons of money!
Read my essay on the subject here:
http://www.fireflymovie.com/HighlyInteractiveHD_D
Your right, people will ignore this ... until.
People will ignore this stuff until they bring home yet another component that won't work right with their Thousand dollar TV. Then they'll be really really pissed.
I predict that if the industry gets its way with DRM , then when HDTV finally gets to almost everyone there will be a bloodbath at the polls as people run against incumbents with lines line "Senator X took away your TV, I'll give it back."
DRM is out of hand, its never worked, but the entertainment industry will never learn.
Or someone will come up with a spiffy little adapter sooner than anyone expects.
You know they will do that.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Composite video has a limitation of 140 lines (120 lines practical) of resolution. HDTV is 720P or 1080i. I don't believe you have a HDTV that only has composite input. Component perhaps.
What good is a DRM free grill if there is no one producing steaks for it?
*Everybody* got shoddy capacitors for a few years around 2001. Virtually every manufacturer of electronics was hit.
The scale of the problem was far too enormous for most companies to do anything out of warranty. If your player was four years old, and therefore out of warranty, there's nothing they can do about it. If they did, they'd be screwing their stockholders out of a misplaced sense of social justice.
Your product lasted as long as it was guaranteed to last. Now you know that when you buy a product, the warranty period is all you should expect, because that's all you've paid for in their eyes.
Maybe that will change how much you're willing to spend on things, but it's not manufacturer specific. They all responded the same way. Products with a one year warranty were generally fixed out of warranty, products with a three year warranty were not.
I don't quite get why people get upset about DVDs getting released multiple times. When you bought the DVD initially, were you happy with it? If not, why did you buy it? Did you feel like you must have the latest greatest? When the manufacturer of your car releases an updated version, do you equally get upset?
Let Toshiba kill its own alleged "standard" due to its own stupidity, I say.
1080p is the future, and Blu-Ray/Sony Playstation3 supports 1080p. There are many televisions coming out now and in the near future that supports 1080p, which means Blu-Ray will have an advantage over broadcast, cable, and satellite in terms of image quality for some time to come.
HD-DVD is cheap to manufacture per disc and that is why some studios support it, and supposedly has an advantage over the number of Blu-Ray houses. I say, "big deal." Circuit City's DIVX DVD "standard" also had more studios (plus Steven Spielberg and George Lucas - supposedly) supporting it than open DVD, and we all know what happened there. The end users - us - boycotted DIVX and Circuit City flushed it down the toilet after sustaining massive losses which also led to Circuit City's retail strength collapsing in the face of Best Buy's expansion. It will be no different here. Toshiba is going to sink with HD-DVD, and Microsoft better wake up to that little tidbit and decide not to release and Xbox360 1.5 model with HD-DVD built in. Microsoft could always order Blu-Ray drives from Matsushita if they didn't want to give Sony money per drive.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Component and Composite and different.
Component can do 1080i no probs.
lounge around on the blue couch
Now lets see... To get this thing feeding to my 1987 Black and White television, how many adaptors will I need? It's not cable ready, just has the two little screws in the back where I hook up the rabbit ears...
Anyone know how I can hook this new box up without disconnecting my Atari 2600?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
If you take a look at all the major dvd players out there that have scalers built into them you'll find that currently the only way to go above 480p on them is to use a dvi or hdmi output with hdcp
480p maximum? So what do the PAL DVD players do? Do they downsample 576p to 480p?
2 xboxes, one connected via HDTV cables, another via the standard composite, using a picture in picture, and splitting it down the center of the screen.
You're comparing HDTV (720p) to SDTV (480i or 576i). The article is about downsampling HDTV to EDTV (480p or 576p). What would have been the result in a 3-way comparison between HDTV (720p), EDTV (480p), and SDTV (480i)?
You're kidding me right? You think the same people dumb enough to be led around by the media would be smart enough to figure that it's the DRM stopping their tv from being able to play their new hd-dvd?
No, they'll just spend their next pay check on a new tv that's no better then their current one except for oh say, the copy-protected video input port. That is, if they hadn't already been persuaded by the manipulative best buy employee to buy a new tv before hand anyway.
You are over-estimating the average intelligence of most people in hope that they'll realize what DRM is (among the other stupid things going on around them) and take a stand. I lost that hope a long time ago.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
A good number of attacks have already been found:
@ minder.net/msg11705.html
p /hdcp111901.htm
http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks-moderated
http://apache.dataloss.nl/~fred/www.nunce.org/hdc
You just need to be able to stream the raw data to storage fast enough (or simply pass it on to your display device of choice).
While I feel the same way as you, I remain hopeful that one day the average person will be able to follow a logical argument.
I have my HD-TiVo connected to my Sony TV with an HDMIHDMI cable. All the data goes across encrypted.
But I can't tell, it just works. No problems here.
I don't like the protection being enforced, but it works in my case. Sounds like you have bad equipment.
Note that the spec for protection doesn't even prohibit analog HD output, it only speaks of the digital output. So Toshiba is going farther than required here.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
But when their new TV won't work with their new DVD player? Then the people will cry for blood.
no they won't.
like most sheeple, they'll pay the 15% restocking fee and go back to watching the same old tv they had before.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
imho its all about standards compliance, get that happening and you won't see this behaviour from the big so-called 'standards setters', the victims of the current format wars are you and me, the end users and developers of technology. The choice before us clear. Either look to the collective wealth of international standards embodied by ISO, ICCAN, POSIX and other international technical institutions, or be herded into data cul-de-sacs at the mercy of the proprietry format pimps. Deliberate format redundancy and standards breaking by large corporations are a reality and its cost to the data consumer is massive. If you work procuring for government, or set company compliance standards, do these checks. If you can't find at least 1000 usenet posts, a good dozen IRC channels, thousands of web pages from globally unique sources, at least one document beginning RFC-, a cavalcade of beard twisting commentry debating whether a cross compiler for, or a
perl module for, or a database interface for it exists, then don't touch it with a shitty stick. If its not de facto internationally documented public knowledge just swerve it.
There's a hole in your argument. I agree that most people don't want to buy shit ... but studios *do* lose money from black-market DVDs. In that light, copy protection makes more sense.
we'll just have to hope that natural selection is on our side and maybe one day that will become a reality. You can't expect your average middle aged person to just all of the sudden come to see the light. It's just not in most people to begin with...and some people are colorblind, and others think the light is coming from god and thus instead of trying to understand it......
oh well you get the idea...
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
I hope that this Toshiba player goes the way of Divx and is shown the door out.
What is possible is that the player will only talk to a monitor that supports HDCP. TFA says nothing one way or the other about this, but it'd be something to bitch about if this is the case. Given the existence of large numbers of monitors with DVI and/or HDMI inputs that don't support HDCP (this is especially true for DVI), a DVD player that will only talk to the handful of monitors that support HDCP should be considered broken. Unfortunately, you can't determine from TFA if this is the case.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I don't quite get why people get upset about DVDs getting released multiple times. When you bought the DVD initially, were you happy with it?
There is a fine line between (A) holding back on the quality and/or features on a first release and (B) improving the quality and adding features on a second release.
People tend to get pissed when they feel that the studio is doing (A) just so as to trick people into buying the same product multiple times.
If not, why did you buy it?
Because, at the time, it was the only version available and there was no indication that it would be sold in any other form or from any other supplier. Monopolies encourage artificial scarcity and customers realize that the title may just as easily go out of print as be re-released. In fact, there is a sort of reverse self-fullfilling prophecy about that - the less the first release sells, the less chance it will be re-released and more chance it will go OOP.
(Nevermind that in this digital age with JIT manufacturing NOTHING should EVER go out of print - that's just more of what happens when monopolies are involved.)
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I read you essay too (same AC). In comment, I think what you are saying is sound. All the current DVD next gen wannabes are just some more of the same with increased capacity and lots more inhibitors.
Interactivity is cool, and I think your ideas are great, but you confuse data with procedures, a problem that cannot be solved without a universally standard compliant operating system. Or can it? Maybe you are familiar with the Knoppix remix revolution. If not come join in. I took a DVD to a mates place last week and we watched it on his computer. Big deal? Yes, because to watch it I rebooted his machine, which then loaded a complete operating system which took over the PC, selected the best video mode and then kicked off
a commandline xine from the init.d files. This is the format of the future for your highly interactive videodisc tech, the OS lives on the data medium. OK I admit its crap on a PC with less than 1G of RAM, and it doesn't always work (Ive tried 4 machines and 2 fail), but I know there are peeps out there working on better cloop decompression on the fly etc, so all the components are comming together. If you want interactive I would suggest this route, design it yerself. Adding a menu to bookmarks would be fairly trivial. You could rob bits from freepia
and 'tivo-like' distros to embed complicated X mixed video menus on your DVD! Worlds your oyster mate.
If I found out my car company had brakes that could stop my car 10Xs faster, or an engine that could get 4X the fuel-mileage, that doesn't cost any more than the crap they gave me, I'd be very angry.
Similarly, people who buy DVDs, expect that there isn't going to be a better one comming along soon. They expect that if there's any extra content available (deleted scenes, interviews, etc) it will be included on the DVD they bought. Finding out that you were sold crap, and the studio intentionally held-back content they had available and could have given you, tends to piss someone off.
Movies are not like cars. You can't go to a different manufacturer and get what the first one was holding back from you for their next model.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I meant to say component and not composite.
Life is not for the lazy.
I still have a 80486DX2 66 Mhz, circa 1991/92, that works (and can run the latest Linux kernel, fortunately it has 20MB of RAM). I've got 4 ISA ethernet cards, also all circa 1991/92, in it as well. The most modern thing in it is a 10GB HDD drive, from around 1999. To get the 486 to boot off of it, the BIOS thinks it is only 512MB in size, once Linux starts, Linux sees the whole disk.
Recently I took apart a working 200MB Western Digital HDD, only because the cover would make a useful screw holding tray while working on my bike, and that use became more valuable to me than 200MB of storage ! It was a bit sad to pull apart a still working drive of such age.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
not sure if anyone else said this yet, or noticed, but from what i take out of the wording of this, is that it is saying the HDMI and digital connections will only output hidef...
but then goes on to imply that it does, in fact have analog connections at 480....
correct me if im wrong... but is this just a mix up or are people mass misinterpreting things?
~DreamWraith
I sware that all the upconverting DVD players that are out now, and they are the only things that will currently output an HD signal (720p, 1080i), will output the upconverted signal over HDMI. I don't have one, but that's what I've been told.
So these new HD DVD players are exactly the same as the current upconverting DVD players.
Also, even though it only outputs via HDMI you could buy an HDMI to Component converter and just use those cables. Eventually that might not work, but until -EVERYTHING- complies to those standards I think we could get away with it.
How about we start mass-mailing these rational comments straight to the idiot manufacturers and companies? Maybe if we FROCE them to see our point, perhaps they'll start listening.
/., how many real subscribers/members are here? judging from the numbers of these IDs, somewhere in the millions? That's a LOT of voice to go unheard, people. Anyone up for compiling all these good insightful/informative comments and letting these people KNOW what we want? Of course, we might bomb a few of their mail servers with that much text (not intentionally,) but maybe that'll give them incentive to listen to us and make an immediate response? Or at least, start thinking with brains instead of wallets?
Sure, ten or twenty ain't gonna impress them. Come on, this is
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yeah, right. Just like when the original DVD came out. Copy protection, advertising enforcement and thinly-veiled illegal price fixing in one neat package, and they eat it up like hotcakes.
Yes, in the US where we get first-run DVD's. There were very few in the general populace who ever ran into (or probably even knew) about region restrictions.
Now hop across the pond. Suddenly, you are waiting months for a DVD that is already released in the US. Suddenly, you are paying a hell of a lot more for movies.
So what happened? While I'm sketchy on the exact progression of events, I do know they started off selling region-locked DVD players but somehow people got word there were unlockable players, and sales of those took off. Now I think you can go into any store in Endland and most of the players are region free by default (someone please correct me if you still need to unlock them).
As I said, consumers stopp accepting things when they have something placed between them and thier entertainment. And when consumers start buying, suddenly business practices get a lot more flexible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think the reason the quality is accepted is because many people can still record the signal coming out of the box, and even with artifacts (which I personally detest) it's still way better than broadcast or even analog cable (which I know having just recently switched back to analog cable in an effort to wean myself (and GF) from the TV altogether). If the broadcast flag had ever really been implemented it would have had a nasty backlash from consumers.
:-)
People accept the delay in changing channels because women do not care if it's slow to change channels, and may in fact be somewhat pleased by the delay to slow down others who might wish to do so more often.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just incase the hyperventillating bloggers pick up this story, the correct magic word is down-sampling.
For an insightful, and balanced view into blogging read this article
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
And some small or no-name brand from China, that does not bother with all "checks and balances" (gasp!) suddenly enjoys quadruple sales. :) Philips players in retaliation will have well-known code (flap the door of the player three times, tap on the side panel and say "please let me watch in digital format" three times) that will turn off protection. :)
Of course the funniest thing will be that same factory produces "big name" playes during morning shift
Easy
Hyperom.com
How about the many crypto analysts who claim to have broken HDCP?
0 6&mode=nested&threshold=3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/20/02512
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Yep, I did in fact mean "England"! Very sorry, no excuse. London is one of my favorite cities but when I'm there for some reason I never thing to pop in electronics stores which is why I was not exactly sure what the situation was 9though I knew generally region free players were very easy to get).
In the US you never see region free players in major stores (at least not advertised as such) and most major-brand players are not even unlockable (though I have one that is since I wanted a few DVD's from England I could not get in the states!).
it wil be interesting to see Region Coding, Act II when the Blu-Ray players come out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It drives me nuts
A pirate walks into a bar, and the barkeep says "Excuse me, cap'n, but did you know that you've got your ship's wheel stuck in your pantaloons?"
"Aye," says the pirate, "that thing be drivin' me nuts! Yarrr!"
People in the UK are just starting to wake up because they already know about region coding. I've met a few non-geeks who are already starting to get the idea of open standards (whether in consumer electronics, computing or whatever else).
> You can't expect your average middle aged person to just all of the sudden come to see the light
This have nothing to do with age. Don't think young==smart because you are young and think you're smart.
While you are bitching about "they took away my HD-TV, it want a bloodbath", the power is deeply fucking you about retirement, unions, medicare, genetically modiified food, or diverting huge amount of resources into military lobbies. Which most young people don't care about (as long as they have their HD-TV).
People should be more informed. All of them. On all subjects. But as the media are biased toward power (because the mass media are just too big), democraty is half-f*cked.
Quality isn't an issue for most folks. It's the right to use what you've already paid for. This gets back to the old sold vs. licenced issue.
If the movie was licenced, making a copy for personal use and backup is legitimate.
If the movie was sold, telling the buyer how they can use it is not permitted; ownership has been transfered.
For me, comming from a commercial software background, I take the licence angle as legitmate. Any copy protection is an annoyance and abuses the relationship between copyright holder and licencee (me in this case). Thus, it's not only OK to break copy protection it is a duity if I want to secure my personal rights.
I do have copies of movies on DVD that I have owned on VHS. For example the VHS version of Star Wars where Han shoots first. I do not posess any movies or audio CDs that I do not have a licence for. One of my Monty Python's Flying Circus DVDs was useless (disk 13 of 14 was duped 2x...no disk 14). Dowloaded that one.
I realize that I am in the minority and that most people will copy without compensation any DVD they have or download it on a whim.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Who are you responding to? I don't see the parent thread.
That said, how do the black-market DVD creators create the DVDs they sell?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Don't forget that these security schemes are just fences. There is a way around any security system in the world, including Alcatraz, the issue is only how difficult it is to circumvent it, and to make it not worth the effort.
What else?
Hah! You think the average young person is smart?
Maybe not. PC games don't work (due to faulty "copy protection" technologies), and all people do is buy console games instead, because they work.
DVD Movies have region coding in them, so people buy the working (region-free) DVD players instead.
When the USA switches off analog TV in a couple of years, you might get a protest though.
It may be good news. If there is only HDMI suport, then doesn't the exemption clause of the DMCA kick in with regards to reverse engineering and decrypting data for purposes of compatibility (HDTV's without HDMI) where no other option exists? I know I haven't quoted it and may be a bit of, but I seem to recall something along that lines.
I thought a HDMI input would accept unencrypted DVI as well. So I can't connect my PC to my TV if it's only got HDMI? If that's the case, I won't be buying any time soon - not until the prices come way down. I'm not paying $2000 for a TV that I can't feed my own video into. That's just stupid.
/. is sorry for the error, and happy to set the record straight :-)
BC
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html
I read endless reviews of DVI/HDMI output DVD players and the only one that rated higher than the Oppo was the high end (aka the ridiculously expensive aka costs more than most cars) Denon player.
Best of all, Oppo provides great customer support. I've emailed them several times and have always received a response the same day. Before I bought it, I also emailed a question to Samsung and received a response 4 days later (which didn't even answer my question but rather instructed me to call them).
I have read previews on the internet that the new HD-DVD players that your company will be releasing will only support the HDMI interface. This is a situation that as a consumer, and an early adopter of HDTV that seriously concerns me. HDTV is a wonderful technology, but the consumer electronics industry is totally screwing over the consumers. First the original standard was supposed to be RGB, that got changed to Y-Pb-Pr. This did hurt me in my original purchase. Since then, I have bought an HDTV, but it only has component inputs on it, there is no HDMI interface on it. So now that I have bought a new $3000 tv, I can't use one of your HD-DVD players on it? This is totally alienating people like me. Are you going to replace my 52" tv which is less than a year old? At best case, you will alienate your consumers to the point that you will not sell these units. At worst case, consumers are going to get fed up with this constantly changing standard and file a class action lawsuit against irresponsible companies that are totally screwing us over. Please explain this situation to me. Thank you, Brian Emenaker, concerned consumer
Hey, those same people saw right throught the original divx scheme. Also, as you mention best buy, I see a couple of scenerios for the return of the stuff that doesn't work because of DRM.
1) they will tell them that the device is fine, you just need to trash your current thousand dollar TV and buy a new thousand dollar tv.
2) they will try to sell them whatever settop box they need to make the device work (probably costing as much the DVD player)
3) they'll fess up and show them the less DRM encumbered players
While 3 is highly unlikely. Options 1 and 2 both have the customer leaving the store really pissed.
It looks like they've locked themselves out of a sale from me-- I have an HDTV set, but it's a slightly older one with only analog component inputs. I was really looking forward to HD media of some flavor, but it won't be this one, and I imagine I'm not alone. I wonder what percentage of deployed HDTVs are analog-only, and how many of those folks would be willing to upgrade after such a short time?
They're still selling sets like this, too.
Sure, how long has macrovision been around for?
I simply can't be bothered to worry about this stuff any more. I'm taking my ball and going home. I can live without the TV, movies, and music that the big labels produce. I don't want to have to understand the HDCP, DVI, or whatever specs. I don't want to do research when buying new hardware to ensure that it has not been crippled due to copy protection. This isn't a boycott on my part, and I'm not making some kind of big statement about standing up to Hollywood. It's just that it's gotten all too complex and stupid for something so simple - watching a program. The payoff is just not there for me personally. Maybe once the dust settles I'll have another look to see if the end result is favorable. I would LIKE to be able to watch movies or TV occasionally, after all. In the mean time, though, I am exercising my freedom to walk away.
Having an HDTV set, with native 720 p, I'm not running out to buy this stuff yet-you don't NEED it. Yes, my over the air signals in HD are better than over the air classic blur 0 Vision, 480 P, but a DVD usually throws the best possible 480 p picture, with stable colors. The difference between HD and OTA or cable TV Classic is huge. The difference between DVD and HDTV is not nearly as great. I'm watching on a 42 inch screen, so this might not apply to a 60 inch screen. The short answer, is that while I'd like an HD DVD, I don't need it badly enough to pay $1000 for it, nor do I need to eat the poison apple of DRM. I'd like HDTV -DVD, but not as offered by the monopoly content providers.
have been watching the HD market evoution for a while now. The first HD players were supposed to emerge in 2003, and here we are: still nothing but air. Seems that the delay has really opened up an opportunity for Microsoft, and their FVD format which is about to be released in China and Taiwan ($170 for a player, wiich includes 10 movie titles) looks like it might be a winner. MS have also got the DRM side down, through experimentation with WMV-HD in the PC realm, and it is likely the new XBox will support the WMV-HD format, which means a lot more people will have a high def player based around MS technology than Toshiba or Sony.
The reality is that DVD's will be with us for a long time. The studios cannot ignore that existing market, and if you have a good DVD player, like with Faroudja or Silicon Optix chips, you can pull a picture that is very close to HD I have done side-by-side comparisons with some of the titles that have come out with both DVD and WMV-HD disks on a 120 inch screen, and the DVD (Faroudja-processed) actually has more detail than the WMV-HD.
MS have thrown Toshiba a bone by saying they will support the HD-DVD format in the XBox at some stage, but I think the real player in formats and DRM will be MS.
Meanwhile, it is a race between the improvement in DVD players, and HD. All the media is out there for DVD, and better players, with projection systems, make a lot more sense than being an early adopter of any HD format.
Early adopters, later adopters, yesterday adopters...everyone screwed because it all keeps changing every year.
Component video...no wait, DVI video, no...we meant HDMI. Pick a format and live with the limitations already. That's why other formats have lasted for decade after decade, analog TV, FM, AM, CD, etc. They made a choice, then stuck with it.
I put off buying into HDTV until the standards all stabilized and the kinks worked out, but the clock is ticking and I'm not going to live forever! damn!!!
I was replying to "HDCP requried by DVD spec," which you can find by clicking the "parent" link below my post.
I honestly don't know how the DVD creators make their DVDs; I only know that there is a huge black market here in NYC for illegally copied DVDs.
OK. Then, why did your subject say; Re:Studios don't lose money because someone copies? Very confusing.
I honestly don't know how the DVD creators make their DVDs; I only know that there is a huge black market here in NYC for illegally copied DVDs.
They don't break the consumer-grade copy protection, they just copy the raw data or transcode (look it up if interested) it so it fits on single layer consumer grade media. If they don't, they are morons. (Then again, they are blatently stealing someone else's property...so maybe they are morons.)
One important rule of security: Lack of physical security means lack of assurance of any security. Meaning: If someone can touch it, you have lost certianty that it will continue to be secure.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Come on, how many people are REALLY demanding to buy stuff like the Sci-Fi series? Very few comapred to the market at large, which is why the hue and cry for region free players is not as great here and thus they are substantially harder to find (though of course not impossible).
I bought a copy of "The Italian Job" from Endland myself (long before the DVD came to the US). But there just is almost nothing mainstream that's released there first instead of here.
As noted, australia is the same way - and the reason why it's so easy to buy region-free players anywhere bu the US is as I said because the DRM has affected for more buying options elsewhere than here.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I believe they use HD-VHS recorders (like the JVC HM-DH30000) that record from satellites and output to component. I'm not sure how they convert that to digital, though.