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."

Comments

HDTV!

[groovy.ambuj]

There have been recent surge in HDTV. Recently ATI technologies also annouced cheap HDTV... though wondering why would Toshiba support only high def??

Re:HDTV!

[damsa]

I think you are reading it wrong. Toshiba will only support high def if your TV has also a HDMI plug. Otherwise it will look the same if you use component or other methods of cabling as a progressive scan DVD.

My guess is, is so the movie studios will release stuff on Toshiba's format first because it will be less likely to be pirated. HDMI only means that stuff will be encrypted. Then everyone will buy Toshiba's format then Toshiba can make billions off licensing. Most people won't notice that their HDTV set is not playing at full capacity HD mode using regular plugs so they will continue to buy Toshiba HD-DVD licensed stuff because it's out sooner than blue ray. It's an interesting strategy but probably will not work as Sony also owns a movie studio, thus most movies from Sony, like Spiderman 3 will probably come out on Blu Ray first if HD-DVD at all.

"It's Filet Mingon, but ONLY on our grill!"

[Nova Express]

"If you try to grill steaks on any grill other than our own, it instantly turns into hamburger!"

"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."

HDCP requried by DVD spec

[rstewart]

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.

Recipe: How to kill a technology before it starts

[jaysedai]

Step 1 - Create format war...
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_DV D.html

Re:"Secure Digital Outputs"?

[eobiont]

Firewire is secured by 5C style encryption. Free to Copy, Copy Once, or Copy Never. Singnal other than Free to Copy are not passed out firewire if there is any device on the firewire chain that is non-5C compliant.

Boooogus.

Re:Uh, composite video is limited to 140 lines

[Cowclops]

If 720p is 720 lines... then composite video is 525 lines (in NTSC countries anyway.) Not sure where you got "140 lines (120 practical)" from because you can definitely get >400 HORIZONTAL lines from a laserdisc and laserdiscs are recorded in composite video. Even VHS tapes can handle about 240 lines. All NTSC composite connections are 525 lines vertically, with about 486 and a half of them actually being visible on screen and the rest is just the vblank period.

Re:Wow

[afidel]

Yes, in fact the HDCP spec specifically bars the decryption of protected content on general purpose PC's. That means no more media center XP, no more homebrew PVR's, no more doing as you wish with your purchased content. And of course once the encryption is cracked the easiest way to enjoy your purchase will be to break the law (DMCA) and strip all the "protection" nonesense and so with it as you damn well please.

HDMI encryption is going down faster than CSS!

[Anonymous Coward]

A good number of attacks have already been found:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks-moderated@ minder.net/msg11705.html

http://apache.dataloss.nl/~fred/www.nunce.org/hdcp /hdcp111901.htm

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).

HDMI != HDCP

[ncc74656]

You're confusing HDMI with HDCP. HDMI is just DVI-D combined with audio. HDCP is a "copy-prevention" scheme that can be applied to either HDMI or DVI-D (or the digital part of DVI-I). If your monitor has a DVI-I or DVI-D input, you can get a dongle that will adapt HDMI to DVI. (Dongles are also available going the other way, to plug a device with DVI output into a monitor with an HDMI input.)

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.

Re:HDMI != HDCP

[WARM3CH]

Data protection is obligatory in HDMI protocol. Look at this phrase from part 9.1 of the HDMI 1.1 spec:

Content protection capability is recommended for all HDMI compliant devices. An HDMI compliant Source should protect all of the protected audiovisual data. Amongst adequate copy protection technologies that are compatible with HDMI, HDCP is available.

(you can get a copy of the latest specs from http://www.hdmi.org/)

Re:HDMI != HDCP

[Spoing]

"Content protection capability is recommended..... An HDMI compliant Source should protect all of the protected audiovisual data."

Doesn't sound like "obligatory" to me.

Ever worked on a contract where the requirements are spelled out? I'm betting you haven't.

The word "should" is implied everywhere. The word "should" means "will do this or will violate the contract" not "may if you want".

As for "recommended", it means what it says, yet "should" takes it away since if you don't follow the recommendation, you've broken the relationship and liked snubbed kids they will take the ball and go home. If you want to play, you have to follow the rules of the ball owner in this case.

Re:HDMI != HDCP

[Edgewize]

In any standards doc I've ever seen,

MAY = optional
MAY NOT = optional
SHOULD = strongly recommended
SHOULD NOT = advised against
MUST = required
MUST NOT = not permitted
SHALL = must
SHALL NOT = must not

Look to England

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Look to England

[jimicus]

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).

I'll assume you mean England.

Depends where you shop. Ironically, cheap Chinese players in supermarkets are more likely to ship unlocked than expensive ones in electronics stores like Dixons (though most generally say "Region 2" on the box). OTOH, Richer Sounds (cheap hifi warehouse) regularly advertise players as "region free". Sometimes they get in a job lot of a particular model, unlock the region on some of them and sell them at a £20 premium over the "region locked" version.

And if that didn't put the final nail in the coffin of DVD region coding, Amazon UK even put instructions on their website for "how to unlock your DVD player".

Re:Format war

[ColaMan]

You can get one now (from cNet, via boingboing:
DRM removal widget

[...I]t uses the HDCP chips ususally built into high definition displays, so that HDCP "protected" signal sources uncomplainingly deliver their signal to the boxes. They then convert them to RGBHV or unprotected DVI signals.

Buy a crate of them now! Ebay, here we come!

Re:I'm willing to bet that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD

[Shawn Parr]

One reason, despite their higher quality, has to be the onerous copy protection attached to each format, including such idiocy as disabling digital bass management at the player level thus requiring users to run six analog connections between their SACD/DVD players and their home theater receivers.

Er, both of these formats use a resolution that current digital interconnects are not capable of. They decided that instead of creating a new digital standard, or messing up an existing one so that some things would work together but some won't, to go the good old "everyone can handle analog" route.

Seriously, neither SPDIF (coax) or TOSLINK (optical) has the bandwidth for multichannel 96k audio, or 192k audio, both of which are supported with DVD-Audio.

In much the same vein SACD uses a bitstream rather than decimating the stream from the converters into set word lengths. This is conceptually why it sounds better, because you are skipping the decimation stage in the A/D convertor, and also not having to reconstruct the digital words back into a bitstream for the D/A convertor.

SACD's bitstream is at a bit over 2Mhz, which is above the bandwidth that standard SPDIF/TOSLINK circuitry is capable of.

Yes, all this DRM stuff really annoys me too. However this is the one case where connections were done in a way to try to make it more universal rather than create more industry confusion.

Imagine buying an SACD player with SPDIF that only worked with Sony Receivers made since 2001? People would be annoyed, just like they are about HDMI, etc.

Re:But I thought....

[netringer]

I thought a HDMI input would accept unencrypted DVI as well.

As I understand it, it does. It's working that way for me. In my case I think the cable is not passing the DRM stuff from the source to the TV, because the source is, indeed, DVI. The TV is usually happy with the signal.

The other lines missing in the cable are the audio lines, which as far as I'm concerned are a silly idea. You'll send audio to the audio surround system, not the tinny speakers on the monitor, if it even has those.