Slashdot Mirror
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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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
DVI is not encrypted, is it?
This reminds me of the macroflash that some DVD players have. If you try and copy a DVD to a VHS tape, it will phase in and out of the picture in all sorts of colors. Did people think that a 480p picture needs to be protected from being copied on a format that is half the resolution and interlaced?
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.
The problem is not with copying a DVD. Studios don't lose money because someone copies a DVD and trades it. Studios loose money when you already have the $29.99 blockbuster hit on DVD, and two years later they re-release the same movie on DVD and clean it up a bit. Who wants to buy the same shit twice? It pisses people off, and that is when they start thinking about copying a DVD. No, they don't copy the ultra edition, because that is the one they want to buy and have as a part of their DVD collection. They copy the crappy first release. Now I have known some DVD collectors with 700+ DVD's to copy a DVD, and then see the DVD was done right, and buy the first version. People don't want to buy shit.
Studios do not respect people. If Studios respected me as a person, they would not waste my time. Not in theaters with 20 minutes of commercials and $5 popcorns. Not with DVD's that disable the menu and fast forward buttons. Not with DVD's that get re-released three times.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
OK, I've not read the spec, but you've contradicted yourself there.
"Data protection is obligatory"
But the paragraph you quote:
"Content protection capability is recommended..... An HDMI compliant Source should protect all of the protected audiovisual data."
Doesn't sound like "obligatory" to me.