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

Wow

[UserChrisCanter4]

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.