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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."
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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/
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.
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.
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.
I'm being punished for being an early adopter; my HDTV has composit input only.
If somebody sold you an HDTV with nothing but a composite input, then I've got a bridge on the East River you might be interested in too.
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.
Are you kidding?
I don't even have one, and I have an HDTV!
I have a CRT Philips set, which uses component input.
So, basically, Toshiba expects me to buy a third piece of hardware (a video processor) in order to use their product? Dream on.
This should dramatically hurt their sales. This hyperparanoia with regard to copy protection has gotten out of hand.
-- This sig for rent.
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
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.
Typical consumers have no imagination and accept what they are told. If you complain, you're met with either the same resigned agreement you get when you complain about the weather, or the "company line" about how it's all good and necessary and looked at as an idiot or a communist.
It's damn near impossible to underestimate the stupidity of the masses.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
*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.
DTCP/5C has been around since 1998. One of the things they have us content protection over 1394. DTCP/5C protection supports renewability, copy control information, and content encryption. All the HDTV equipment with 1394 (DVHS vcr, monitors with 1394 input) are required to implement DTCP for copy control/encryption.
This system has not been broken as of today (2005), and the possibilities that a "box in the middle" attack can even be applied to this protection scheme are unlikely, because of how key exchange is implemented and because compromised hardware can be blacklisted easily.
i wonder what the typical lifespan of a computer is, setting aside the fact that most people dispose of them faster just because they're outdated. if they do die faster than other electronics, i wonder which is the part that dies fastest on average (my guess would be hard drive?)
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.
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.
If this were entirely true, digital cable/satellite TV would not be the heaping piece of crap that it is today and you might actually get picture quality comparable to analog and not wait 2 seconds just to change the channel.
As for HD, I have yet to see a stream, by means of over-the-air or terrestrial cable, that didn't have the bitrate squeezed so hard that artifacts were everywhere and anything beyong 480p was pointless.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
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.
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
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!
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.