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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.
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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?
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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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.