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.

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.

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.