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Toshiba Introduces U.S. First HD DVD Players
Roy R writes "Toshiba America Consumer Products unveiled today the market launch details for its line-up of the first High Definition DVD players for the U.S. market. The new HD DVD players, models HD-XA1 and HD-A1, will take advantage of the superior capabilities of the HD DVD format.
The players will output copy-protected HD content through the HDMI interface in the native format of the HD DVD disc content of either 720p or 1080i."
anybody have a solution to that I'd be really greatful.
MP3 Search Engine
I don't care about being able to play a media there is nothing to play, it would have made more sense to release recorders first so there would actually be some media for the players to play, plus I want to use them for backups. :)
...that either HD-DVD or Blu-Ray becomes dominant. What we really don't need is two formats each with exclusive studio deals. I don't want two players...
Call me when they're price at a more reasonable level. $500 for the base model is stupid. $800 for the premier model is gouging.
Begun, the HDMI massacre has.
Global warming is a cube.
or does the player in the picture look remarkably big/clunky?
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Thanks Toshiba, glad to hear it will only work with HDMI seeing as how my Toshiba HD-Ready TV only has component connections!
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
Does anyone else think that picture looks like it is from 1985? Compare it with the first Sony CD player in 1985 - http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/images/PDRM 1542a.jpg
It is huge and expensive...I'll wait for it to come down in price and when it can record.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I mean, honestly why pay $500 for a machine that has little to no content available for it? I have a bad feeling, that like DVD, one of the first titles we see will be James Taylor live in concert...
And I lift my glass to the awful truth which you can't reveal to the ears of youth except to say it isn't worth a dime.
I want to view my movies directly from my harddrive, when will the movie/media/music industry get it?
During the keynotes, Peter Moore announced an external HD-DVD player for the XBox 360 as well.
No word if the player would be manufactured by Toshiba, though.
Keynote is here in text form.
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
... that you are supposed to buy DVDs, not watch them !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
1. Why don't the release writers first so there's something to play? They can't. Even the industrial disk writing systems are still having yield problems, so there's no chance the home burning technology will be ready for years to come. 2. Nobody will buy them because there's nothing to play. There's a chicken and egg problem here. Who is going to release content if nobody has players? Idealy players and disks should be released simultaneously, like XBOX 360 and it's launch titles but HD DVD is a longer term game. Exactly the same things were said about DVD when it first came out. Limited runs of HD DVDs are avilable, just not to consumers. I imagine the first buyers of HD DVD players will be HD DVD disk manufacturers, distributors and content developers with access to limited distribution material. With XBOX MS could deliver test boxes directly to such people, but for HD DVD there are so many of them in so many parts of the world it's probably more efficient to put the drives on the market and let such companies buy them through consumer channels. Simon Hibbs
I got me a player, it's as big as a whale and we're headed on down to run a HDMI hack. I got me a Toshiba, it weighs about twenty, so hurry up and bring your hard earned money! ...
Sign says, Fooo! Stay away fools, 'cause DRM rules at the HD DVD shack,
Well it set me back near the middle of a thousand,
Just a funky old Betamax and I gotta take it back.
If big boobed women work at Hooters do one legged women work at IHOP?
Edumacate me. Why tell us that bad info is being posted without telling us what the bad info is?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I dont know about other people but the toshiba hdtv 26 widescreen tv that i got for $488 has an hdmi input on the back that is hdcp ready .
But $500 dollars is quite expensive.
Begun the resales of Star Wars have.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Remember, if you don't have a high-density set that supports the HDMI copy protection standard, this isn't going to do anything. Computer monitors do not count.
It is also first generation, and very likely to have major electrical problems. Not to mention the player is about the size of an average HDTV set.
The ______ Agenda
They were using it as sort of a sensationalist buzzword.. don't forget that curreent-gen dvds are also copy protected.
pSc
Proud Rememberer of the BBS Days.
... when the content protection scheme will be cracked and when I will be able to make a DRMless backup copy which I can watch where, when and the way I want.
See ya in 2020.
If the HD signal is not output via component outputs as well as HDMI, this is going to be a non-starter for many of us who have 0 or 1 HDMI input on our HD TVs. I have 1 and it it connected to my cable box.
Consumers are not going to go for this new format. Do they honestly expect the general consumer to get rid of their DVD players so soon? I believe this is an example of a technology that is out too early and by too early I mean at least 10 years too early. The only niche market I can see this succeeding is on the computer side (and gaming consoles). Most people have finally moved over to DVD...heck some have not...no way I can see them moving over to HD-DVD so soon. I usually buy new technologies but unless the formats are settled and they give us coupons to exchange existing DVDs over I wont even contemplate moving over... I used to own 600+ VHS movies...when DVD came out it made sense to sell them off and move over to DVD...I have over 600+ DVDs...they can kiss my you-know-what if they think i'm moving over to HD-DVD (or Blue-Ray). And yes I do have an HD-Television and I realise what I'm missing but on the other hand DVDs are here to stay for at least another 10 years.
I don't understand why they're going with 1080i, a standard for CRT TVs. All modern displays are progressive. 1080p refreshing at 24Hz would be ideal for showing movies, and would be the same bandwidth.
I think one of the things that really helped spur on DVD adoption over VHS wasn't the prettier pictures and better sound, it was the fact that you can do much more with a DVD than you ever could with a cassette. You can skip to whatever scene you want, you can access extras, you can change the audio track to your language of choice(if it was on the dvd of course!), you can add subtitles, you can get rid of subtitles, you can hear commentary, you don't have to play with tracking etc.
The only difference that I see between DVD and HD-DVD is prettier pictures, and to me it just doesn't matter that much, but I am in no way representative of the public at large...
Monstar L
I wonder if it will be released as a giant box-set (1-6), two box sets (1-3 and 4-6), or both? I'd certainly buy a giant box set, but I imagine the price of such an item would put some buyers off (remember, marketing isn't about appealing to common sense). Or I'll just wait for it to come out on Blu-ray... yeah, that sounds better.
If they think Im gonna buy a brand new set just to have an HDMI port...
Wrongo! If they had put an HD signal over component video I would have
spent the $500 on an HD-DVD player.
...for one that plays both formats
0 6/01/05/broadcom-unveils-chip-that-plays-blu-ray-h d-dvd/
http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/20
(apologies if this is already linked)
If this this only has HDMI connectors, how in the world do they expect people to buy this? Both of my HDTVs use component inputs, and I would only buy something with component output on the unit. Is there any way to "convert" the HDMI to component? (i.e. some kinda dongle or something)
HDMI only was a stupid move. I already get the feeling like this was rushed to the market just to be able to say "we had the first." I convert my HD signal with a 3rd party unit to watch on my 19" LCD in my bedroom. I have a 50" DLP downstairs. There's enough HD content (including most of my beloved Red Sox home games) to keep my content. There will be more content in the future. It seems as though I'm the only one titilated for this all digital no more analog stuff. How long before Netflix starts to carry HD discs? They're my only source of DVDs. Right cuz I've never, every "backed up" Netflix DVD on my too-big-to-ever-fill-but-smallest-SATA-you-can-buy hard drive. Maybe I'll be able to fill it now.
including "Serenity"!
via betanews
Universal Pictures announced at the HD DVD press conference in Las Vegas Wednesday that it will have 10 titles available for the high-definition format's launch this spring. The studio will issue new and older movies on HD DVD throughout 2006. Initial releases will include six new movies: "Jarhead," "Doom," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Cinderella Man," "Serenity" and "The Bourne Supremacy," along with four older flicks: "The Chronicles of Riddick," "U-571," "Van Helsing," and "Apollo 13."
You are a sucker for coporate billion dollar whores mafia fuck faces.
The power required for HD-DVD is SFA, Sure we might need 4x or 2x more space, but the cpu power or logic power
is trivial, or $10 at most.
If a $200 PC from wallmart can play HD MPEG2 files, thats 3x over priced compared to dedicated hardware decoders that are 5 years late.
Its called, "yes we can do the tech now at $10 more, but we will charge you $900 more because we are greeedy F UCKS."
We all could do HD quality in 1998, shit man, I bought a 21" monitor for $40 that could easily do 1280 in 1998.
so being generous for year 2000, the video card/hardware was trivial to do mpeg2 at 1280x768, its DRM that costs 1000000 man hours... or is it LAWYER HOURS!!!!!!!!!!
God damn lawyers, they should be paid $8hr or outsourced to india at $3/hr, because they are Dumb MOFOS - that never invent any thing, and know nothing, and couldnt save the titanic if it depended on their lives.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The sooner they start releasing Blu-ray/HD-DVD, the sooner people can get to work on reverse-engineering the encryption and copy-protection so it'll work on linux. From what I've heard about the copy protection, it will definitely be an obstacle, but will be defeated by the bright minds of open-source.
Will I buy HD-DVD/Blu-ray movies if they aren't supported by open-source at all? I might, but only if releases on regular DVD stop altogether.
What is the copy protection mechanism then? Is it biometric or does it require a human sacrifice?
kin242.net
i made a choice 2 years ago, and now im laughing at the whole next-gen dvd fiasco
;)
1. dump/put up the attic my VHS tapes
2. not to buy expensive EUR20 a pop DVD's
3. Rent and Rip (recently i jumped onto Nero MPEG4 where i can have mp4 video thats capable of being encoded up to HD resolutions, multiple dolby digital soundtracks,subtitles ) 4. Store on my harddrives (over 2TB of content now)
5. connect my pc to my HD projector
STICK A MIDDLE FINGER UP TO MPAA and CO P.S usenet and bittorent helped as well
The players will output copy-protected HD content through the HDMI interface in the native format of the HD DVD disc content of either 720p or 1080i."
Cue the surge in sales of HDMI to non encumbered output dongles.
A buddy of mine was showing me the unit he bought to hook his older HD plasma to his new DVD player with HDMI... how long until these older units start going for high $$$ or a company like lite-on or APEX starts creating units that bypass this stupid DRM?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What I am really looking forward is 1080p output capable HD-DVD players. 2006 year is going to be the year of 1080p HD Displays. Unfortunately, HDMI (as I understand) as a format does not have 1080p output well-defined (or defined at all for that matter). However, 1080p HD displays offer significantly better picture quality than 1080i/720p displays. Costco is offering a 37" flat screen 1080p for $1600. Other ~60 inches 1080p displays are pulling in under 5k at this time - which means they will "soon" come to under $2.5k budget. Once it reaches at that point, many of early HDTV adopters (about 1 million in US) will be itching to upgrade their gear to 1080p capable display. It would be a shame if HD-DVD players (without any valid technical reason) will limit its output to 1080i.
When DVD players first arrived on the market, I paid $600 for a basic featured player. Now, for under $80 you can get one with progressive scan and can play any digital file format on the market today.
I won't be fooled again into paying a premium for HD-DVD players.
First, they are essentially the same technology, simply tweaked to squeeze out more storage space and using a different wavelength of laser. This is hardly technology that required billions or even millions of R&D costs. Like the original DVD player and is close ties to CD technology, HD-DVD is just an extension, not an evolution of DVD technology. Thus, we shouldn't have to pay a huge premium for it.
When you consider that the chassis and most of the components in an HD-DVD player are going to be identical to a regular DVD player (especially the current up-conversion ones), your talking about probably $20 of unique technology that goes into every unit, this doesn't justtify a 400% - 800% markup over regular DVD players.
Second, I won't pay more for HD-DVD titles. I don't care if they required new expensive technology to be mastered, Hollywood is making huge profits on the markup for regular DVD's, some of those initial HD-DVD costs can be absorbed in their current pricing scheme. Your talking about digital data formats, HD-DVD is simply film mastered with a higher bit-rate, again hardly revolutionary or required millions in research to get accomplished. If you start to consider that many movies are filmed digitally these days, conversion from one digital format to another is a brainless activity.
Lastely, what is the difference in quality? I mean, when I compared my first DVD movie to a VHS version, the difference was astonishing. Crystal clear video and digital surround sound sold me on the DVD format. I haven't been entirely blown away by the HD revolution. HDTV quality is good, but I find I can still live with standard def digital cable on a good quality television with a good cable signal. Most HDTV sets I am seeing also are not doing HDTV justice, especially the cheap LCD panels that can't display a good color gamut regardless of their resolution quality. I'll have to wait until I actually see HD-DVD on a good quality HDTV, but I am sure it won't be as ground breaking as the original DVD format.
My reasoning for holding off on adopting HD-DVD is based on past experiences, if I wait a few years, HD-DVD players will be in the $100 range, most movies will be masterd in HD-DVD for the same price, and if Blu-Ray does make an impact, I won't feel like I lost out in another Betamax-VHS or LaserDisc-DVD war.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
bravo
VHS to DVD was a big leap in terms of clarity, resolution, sound and usability. HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will give better resolution, although for most people, they will need a new TV set, and I know lots of friends who just won't bother. They'll get HDTV when their set breaks down.
Personally, I want to see something like 2000+ line resolution. Putting down a ton of money for new kit to see movies at barely better than DVD resolution isn't going to win me over.
I think it will go beyond niche, but it's going to take a very long time.
Given the politics of the new disc formats, if that does happen, it will actually happen on Blu-ray.
You could. I had a few tapes with outtakes or documentaries. But it meant that if you wanted to see them, you had to run the tape to the right point.
So now I gotta buy all new DVDs? ;-(
Also one word: porn.
If their player only outputs HDMI and not component video, then a great deal of first and second gen HDTVs won't be able to use this. I have a first-gen Panasonic Plasma TV that has component only (although they sold an add-on card to do DVI). So I can't use this.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Watching high def television content on my 60" Sony makes me drool at the prospect of true high def dvds. Right now I use an Oppo upsampling dvd player which does a pretty decent job of converting a dvd to 1080i, but the quality depends on the quality of the original dvds, so for example Attack of the Clones is gorgeous (the quality of the movie itself is another topic :) ), but my Predator dvd is awful.
That beging said, upsampled dvd's don't hold a candle to true high def. It's not quite like from VHS to DVD in terms of quality improvement...but it's pretty close!
The quality difference is masked on a smaller screen but on a large screen the difference is pretty significant.
I'm a little disappointed with HD-DVD's storage capacity, as blu-ray seems to be technologically superior, but from what I have read blu-ray's drm scheme is crippling to the consumer and should not be supported in any way!
It does matter because most 1080i deinterlacing sucks. Interlacing should never have been in the standard. It is a hideous compromise that falls apart when fast motion happens. You can't simply merge the frames and show at half the rate because each half of the frame happens at a different time.
De-Interlacing is difficult enough that most 720p sets just throw out one field and upsize the remaining one...
If this is what they are doing, it presents a significant advantage for BD-rom as I saw 1080P as their standard and since only the lunatic fringe of early adopters is likely to buy they are going to want 1080p.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
During the keynotes...
Keynotes for CES? What keynotes?
The only people who will want to buy these devices are early adopters.
Can you see what i'm getting at? For $500, it better come with component out or it wont get very far.
"..to me it just doesn't matter that much, but I am in no way representative of the public at large..."
You are probably more representative than you know. This is not a VHS vs BETA type BATTLE.
This is DVD-A vs SACD vs CD type battle. Tell me who one that one DVD-A or SACD? CD of course.
Same formula, improve quality, add more DRM (Deny Rights Management) and they will beat a path to your door.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
After buying a SACD/DVD-A universal player a couple years ago, and still finding a horrible lack of desireable content released, I think I've already played this dualing format game. And lost. Like a total John. Obvious answer is that the Touchstone and New Line type industry players are just going to do what the music labels did -- continue to release content on the lowest common denominator; the DVD-Video. Personally, I'm not making this mistake. I may well buy a Sony PS3 when it ships, then if a decent movie is released in Blu-Ray HD then I already will have a player. However my A/V rack will be void of any HD player for the foreseeable future, mostly because I don't see the HD DVD conflict being resolved any cleaner of faster than the current SACD/DVD-A skirmish that I jumped into.
Oh, wow! ONE movie I or my wife give a rat's ass about (Apollo 13) and I already have that on DVD. That, and my TOSHIBA HDTV only has component inputs. I don't guess they'll be getting 5 of my Franklins.
I wonder how long it'll be before some Chinese or Korean manufacturer bucks the system and makes HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players with component video outputs? Oh, and how long before there's some worthwhile content?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
1080p is not just flicker reduction. It will remove all the jumpiness and motion artifacts that plague 1080i. Since most 1080 displays are native progressive all the 1080i signals are deinterlaced and produce artifacts in the process. These are almost inevitable as you can't simply combine 1080i frames as they are not from the same time and object will have moved between the two fields of the full frame. In short this is a mess.
1080P signal with 1080p monitor is the way to go. Another win for Blu Ray, though I hope both flop with their DRM (Draconion Restriction Managment).
I can't say I'm that interested in the opinion of Toshiba's PR department about their new drive. Especially the little line about HD DVD having superior storage capacity. While this is true now (50gig vs 40gig, IAMNM), the theoretical max of BluRay is so far beyond that of HD DVD. Not to mention Bluray being 1mm thick vs. 5mm for HD DVD.
I don't think this little war over HD movies and content is quite over. esp. since this sucker doesn't even record for $500+
According to a company working on this nanotechnology. . Atomic Holographic Optical Storage Nanotechnology will dramatically improve applications like 6,840 raw uncompressed high quality Video/TV hours, or 2,100,000 chest x-rays, or nearly 10,000,000 high-resolution images, or 30,000 four-drawer filing cabinets of documents, or 20,000 DVD'S Worm's , or 4,000 BLU-Ray Worm disk's, or 100 - 100 gigabyte disk drives or 50 Inphase Holographic Disks on ONE 10 Terabyte 3.5 in. removable disc.
I agree.
Practical example: for me, watching F1 on DVB-S with deinterlacing at 25fps is
much worse than analog satellite TV.
My post wasn't in any way off topic.
I dare someone with a pair to come and tell me how my joke was off topic. Sheesh. A post about hd-dvd renditions of old movies are modded as off topic on a hd-dvd story discussion. This is utterly illogical!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Just a couple of things to add. 1. there will be no point in buying your old dvd's again in HD. only new movies from here on out will matter anyway. Yes, they'll release a new version of the old Star Wars trilogy, but it was filmed in analog back in the day, and there's no more quality to gain than the DVD already squeezes out.
2. Are there any tv's that have >1 HDMI connection? I don't think i've seen a set with more than one. I've got a new 50" sony, and it's only got 1 HDMI which is already used.
3. It will be a slow changeover, since the appeal for the average consumer won't be that high. Tapes to CD's? Huge. VHS to DVD? Huge. But as other people have said, it wasn't just for the quality. It was the ability to skip around + the extra content. And because of this...
3. I predict HD-DVD will suffer the same fate as SACD/DVD-A, only to a lesser degree. Self-proclaimed HD connoisseurs (aka your average best buy shopper) will be able to tell a difference in quality. self-proclaimed audiophiles mostly don't really know what to listen for/what sounds good).
Han shot first.
I would like to know how many people will actually buy and KEEP their new HD-DVD players once they realise that they will also require a new TV, not only that but a TV that supports their copy protection scheme. Especially when they realise that the only reason for the new TV is so extortion-wood won't lose any POTENTIAL revenue due to those "bad people" copying movies.
My guess is it will go over like DVD Audio did. All but the most discerning customers will say to hell with it since what they have is cheap and works just as well (as far as joe user is concerned)
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill
Hmmm, just thought about something. Surely Sony isn't going to release the PS3 with HDMI-only? Wait 'til Mom comes home from Wal*Mart with little Johnnie's new toy and finds that they can't hook it up to their TV. They'll have to have component outputs on it. If they artificially restrict Blu-Ray movies to SD quality on the component output, those of us who know about it should make a point to explain a few things about DRM and copy protection to our less-savvy neighbors. Those with early component-only HD monitors and a new supposedly HD movie format who find that they aren't seeing these movies in HD might actually get up in arms when they find they've been fleeced.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Coaxial = share an axis. The RCA connector and cable ARE COAXIAL. Duh!
I expect that in a couple of years, the market will have been flooded by generic region-free players that play both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and probably don't even require HDCP.
Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work you can always hit them with it.
it seems that with any new technology, the first few models to market have a physically enormous case size (read: ugly) and are unfeasably expensive.
Back in the late 70's when the original VCR's came out, they were the size of suitcases through necessity: it really was filled with a big mechanical drive and a load of pcbs (which also accounted for the cost).
These days, it seems ludicrous to assume that just an upgraded drive/laser assembly and firmware would account for such a size/cost difference to a regular DVD player.
I guess it must all be a marketing strategy, in that it gives them new products (smaller/cheaper) with minimal development effort over the next few years.
Sorry to hear that. That's pretty sad, to have neither interface.
I'm sure that more rampant piracy is exactly what they media producers want.
No, what they want is format adoption. Where I come from that means as many people using the format as quickly as possible. From that standpoint people buying burners to at first store data, and later home movies, is a good idea as it gets a foot in the door and people buying players.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's pretty common these days that the Amplifier/Reciever for your audio system has inputs for video signals, and will switch them too.
My (slightly older) JVC amp has composite video, S-video, and Component inputs and outputs and it switches them when you select the video source. I've seen a newer model that includes HDMI switching.
So you run the cable box, DVD, and game system to the amp, then run a single HDMI from the amp to the TV, and everything Just Works.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
"You can't simply merge the frames and show at half the rate because each half of the frame happens at a different time."
This is, naturally, only true for non-film sources. Which, quite frankly, I really struggle to care one jot about. I fully expect most discs to be 720p not 1080i anyway, so it's a rather moot point.
Incidentally, the reason the Pioneer BluRay player is $1800 compared to the Toshiba HD-DVD player's $500 is largely because it will apparently deinterlace film to 1080p for you.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Seriously, that thing looks bulkier than the Pioneer combined LD/DVD player I owned seven or eight years back - and that had to be big to fit the 12" LDs. What's Toshiba's excuse now?
You must think in Russian.
Well, there's a likely problem with that theory. Unless someone tells me that HD projectors have modes to take analog Video up to higher resolutions, it makes no sense to have even a component out for High Definition TV, since you lose all the shiny new resolution. Additionally, there is no reason for any Tom, Dick or Harry to buy HD-DVD of any flavor if they have an analog TV, sicne they won't get a much better image out of it. With DVD, we're basically running up against the image quality of the traditional TV, so it makes no sense to hook up a HD-DVD to an analog TV.
BUT, the granparent-cousins are correct, HD-DVD is unlikely to catch on like wild fire because of all these issues. This is especially true because all the people who thought they were preparing for HD-DVD by buying a HD-TV early are getting burned. Hollywood really doesn't want film quality coppies running around, so they're not going to be upset that it doesn't catch on.
It is really stupid that the fundemental HD interface is changing in mid stream, though. The Consumer Electronics industry may lose credibility over this.
Today is all we really have. We should all live it well: it is our stepping stone to all of our tomorrows.
This, like mentioned before comparing DVD to HD-DVD quality, seems to me like 1080i/720p will be "good enough" for the average person that they won't be willing to pay more money for 1080p sets if the picture quality isn't a dramatic difference (like cassette to audio CD or VHS to DVD).
Also, does the average person even know what "1080i" and "720p" mean? Again, this smacks of the standard "giving the average Joe FAR too much credit" syndrome.
Color me skeptical that 2006 will be the "year of 1080p."
And you can get a Sony PS3 for $500 that will have BD with 1080P. All vapor right now. The Pioneer deinterlacing was for DVD's not BD.
I don't know where you get the film source reference. Deinterlacing current DVD's still causes a bit of a mess in a lot of systems unless they have excellent deinterlacers, if it was merely a frame combine there wouldn't be an issue.
Ok, my TV which is capable of 1080i and my projector (720p) have both component and DVI connections, but thats it. Is HDMI a different connector or will I be find connecting this to my DVI connection?
OK, we have a device that strips HDCP from a DVI signal. Watch its HDCP key get revoked after the first round of HD DVD or Blu-ray videos gets ripped, and watch it not be able to decode new titles.
What about home movies would need the extra capacity of HD media? Are you talking about the raw DV footage?
I'm talking about the extra resolution, home HD cameras are going to start becoming more affordable this year.
The space is helpful too as people can pile on more still images and music along with movies... but mostly I'm talking about supporting higher resolutions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's still a lot of DVD players hooked up to the old coaxial
How? Running it through a VCR led to problems with Macrovision. Which DVD player had a coax RF output? Were standalone RF modulators widely available during the early days of DVD Video?
Unless it supports full HDTV resolution (not downgraded resolution) via the component inputs or regular DVI inputs that I already have on all my audio/visual equipment. I'm not spending $X thousands of dollars of my own money in the effort to support DRM. They'll have to offer content or hardware at lower prices before I'll consider it, and even then, I'll weigh it against unencumbered formats.
They'll get HDTV when their set breaks down.
Or when central government legislates that their set break down for watching broadcasts in favor of more spectrum for cellphones.
Personally, I want to see something like 2000+ line resolution.
No you don't. It's been tried. You'll get motion sickness.
(Just as the revocation of DVD player keys is possible - don't know how many have actually been revoked, though)
It happened at least with the Xing key that ended up in the first version of DeCSS. (Newer versions use plaintext attacks against the cipher.)
But these are legitimate devices - not piracy tools.
Yet.
I would have thought that if the consortium revoke the keys because someone has improperly used the device, they'd be opening themselves to massive lawsuits for illegal restraint of trade.
Unless the conditions for revocation were clearly covered in the HDCP license agreement. Or do you claim that the contract would be ruled unconscionable?
Similarly, if a HD-DVD player ends up with a design flaw which allows it to be hacked, and the manufacturer gets its keys revoked, then they better be prepared to pony up free upgrades to the innocent consumers who bought their kit.
Such a requirement would likely be spelled out in the HDCP license agreement.
home HD cameras are going to start becoming more affordable this year.
HDTV at 1080i is 2 megapixel. At such resolutions, you need good lenses if you want a good picture. Barring some sort of breakthrough in optics technology, good lenses will always be expensive. How are HD-friendly lenses going to become cheap any time soon?
There is some trtuh in this list but it is way too angry and insulting to be anything but flamebait. Extremism is the mark of a closed mind.
You can, but you're limited to a maximum tape density of only 2.5 hours.
Is it possible to duplicate the movie at SP and the extras at SLP? That would allow 90 minutes of movie and 210 minutes of extras on a T-160 tape. Or you could just put the extras on a separate tape; many movies such as Gone With the Wind, Titanic, LOTR 1, LOTR 2, and LOTR 3 have to be broken up into two tapes anyway.
In theory 1080p60 should be do-able given the source material and enough bandwidth (I don't think HDMI has it).
And, more importantly for the HDCP debate, neither do the back catalogs of any major motion picture studio. Virtually all feature films run at 24fps or 25fps depending on whether a work was first published in a 60 Hz region or a 50 Hz region.
One word, marketing. Marketing frequently prices a new technology related product as being more expensive then another product that it is similiar and technically superior to. Doesn't matter if the more technically superior one only cost like a dollar more to make. They'll still price it much higher, because consumers believe a newer higher priced product is technically superior to the lower priced product it's meant to replace.
For example, dvd-rom drives and cd-rom drives for years cost around the same to manufacturer. But because the dvd-rom drive is technically superior to cd-rom drives, it has to have a higher price to show to consumers that it's the better buy. That is why you can no longer find cd-rom drives easily because they both cost the same to make, yet dvd-rom drives can't fall down much in price anymore as they've reached their lowest price point now that marketing can't price cd-rom drives any lower because then the company would be losing money. So they simply stop making as many cd-rom drives.
So blame marketing for all this.
My Gawd WTF...
If a good print is available
Good luck. Under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and foreign counterparts, owners of copyright in old motion pictures have a financial incentive to force all owners of prints to let them rot so that they don't compete with the copyright owner's newer productions.
Surely Sony isn't going to release the PS3 with HDMI-only? Wait 'til Mom comes home from Wal*Mart with little Johnnie's new toy and finds that they can't hook it up to their TV.
I'm pretty sure that the people who aren't willing to make sacrifices to find enough money to rent-to-own the most basic HDTV monitor with HDMI are also the people who can't tell the difference between 480p movies and 720p movies. Sure, games will be able to run in 1080p, but movies have full-scene antialiasing.
Besides, a PlayStation is for games. Even if no copy prevention is available, PS3 games will still run in 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, depending on what you select in the console's configuration to match your TV's display technology (1080i for CRT, 720p for small flat panels, or 1080p for large flat panels). Or did PS2 games use Macrovision?
Yes, DVDs do provide 720 x 480, though it may be interlaced or progressive, at various framerates.
If you use an NTSC interface like S-Video or composite video, and the DVD is interlaced, you still get the full resolution of the DVD.
NTSC specifies 480 visible scanlines (525 total), interlaced, which is what broadcast TV, VHS, laserdisc, and DVD have to provide to work with NTSC sets.
DVDs have a greater horizontal resolution than VHS or laserdisc, with 720 vertial lines across, as opposed to 400 for laserdisc and ~250 for VHS. However, a good regular TV monitor is fully capable of 720 lines of resolution, through composite or SVIDEO. Speaking of which, composite and SVIDEO are equal in quality. The only difference between the two is the location of the comb filter (either in the source, or the monitor). In fact, many laserdisc players worked better using composite video, since the comb filter in the player was superior to the one in the monitor (TV set). SVIDEO theoretially holds up better for longer cable lengths with less signal degradation (hue shift, dot creep).
Component video (either RGB from bygone days, or YPbBr) allows for interlaced ot component transfer of video at various resolutions. From a DVD player, 480i or 480p is generally used (except in upconverting DVD players). 480i provides the same resolution as SVIDEO or composite, though with less dot creep over equivalent quality cabling. 480p works with monitors that support it, and sometimes increases the quality of video (depending on source format and monitor type).
As far as upconverting DVD players go. Hahahaaa!!!! Marketing genius. I'm suprised MonsterCable did not come out with them first. The DVD is encoded as 720x480. Upconverting it to 1920x1080i or 1280x720p, whether done in the monitor or DVD player, will not make a difference. (Unless perhaps, the monitor is a HD CRT rear projection - some of the early ones I believe changed the scan patterns depending on input resolution, to save money on a scaler, so they might benefit). This is the same as the composite/SVIDEO idea. It may be possible to upconvert during the iDCT phase to produce some noticeable difference, but from what I've seen, the DVD players have an upconverter after the first frame rendering.
it seems ludicrous to assume that just an upgraded drive/laser assembly and firmware would account for such a size/cost difference to a regular DVD player.
It's not just "updated firmware". HDTV decoding is roughly 10 times as complex as DVD decoding. For one thing, HD-DVD and Blu-ray use H.264, not just MPEG-2, meaning that the manufacturer needs to make all new decoder ASICs. For another, there are 6 times as many pixels on a 1080p canvas than on a 480p canvas.
IIRC HDMI carries exactly the same data as DVI - just with extra bells and whistles like 7.1 audio. So you can convert DVI to HDMI with a cheap adapter.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
I would have thought that if the consortium revoke the keys because someone has improperly used the device, they'd be opening themselves to massive lawsuits for illegal restraint of trade.
Unless the conditions for revocation were clearly covered in the HDCP license agreement. Or do you claim that the contract would be ruled unconscionable?
I think it might be ruled unconscionable. If you have a contract term which states that your business may be cancelled if a third party, over whom you can exercise no control, finds a way to abuse your device such that it harms another consortium member, and that the device has a legitimate purpose which was approved by the same HDCP consortium; then no-one in their right mind would sign such a contract. It leaves you with open ended liability for actions which you are powerless to prevent.
The HDCP license agreement states that all devices are subject to technical review to ensure that their keys are sufficiently robustly protected (to prevent device cloning), as well as ensuring interoperability [and do revocation checking]. If the keys were issued after such a review, one can hardly claim that the possible abuse of the devices was unforeseeable by an expert well versed in the field.
I realise that the analogy does not apply well, but the Betamax defence must have some applicability here - the device has an extant (perhaps even dominant), legitimate use. *Any* device could be abused (imagine getting hit over the head by one of these ugly Toshiba HD-DVD boxes!), but that would not provide sufficient cause to invalidate the manufacturers line of business.
--NgAre there really DVI capture cards out there?
/. post should be "HDMI cracked, now what do we do with it?"
Assuming there is not one now but will be Do they really think the encryption will outlast the capture technology?
Next
Sure, now you notice! When the Xbox came out, you said "My console can crush your console! Mwahahaha!" But now that this behemoth is out, you cower and complain that it's size will devastate your entertainment center, tossing all the foo-foo knick-knacks to one side! But, don't worry, you can put knick-knacks on top of it. Think of this as the Beverly Hills of knick-knack real estate.
If you have a contract term which states that your business may be cancelled if a third party, over whom you can exercise no control, finds a way to abuse your device such that it harms another consortium member, and that the device has a legitimate purpose which was approved by the same HDCP consortium; then no-one in their right mind would sign such a contract.
"Third party over whom you exercise no control"? I'll explain why this is not the case: Spatz-Tech, maker of the DVIMAGIC device, is the third party. Another company, an HDCP licensee, makes DVI chips that are intended for use in DVD players and HDTV monitors, not in DVI repeater boxes. I'd imagine that the chip maker's contract with the HDCP consortium at least requires the chip maker to stop selling to Spatz-Tech once it learns that Spatz-Tech makes HDCP strippers.
This may be the final nail in the HD-dvd coffin.
= 41
2006 is going to be the year of 1080p, the early adopters (read geeks with money) are going to prefer to run a true 1080p source into at true 1080p display. I know I won't by a new display until I know it supports 1080p.
It also looks like BD movies will be 1080p native. Not sure what the 720p/1080i implies about the movies for HD-DVD:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060104/law066.html?.v
In addition to 1920x1080p HD master quality, consumers will benefit from Blu-ray Disc's immense improvements over current DVD technology including enhanced menu navigation, increased added-value and new interactive capabilities.
If you want a pristine picture, you'll need better lenses... but even with mediocre stuff the sheer jump in detail between standard TV (even component or S-Video) and real HDTV is very impressive.
Also here I'm thinking about how much more slideshows will look on HDTV at readl HDTV resolutions (like 720p and higher). Since 4-8 mexapixels is pretty standard now more resolution will really benefit still images presented on the TV.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sony has again missed the boat, Beta and now Blu Ray. A DVD solves most of the problems of SD TV, except for the interlace and the limited color palate. 99% of the TV watching world has no idea what those things are. Reality is that unless you have a big HDTV, there's no, zero, none, reason to buy HDTV-DVD I recently tuned up some 27 inch HDTV's and let me tell you, a 480i DVD is just fine. Unless the image is big, the Blu Ray or HD DVD is meaningless. For the vast majority, for the next 20 years, DVD is good. There is only a small early adopter group who will buy the new format. I'll wait. So will many others. I have a big HDTV, but until this format war shakes out, no sale. I have the oft discussed HDCP connection, but that's not the point.
One other point : HD DVD, while technically not as good as blu rootkit ray, can use the existing stamping plants and many of the machines that are now used for SD DVD. In the mass market, cheap always beats better, so the content providers who never found a corner not to cut, or artist to screw, are not going to spend money so you can get a better picture. Better to stamp and send two HD DVD discs than one Blu ray disc. The costs of the disc are trivial and the plastic box can hold two as easily as one.
That's almost HALF MY PORN COLLECTION on one disk where can i get it:D
If your neighbours roof is flying past your window, you know it's cyclone season.
I'll explain why this is not the case: Spatz-Tech, maker of the DVIMAGIC device, is the third party.
I think that Spatz-Tech itself is the HDCP licensee. However, I don't know that. In the end, we'll find out if they can arbitratily have their license revoked, or their supplies withdrawn. At the moment, both of us are speculating.
--Ng
On the DVD deinterlace issue, it depends on how the DVD is mastered. Some are done 'properly'; i.e. the progressive fields are stored with info on how the player should interlace them, and that works well on most players. Some, however, are mastered on the cheap with the interlaced frames, and it's those ones that normally end up being a mess on cheaper players. There's a good description at Home Theater Hifi that makes far more sense than I can. For what it's worth, I know a few people who have taken their 1080i HDTV captures of films and deinterlaced them for 1080p playback on their computers, and they look absolutely stunning, so it must be possible.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
It'll never fly. Add-on drives never do. First, it'll likely cost a couple hundred dollars (which, on top of the already high X-Box 360 price, is sure to push the total towards $1,000). Second, game companies know the price will be a killer, and won't want to develop for it if there's little chance of adoption by gamers.
Look at, for example, SegaCD. Sure it had about 20-30 good games, but the total number of games released was only around 100. And then they compounded that failure with the 32X. *groans*
At least Nintendo had the good sense to ditch their CD-ROM attachment for the SuperNES. Hopefully Microsoft will ditch their HD-DVD plans before it, too, becomes another footnote in the "expensive attachments always fail and never gain support" section of your favorite gaming history book.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Good link. What a mess is all I can say.
I still hold that interlacing should never have been part of the HD standard.
I read something on AVSforum that BD has 1080P mastering for it's disks, while BD has 1080i, but with proper flags.
Personally I would prefer the 1080p mastering. It keeps all interlacing issues in the disk mastering stage wether the original source was Video or Film. That would only leave frame rate issues to deal with.
To handle that it seems like multiscan rate display would be the ideal solution. 50Hz,60Hz and 72Hz would handle the common frame rates without judder.
Oh well maybe in another 5-10 years the next standard will be free of interlace and with well defined frame rates and compatible displays/players.
In the interim I will probably just get a PS3...
Given that Sky are planning to broadcast all HD at 50Hz in the UK later this year, so we can still look forward to suffering the effects of PAL speedup, I'm not holding my breath for sanity to prevail any time soon.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"