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Next-Gen DVD Players to Rely on HDMI?
RX8 writes "For those thinking about upgrading to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD when they become available, you may want to think again. According to Designtechnica, the next-generation players will not support 1080i or 1080P and quite possibly not even 720P using the component video connection, it will have to use HDMI. Why? Because of copyright enforcement. Hollywood wants these new players to get rid of component video all together. So if you have an HDTV and want to use these new players, chances are you are out of luck. Neither the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD camps are officially saying anything about this yet, but early players are only showing these high resolutions using the HDMI connection."
If this thing goes through, somebody's gonna come up with a little adapter box that'll convert it into S-video. That can be converted to composite / RCA. Problem solved.
"This is a major dilemma, and no one is talking about it" -- THIS is the big thing. We have to be heard to stop things like this. Sure, there's tons of conversation to follow on this thread, but we need to post elsewhere about this as well. I suggest as many people blog about it as possible. I know I will.
Slackmaster K Proprietor, DamnedNice Blog
This will do nothing to discourage the pirate, and will only serve to annoy and alienate paying customers.
What are these copyright protection schemes trying to accomplish? ... 99% of consumers *don't* copy their DVDs, 99% of consumers *don't* upload their DVDs to the internet ... But do you know who this hardware will affect? 99% of consumers.
The last 1% of consumers who do backup / upload will continue to do so regardless of the protection. All it takes is a single producer to have a accidental backdoor (see X-Box exploits via a game).
Further more why are they protecting the extra quality so vigorously? From what I've seen you have get non-HD pictures without any kind of protection, but for HD you need all this crazy stuff... But who is crazy enough to upload a full quality HD movie on the 'net?
I think the copyright holders are going to KILL psychical media far faster than it otherwise would and push consumers towards platforms like iTunes for their video.
This article would have been better titled: "Next-Gen DVD Formats Will Flop" because that is exactly what is going to happen. They've got a small market of people willing to replace all of their gear as it is, and now they have introduced compatibility problems on purpose with these inane restrictions. Nevermind the fact that they've got two completely incompatible formats, one of which is guaranteed to fail. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. The word of mouth on these things will be how "so-and-so spent gobs of money and it didn't work".
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
These companies are so focused on restricting the usability of their products to protect imagined revenues that they aren't seeing the big picture - if there is a better, more usable, accessible, cheaper alternative available, people will use that.
The quality of piracy has gone up massively with internet distribution. Once pirates work out a system for ripping HD-DVDs and BluRay (and they will), then they can offer high quality films that will work on computers, older HDTV sets that people invested a lot in, and so on.
Functionality is a massive selling point, enough to make even people that actually do want to pay a fair price for the real thing think about getting the more functional version.
Sadly all this expensive work spent on restricting users will not bring in much more revenue to the companies - those people mainly pirate because they can't afford it otherwise, or wouldn't pay for it being stingy bastards. Instead they'll manage on the DVD resolution version - quality isn't a big issue for them either - students can't afford HDTV systems, stingy people have 20 year old televisions.
Seriously, if this is the case, who is going to waste their money and buy one of these players?.
Consumers will be outraged (even the stupid ones). After all lets see what there is to consider:
I think many retailers will end up experiencing a large increase in returned AV equipment in the coming years so much so that perhaps some retailers may decide to stop stocking such products or at least pick stock that is known to work together.
As for me, I probably wont worry about upgrading because my existing DVD collection is sufficiently entertaining and the quality of movies being released now days is simply appalling. In the end it's just not worth it.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
It's doing the trick on me at the moment. I'm not the earliest of early adopters for home entertainment stuff, but I'm usually not far behind, and have spent many thousands on kit for the house.
I'm in the market for a new HD-TV now (I bought a widescreen TV when they first came out, but it's a big fat CRT and I want a nice shiny thin LCD/plasma to hang on the wall and play XBOX-2 games on), but I aint buying while there's so much confusion/disagreement on standards. I don't mind (too much) paying early adopter prices for kit that's going to be half that cost by next year, but I'm not going to pay early adopter prices for kit that's likely to be pretty much obsolete (and replaced by something more restrictive) by next year.
The problem is that I suspect there's a fair few people like me out there, and if people like me aren't buying the kit now, then it's unlikely that manufacturers will be in a position to lower the price in the near future, so the mass market will never take it up either.
I am really tired of having to upgrade all of my entertainment equipment every 5 years. I am not a bottomless pit of a consumer. I've replaced all of my equipment twice in my lifetime, and I'm only 35. Well, I'm tired of it now. As it is, I have to buy a specialized media pc just to record fscking HD content (where were the components?). Damn Blue Ray! Damn HD-DVD! They can rot for all I care. I won't be hollywood's damn pawn. I am the consumer, and I vote with my wallet. ...and if Blockbuster ever drops the DVD format, guess what? I'm not going to Blockbuster anymore.
These things are going to be as popular as copy-protected CDs. Just wait until the first few thousand people get home with a shiny new disc, whack it into their machine and get a crappy picture and/or a blank screen.
Ok, I'll bite.
I'm as anti-DRM as anybody, but statements like yours and the article submitter's are more than a little overly dramatic. It's highly likely that "the first few thousand people" who get home with their shiny new discs will have HDMI inputs in their TV's - it's difficult to buy an HDTV these days without one and has been for about the last 5 years. Even my $600 Samsung CRT HDTV has a DVI input, which is fully compatible with HDMI (HDMI is just DVI with audio, so all it takes is a cable with HDMI on one end and DVI on the other to make it work).
The earliest HDTV's only had component inputs. But with the rate HDTV's sold in the early days vs. the rate they're selling now, I'd wager that the vast majority of HDTV's in homes are HDMI-capable. Even many early adopters have probably upgraded their sets by now with larger models that perform better, have more inputs and cost a lot less. HDTV has been around for around 10 years, remember. It's not a new technology anymore.
The joke is that the AUD$8.95 DVD is here to stay.
Yeah, you don't have an HDTV, I guess. (I admit, I don't know what the HD situation is in Australia. But here in the US, it's almost difficult to buy a non-HD set anymore.)
These new formats are specifically for people with high definition displays. DVD is not good enough for those people. You're talking the difference between 720x480 (and that's assuming the disc is anamorphic, otherwise it's more like 480x360) and 1920x1080. That's a huge difference, and it's the entire reason these people bought HDTV's in the first place. If they didn't want that extra resolution, they would have just stuck with standard-def. So there is a large market for these new formats; if you spend $2,000-$3,000 on a TV, you want a format that takes advantage of it.
Standard-def formats will continue to exist, just as standard-def TV continues to exist now. It's no "joke", and you're not saying anything anyone doesn't know. 5-10 years ago you probably would have said "the joke is that VHS is here to stay" in a discussion about the new DVD format. Change doesn't come overnight. But once you see the difference 1080i or 1080p makes over standard definition TV, it's very hard to go back.
Now, all that said, I give it a matter of months before some Chinese or Taiwanese company comes out with an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player that outputs full resolution over component. It'll be one of those "oops!" moments that the manufacturer claims was unintentional but results in a run on that particular model. Eventually, everyone will be doing it... just as happened with region codes on DVD players.
You're confused as to the difference between HDCP and HDMI, which is not surprising as a lot of articles seem to. HDMI is little more than DVI + sound + signalling. HDCP is the 'content protection' that is causing the fuss. HDMI actually looks quite nice, as you get fewer cables, can shovel 8-channels of 192kHz 24-bit uncompressed audio down it, and get signalling that should be able to provide a single remote system with the minimum of fuss. How well the signalling will work in practice...
One of the requirements of HD Ready is that you support HDCP, to prevent the problem of people buying HD tvs and then not being able to watch in HD. There are a fair few TVs out there with DVI (that support HDCP) but not HDMI.
jh
Actually, all the boxes that are built around Blu Ray at the moment will output 1080i and 1080p over their Component outputs.
They are saying that it's up to the studios to disable this via the medium if they choose too. The box manufacturers want to stay as far away from this arguement as possible, they don't want the bad blood with the consumers. It could well be that the studios do choose to do this, aside from HDCP, Blu Ray also has the additional feature of being able to black list boxes. Apparently what they are doing is embedding the key of the machine that decoded the stream into the video output. That way the studios can pick up that key out of a ripped copy and then disable that unit for all future releases. Based on this, they don't want to introduce any further copy protection onto the Blu Ray discs such as a more advanced version of CSS encoding or other encryption.
However, a lot of this is up to the studios in how they want to protect their content when it's published. What happens thereafter the box manufacturers don't want to know.
Well that's what I was reading the other day anyway.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
These moves do nothing to prevent copying.
They are designed to restrict access to the copyrighted works only to limited, licensed, subset of devices that are designed under the tight control of media giants. MPAA wants to decide how you consume their content.
They want you to sit thru the commercials without skip ability. They want to dictate terms to both display manufacturers and end users about the type of display device used. They want region control that works to protect their price discrimination systems (DVD had a crappy first try). They want piece of the pie every step of the way.
Once they control everything, they can start jacking up the price, tighten 'region coding' and other trade barriers, and add up things like 'phone home'. And once that's done, they can start charging per view etc. Or start monthly subscription 'clubs' with latest releases only available to 'premium members'.
Yes, first it will be 'value added services', but media giants think long term. Once it's normal that your MPAA approved Black Box Player is in constant connection over encrypted link to MPAA server farms, with no competition, and no way to play legal content other than MPAA approved, they can start tightening the screws. Oh, and all other ways will be illegal by then. Including movie playback on PC. Hardware makers will get to put their sticker on the black box, and fight to the death with each other on commoditizing the MPAA-approved solution, but that's their part of the pie.
It's all about maximizing the profits. Current plan is to make customer pay more.
But not all HDMI and DVI TV's incorporate HDCP, which is the copy protection system.
So even people with HD TVs with HDMI will not be able to use these new formats at full resolution unless they have a relatively new set that has HDCP, and it is compatible with whatever HDMI spec (did you know there are different specs? 1.1, 1.3?) and the HDCP spec used by the new systems.
Imagine buying a HDTV this summer, then for Christmas getting a BR player that doesn't work full quality because your set doesn't have HDMI 1.3 and whatever current version of HDCP...
This is a huge issue, and even the early adopters are getting fidgety about it. While some people may switch out their whole systems, at this point it will be a minority by far. Even on the high end hi-fi and videophile forums there is a lot of discussion of people not being happy about this.
Eventually we may run into a situation where the hardware manufacturers stop caving into the producers demands if we have a situation where even the typical early adopters will not bite.
Shawn's Tech Articles
Your experiment requires that I watch "Episode 2" more than once, something which I would not wish upon my worst enemy, let alone something I would ever subject myself to.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
(I admit, I don't know what the HD situation is in Australia. But here in the US, it's almost difficult to buy a non-HD set anymore.)
That's what you might think from the advertisements, but if you go into any Best Buy or Circuit City, you'll find plenty of standard televisions. You'll know when you're looking at one, because the price tag will only have three digits before the decimal point.
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