HD DVD to Screw Early HDTV Adopters

orionware writes "Apparently the folks who designed the Advanced Access Content System (AACS)for the new HD DVD formats have decided to stick it to the early HDTV adopters. If your set used the older component video, expect to watch your new HD DVD at a quarter of the resolutions. To thwart piracy of course." From the article: "AACS says the new players won't output a full-HD signal from their component-video connections, since those jacks are analog instead of digital and thus have no copy protection. The 'down-rezzed' signals will be limited to a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels -- exactly one-quarter the 1,920 x 1,080 pixels that you'll get through the copy-protected digital connectors on the players. The potentially huge problem with this strategy is that the only HD inputs on a lot of older HDTVs are component video."

Comments

HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[Freexe]

That should read
"HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules"

Because I can't see any advantage to the end user by any of these rules.

Will it be easier to make backups - No
Will it be easier to play it on all the devices around your house - No
Will i beable to skip the 2-30 minutes of copyright ads + trailers to watch a movie - No
Will the image quality be higher - Only if you have the right hardware (the confusing HD standard means up and down sampling will reduce the quality even more if you HDTV isn't the right native resolution)
Will you beable to sell the disks on to friends/second hand market - No (At least from my understanding so correct me if i'm wrong)
Will it reduce the cost as no one will be able to pirate anymore - No, This will be hacked within a few months of it coming out the same way CSS was

"If I pirate will my life be easier than going the legitimate route" should be the one question that these media content owners need to answer. And they fail over and over again

Will I boycott HD - Yes

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[jcr]

Will you beable to sell the disks on to friends/second hand market - No (At least from my understanding so correct me if i'm wrong)

The RIAA doesn't have the power to overrule the "first-sale" doctrine. You can resell an HD-DVD if you want, and it's none of their business.

-jcr

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[Criterion]

Sell it all you want. If it's locked to your player, it's no good to anyone that buys it from you.

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[williamhb]

"If I pirate will my life be easier than going the legitimate route" should be the one question that these media content owners need to answer. And they fail over and over again

At first glance it seems to me it's not just "will my life be easier" - with these silly rules if you're the owner of an older HD-TV then pirate copies (without the protection and consequent 'down-rezzing' of the component video) could potentially give you 4 times the resolution of what you'd get from the legit version. Way to give the pirates a competitive advantage on quality as well as price, guys!

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[AKAImBatman]

If it's locked to your player, it's no good to anyone that buys it from you.

That sounds like a great way to kill sales. I mean, how many consumers have more than one TV in their home? (And by extension, more than one DVD player?) Not to mention the number of people who loan their discs out to friends and family. If consumers suddenly find themselves unable to move their disc around (especially if they purchase a new TV/player), they're not going to buy. They'll tell the industry "screw you" and go get their content some other way. Unfortunately for the industry, if there's no legal method for getting HD content, they'll just get it illegally over the 'net until there is.

So the industry had better think long and hard about how much they really want to be pushing consumers.

a whole new eBay business model

[supabeast!]

Someone is going to make a lot of money selling Chinese digital-to-component adapters for all these HDTV owners - at least if HDTV actually goes anywhere.

Re:a whole new eBay business model

[91degrees]

The DMCA's wording only bans devices that have limited non-infringing use. I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to watch high definition content on an existing high definition TV.

Low res pirated movies

[SeekerDarksteel]

Ok, so they're going to limit the analog outputs to 1/4th the normal resolution. And what the hell do they think that's going to solve? Most of the people downloading movies are not overly concerned about the quality. Hell, a lot of copies are made by hand held cameras in movie theaters, with plenty of shaky video and noise disturbances from the crowd. Besides, the vast majority of people aren't going to want to download a 20GB file to watch a movie when they can download a 700MB one.

Congratulations, you have prevented nothing.

Re:Low res pirated movies

[Jeff Carr]

Congratulations, you have prevented nothing. Not true, they've prevented me from buying both HD-DVD and an HDTV.

Re:Low res pirated movies

[DrWhizBang]

Although you point is a good one, I don't think you take it far enough. The low quality pirated video will always be available (think "handycam") but in essence what they are doing is creating a new reason to pirate that did not exist before. For those who do want a better quality, they will be left no option but to download an "unlocked" version (after JLJ cracks AACS, of couse ;-) if they are one of the early adopters without a "protected" digital input. This is a lot of people, given that the earlier adopters will logically be the same people interested in a higher quality picture.

as usual, will wait for hack

[onezan]

As an early adopter, i am among the screwed.

I'm not too worried though, i will wait. Wait for the second generation of cheaper devices to flow from the secondary players in the DVD player markets (the "no-names"). these most assuredly will have the "secret back-door" keycodes to enable full HD over component.

HD in the US is about new revenue streams

[poopie]

PT Barnum would be so proud of what has happened with HD. We've got the hardware producers *and* the government rolling over to the content producers with everyone intent on finding more ways to make the consumers pay more and more often. It's not about cheaper, newer, or better technology.

"See the egress!" of people *not* buying new TVs as they walk out of their electronics store frustrated by the HD cartel.

Why do I get the feeling that there will be an HD 2.0? I think I'll stick with my old TV and if it dies, I'll buy someone elses' old TV.

Betamax anyone?

Re:Overrule, or just make it impossible?

[ajs318]

Bollocks. You don't have a right to make a profit. However, if you sell a product that people want to buy at a price they do not consider extortionate, they will buy it. If someone else sells a substantially similar product cheaper than you, then people will buy that instead. It's called the free market.

Given the economies of scale involved, it ought to be possible for the movie studios to sell DVDs cheaper than the pirates can make them for, if they were really bothered. This method certainly works for books and newspapers ..... how many newsagents' shops have photocopiers? How much would it cost to photocopy the latest Harry Potter?

Re:The problem is

[Kjella]

I doubt the DVI -> component would be in that device. All that device would need to do is to strip HDCP and give you a clean DVI output (handy for many computer monitors too) and then a regular, legal converter device. Wasn't there recently a slashdot post about how HDCP was breakable and mostly because it was supposed to be implemented in less than 10000 gates? I'm thinking two ports, one small low-power chip. Hell, with luck you can feed that into another DVI/HDMI device with DVI/HDMI input for the converting, or do they all scale the content down no matter what?

Re:Tell them you won't buy their crap

[seanellis]

Sorry to reply twice to the same post, but I was struck by one of the headings on the site (follow the About HD DVD link from the home page):

"Designed to meet Hollywood's highest expectations"

Aha. Not the Customer's highest expectations. Hollywood's. That makes me, the customer, feel so much better, since we know how customer-focussed Hollywood are. I'm so much happier without the temptation of skipping the copyright notice for Finland on my DVDs, and I'm glad of the sense of suspense waiting for stuff to come out on a region 2 disk.

Hollywood's highest expectations, as always, seem to be "Make money. Make more money. Make other people produce so as to make more money." (Hmm. Sounds familiar...) Maybe that should be "consume", not "produce".