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

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[H3lldr0p]

Here's the thing that I don't get about attempts to control content like these: Doesn't this just smell ripe for a class-action lawsuit? Seriously I can see a group of pissed off owners of these devices crying "Fraud" over the fact that the player automatically downgrades the signal to their televisions. Throw a few smart lawyers into the mix and you've got a huge mess on your hands. Years of bad PR at the very least. They are also running the risk of having either the courts or the legislature or both of stepping in, and despite all of the money thrown at the political groups, having them create new laws which prevent them from doing or requiring the hardware manufactures to do this sort of stupid sh*t. So why risk it? Are the profits so great that they'll risk the entire business? Isn't anybody in these companies trying to think of a smarter way?

Granted they could always hope for the sweet sort of deal that NetFlicks got, where nothing really happens to the companies in question, but last time I checked that deal was starting to go down in flames...

Some random points

[Phreakiture]

Some random points that occur to me:

• I have a 27" TV. It is an early, analog HDTV, but at that size display, unless you are sitting really, really close to it, 960x540 will be plenty
• Joe 6-pack, when his TV breaks, will probably buy another SDTV. Until his TV breaks, he will not buy another TV. He doesn't want to spend $700 on a TV, never mind $2000+ when he can have one for $99.99 at Wal*Mart.
• As such, Joe 6-pack will not adopt HD-Ray, because DVD is sufficient. His SDTV is barely capabale of exceeding VHS quality, so DVD will look only slightly better than VHS to him, and HD-Ray will look no better than DVD.
• I reap a significant benefit with my 27" HDTV even watching SDTV content, because of it having a deinterlacer. This was a major selling point for me. There is some minor banding (which is a little annoying at times), but for the most part, the picture is fantastic, even at SDTV.
• Short of DV and D8 casettes, which are used for shooting home video and not used for distribution of commercial content, DVDs are the highest-quality SDTV medium you will find in most homes. Technically, they are EDTV, because the MPEG stream may be encoded as progressive scan (and many DVD players can play them as such, and deinterlace interlaced streams), and the resolution is well above that of even the cleanest of composite video signals. DVDs look fantastic on my 27" HDTV.
• 960x540 is only 50% better than 720x480. Many store that sell TVs still can't get an HDTV signal to demo their HDTVs, so who is going to notice that HD-Ray might be better than DVD?
• HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are starting a format war, and people will, therefore, stay away in droves.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will die if they can't clearly show superiority to DVD and their competition. Doing what they are doing, they will fail to show superiority to DVD in many installations. They're stillborn.

Now, you have to keep in mind that, as a Slashdot reader, you are part of a minority. You are technologically literate, and probably willing to dish out more than most people to get better technology. The majority don't care about the technology, just as long as they can see something. Hell, quite frequently they don't even care whether or not the aspect ratio is right, or know what an aspect ratio is! The view with which you and I approach technology is going to be skewed, period. We are technophiles, and most of our friends are technophiles. Most importantly, we who would be interested in this technology if it weren't such a clusterfuck are the minority.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will die.

Region coding

[metamatic]

The same companies have gotten away with region coding for years, and that's a pretty clear violation of international trade laws, specifically the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade section 2.2.

http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/17-tbt_e .htm

I'm kinda surprised the EFF hasn't shown any interest in pursuing this.