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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."
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
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
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.
Looks pretty cut-and-dried to me..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
The laws of probability forbid it!
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.
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?
My mom purchased a Sony HDTV two years ago (I told her to wait because of unresolved issues like these, but did she listen????). It only has HD component ins as HDMI and so on were not even spoken about. I see that Sony is part of the AACS defining group. Well, they advertised that their HDTV was the future of TV (obviously not), and that the component inputs would be capable of accepting HD from future products (that's what the sales guy said). Well, they sold a product that they are now crippling its abilities. Is it possible for early adopters to sue to get compensated for now having to buy a new set just to use HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?
"...try the exact same thing again." Or maybe more appropriately was Ben Franklin's quote: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
So they release one copy protection after another, spending gobs of money that translates to increased cost to the end user, and ultimately they're all cracked in less time than it took to develop them. Why not try a different approach for a change, instead of having the audacity to think that eventually you can come up with an unbreakable copy protection?
The bottom line, (imo), is that some people will always pirate, and some will always pay the asking price. Forget about these two groups, and focus on the people in the middle who would buy your product if you simply made an offer they'd be interested in paying for. Piracy is about getting something for less than what you could get it for off the store shelf, and unless you cut costs and lower DVD prices, these people are going to copy/burn/download/bootleg your product unless you make the retail package, (being more than just price) more appealing than the piracy route.
As it stands, what I see here is that you can legitimately buy the DVD, and play it at reduced resolution on your early HDTV, or you can wait for the copy protection to be broken and get a pirated copy that plays at full quality. Where's the incentive for buying your product now??
Such an adapter would have to break the encryption--which is, of course, a violation of DMCA.
You make your product sufficiently inconvenient and/or expensive that I decide not to buy it. Some smart chap (or chapette) from China or India starts importing players and media that do not have these restrictions. I buy them from him/her instead or I forego video pleasures for other entertainments. Your stock price goes down, you lose your house in Aruba, and ice weasels kill and eat your children.
You lose, I win.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Some random points that occur to me:
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.
www.wavefront-av.com
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.
..... how many newsagents' shops have photocopiers? How much would it cost to photocopy the latest Harry Potter?
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
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
e .htm
http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/17-tbt_
I'm kinda surprised the EFF hasn't shown any interest in pursuing this.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
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?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There is a "Contact Us" form on the HD DVD Promotion Group's website.
I just told them that I would buy neither HD DVD content nor devices if it doesn't work with my two existing component/DVI HDTV television sets. I suggest you all do the same.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom