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

[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...

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:What about this...

[tgibbs]

Such an adapter would have to break the encryption--which is, of course, a violation of DMCA.

Au contraire

[nightsweat]

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.

Re:Au contraire

[__aajwxe560]

HDTV DRM standards are still really in a state of flux. I have a digital projector I purchased around Christmas of 2004 that has full HDTV 16x9 capabilities, and includes a DVI connection to allow for straight digital content to be fed into it. I recently decided to upgrade my Comcast cable box to HDTV, thinking this would be a great combination. Even better, the Comcast cable box had a DVI connector on the back that would allow for straight digital to digital high def, with no analog conversion in the mix anywhere. I was excited that this would truly be a technical marvel (I'm one of those guys that gets excited over shit like this). I turn on the projector, turn on the cable box, jump over to the Discovery channel, and see one of the most amazingly detailed pictures I have ever seen from a tv - for about 8 seconds. Then a big box comes up blocking any further video, telling me I can't enjoy HDTV from this cable box as my projector does not include an HDCP digital rights management chip. This is something that is required to be built-in from the factory, and not something I can add later. This truly, truly pissed me off. Apparently many earlier HDTV's do not have this, as it simply did not exist at the time. I look everywhere for an intermediary device to provide this HDCP functionality while retaining the benefit of a straight digital connection, but unfortunately nothing realistic exists yet (there is a small $400+ option available in Germany, but that is out of the realm of realistic to me).

So, to make a long story short, I now have my cable box outputting its digital signal over firewire to a small media PC I built for a few hundred bucks (and doubles as my video recorder). I then have the DVI out on this going to my projector, and I am back up and running with true high def support (HBO won't come in over firewire due to other DRM issues, but I digress). I just wanted to carry on with your theme of people doing whatever they can to circumvent this stuff, but I think it finally just allowed me to vent about what a pain in the ass technology this is proving to be.

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.

Tell them you won't buy their crap

[csoto]

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.