Sony Decides Against Blu-Ray Downsampling

Paul Slocum writes "According to Ars Technica, Sony is now saying they will not use the Image Constraint Token and so movies will play on analog HDTV sets at full resolution. If HD-DVD does implement the analog downsampling, it's going to give Blu-ray a nice market advantage." From the article: "Sony's decision to not use the Image Constraint Token for the time being is meant to encourage the adoption of Blu-ray players. Launching a new product that would leave the thousands of analog HDTV owners out in the standard-definition cold could have proven to be a nightmare for Sony and the Blu-ray spec in general. Reports that 'Blu-ray discs don't look right on my HDTV' could result in consumers' switching allegiances to the competing HD DVD standard or postponing purchases of next-generation optical players altogether."

Comments

Re:Almost there....

[Overly Critical Guy]

With all the freeloaders on the Internet and places like ThePirateBay selling friggin' t-shirts saying "Piracy is great!," it's never gonna happen. DRM is here to stay and necessary to at least make an attempt to protect the rights of content creators from getting stomped all over. It's always a careful balance between restricting user abilities while protecting content creators, but if you hate the existence of that gray line in the first place, blame the freeloaders.