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HDMI-Enabled Graphics Cards Debut
TrackinYeti writes "HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), is the first industry supported digital-only interface, that requires a single cable to connect an output source to an HD-ready device, such as a television or monitor and deliver HD video, plus multi-channel digital audio, like Dolby Digital and DTS. Recently, Asus Computer released versions of their GeForce 7600 and Radeon X1600 cards with HDMI outputs on them, driven by an on-board Sil1930 controller. These are some of the first graphics cards to hit the market that can output HDMI natively with an integrated HDCP cipher engine and support HD-audio as well. Just the thing for that HTPC?"
Wait, I still use a VGA monitor, with a higher dot pitch than most any HD TV ...
I guess this is good for folks who build home theatres out of their computers, but then why do they need a 3D accelerator to show TV or videos?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Now I get to spend $150 on a video cablr for my PC now... :)
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
I hope that cipher doesn't slow down games on the big screen.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Great, now I can watch all the legal stuff I have valid licenses for. What about my HD rips I make from my legally owned collection for viewing among any of the tv's in my house and for safe archiving of original content?
Whenever I read 'high definition' these days I think: great, another product that's broken by design.
Someone wake me up when they've passed that part...
I would rather the studios get cracking on some good content rather than having us watch the same, boring, stale content in OMG U CAN SEE THER POREZORS!1!!one! I get more entertainment value out of my free podcasts than out of my television. The content is stuff I actually care about, and while the production value isn't always the greatest it's almost always worth the price of bandwidth. And I can watch or listen to them at work.
And the worst part is that when the studios make good content, it's canceled or sunk very quickly. Most people have probably never heard of Idiocracy, but everyone I've heard who's seen it says it's awesome, but it only ran for one weekend in 8 theaters because some exec got scared because it made fun of all the idiots of the world. And then there's Firefly, and Dr. Who, and Torchwood, which got shown out of order and canceled, butchered unrecognizably to add commercials, and completely ignored respectively.
To put it another way: I don't see any reason I should upgrade to HD just so I can get the MPAA regulating what I watch or be able to see the blades of grass on the field where millionaires in tights jump on each other.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Is this anything but a sales gimmick really? I mean, you can already get cards with DVI and HDCP which means you just need a DVI to HDMI cable to connect it to a TV anyway. So now they hope to sell more of these because people who have bought a HDTV might already know the HDMI name and think they need that? Well, i guess the one benefit i can see is that you can save the audio cable, but personally i don't want the audio to go to the TV anyway.
It realy is a technical solution to a social problem.
Technocal solution:
Provide HDMI connectivity.
Social problem:
Can't watch all the legal stuff I have valid licenses for.
That's bad.
Léa Gris
is a fool's errand. The defectivebydesign groups think you're a ravenous consumer-zombie frothing at the mouth for the mere chance to part with cash for a product you know full well restricts your freedom. In fact, they're betting on your television addiction to be so out-of-balance with life that you'll literally imprison yourself in their DRM schemes.
I would remind those of you who do not live solely for the chance to see P. Diddy in high definition to vote with your wallets.
Slow adoption sends the message we do not want defective products.
Why aren't these cards passively cooled? They're a generation old anyways. If they're marketing it for HTPC, then they missed a big selling feature.
I'm the proud owner of a toddler, and try as i might occasionally the little bugger will without doubt get her hands on a shiny disc, perhaps accidentally left in the DVD player overnight and she chewed on the remote i accidentally left on the sofa and nibbled the eject button. anyway, you can be careful but hey, i'm only human right.
Otherwise she might be ill and not feeling up to her usual daily routine of running around the park/garden/trashing-the-house generally so we stick on a bunch of disney/animal films and play them whilst she's chilling out on the sofa and she slyly grabs one whilst i pop the the kitchen to fetch some kiddy medicine.
wouldnt it be nice if i could play backups of my original copies, and not have to worry if that happens.
of course one day i'd like the ubiqutous server-under-the-stairs but in the mean time i'd rather not have to fork out another £20 quid because the only PHYSICAL COPY of the movie who's CONTENTS i purchased the RIGHTS TO WATCH got used as a teething ring.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Low budget filmmaking is no more expensive in HD than SD.
HD cameras and equipment are available to most filmmakers currently using SD.
HD Digital cinemas are not just exotic rarities.
Lots of material is currently being gathered in HD and dropped down, particularly sport.
An HDMI enabled video card is *exactly* what some have been waiting for. Now we can preview our work on a TV screen, which has a different colour space to computer monitors.
So, in summary, quit yer bitchin' cos you're talking out yer arse
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
What you would rather do is fine and is your opinion, but companies are out to make money, and more people would like to watch millionaires on grass, ice, dirt, or wood hop on each other. Still others like to watch soon to be millionaires on grass or hardwood (not so much dirt or ice) hop on each other.
Yet another step towards "trusted" (treacherous) computing. A small part of the article:
Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing", large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. (...)
Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does;(...) It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage.(...) These malicious features are often secret, but even once you know about them it is hard to remove them, since you don't have the source code.
In the past, these were isolated incidents. "Trusted computing" would make it pervasive. "Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.
The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function.
Read the rest in the above linked article. It is an interesting reading, even for the ones familiar with it, as we march slowly and steady to the worst case scenario predicted there.
Play HD DVD and Blu-ray movies on your PC with PureVideo HD technology.
Available on HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs, high-definition movies are bringing an exciting new video experience to PC users. NVIDIA® PureVideo(TM) HD technology lets you enjoy cinematic-quality HD DVD and Blu-ray movies with low CPU utilization and power consumption, allowing higher quality movie playback and picture clarity.
But wait, only these cards are supported: nvidia's list of cards
But hrmmm...it seems that the 8800GTS has regular purevideo, so I can watch Blu-Ray, but not in HD, if the Image Constraint Token Advanced Access Copy System copy protection scheme is enabled on the HDCP graphics card through the DVI out. nvidia's faq
IMHO, this is total bullshit. Did I get this right? Hopefully, there will be some sort of software hack, or small pci card that I can plug into my motherboard or usb port to actually watch hdtv and blu-ray, without buying a new video card...grrr.
While others have been waiting for a format that wasn't crippled in the first place.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Man, Looks like all the posts so far are gripes! I for one am really excited about this. I've been waiting for a next-gen video card I can use in my HTPC. Not only will the 7600GT based card be able to handle decoding HD video (see articles regarding new Blu-Ray/HD-DVD backup ability) but it will also be able to transmit 8 channels of full quality digital sound. And all this with only one cable to go from my PC to my receiver. Finally, this opens up the possibility of using Vista's new digital room correction capabilities without having to do a digital-to-analog conversion on the PC just to get the processed sound to your receiver. All good things in my book.
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
Dear Consumer,
We appreciate you voicing your concerns on this pressing matter and are glad that you choose us for your entertainment purposes. It's people like you that make mass media what it is and we thank you. Unfortunately, many of the shows and movies you listed were not watched by a lot of people so we had to cancel them. The problem is that we need one billion dollars in ad revenue instead of the mere millions that a company would receive by airing quality entertainment and not pandering to ratings. (I mean, who, these days, can afford to run a company on the millions?). You mentioned an interest in the movie and/or television program "Idiocracy," I'm glad to inform you that on the violence channel, one of our best hits "Ow! My Balls" is entering it's 25th season with no end in sight. Perhaps if you enjoyed some of our other quality entertainment, you will find this enticing.
P.S. Don't you dare use other internet media outlets for your entertainment purposes or we will consider you a pirate and sue you for living. And if you don't buy/see our movies we will consider this profit loss due to the aforementioned piracy.
Yours Truly,
The Mass Media Overlords
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I have been using el-cheapo Geforce 7600 cards with HDMI on them for making HTPC boxes for 5-6 months now. the cheap MSI card is our current favorite.
Why does the article and summary act like they just hit the market?
They really are only useful for HTPC's connected to HD tv sets.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Finally I can watch the 20Gig HD movies I've downloaded :-)
I have plenty of excellent AV equipment with RCA jacks.
I do not want pigopolists to force me to replace it all when I must go HDTV.
screw 'em in the market, so they understand it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If you are going to review new video cards, specifically because they are the first to come with HDMI outputs, test the HDMI output! Where are the action shots of these hooked to a 70 inch LCD or plasma? Get with it HotHardware, you know Anand would have given a full review.
I hate DRM!
I hate HDCP content-protection DRM junk!
Does that mean I am "getting too old for this shit?"
Sigh... All the new features, untested. Do the audio passthrough work? Any audio lag? Do this whole HDCP bullshit actually works and let you play your HD-DVD through PC to your HDMI+HDCP TV? Can it scale anything to 1080P properly?
Instead they go through another boring loop of 3D benchmarks. I hate these two-bit hardware sites that only knows how to overclock and run benchmarks.
This card might be great if you never watch Plain Old Cable Television. But who bothers with a HTPC that can't record TV as well?
We're still waiting for CableLabs to stop fellating the movie industry and license someone to make a PCI-based CableCard reader. I mean, I'd subscribe to digital cable service today, if I could tune it and record it on my PVR PC without needing to tape an IR emitter to the front of a set-top tuner.
Their loss, I suppose.
I would much rather have a DVI connectors on my graphics card than HDMI.
HDMI = single data link with HDCP
DVI = single data link with HDCP + dual data link for very hi res screens + Analogue
With the use of DVI to VGA adaptors and DVI to HDMI cables you get the most flexibility.
My Nvidia 7950GT card has DVI and HDCP for quite a while. A $10 cable gives me HDMI output...
HMDI has been out but HDCP on a video card is new... :D
Some early speculations were hinting that these types of cards would not be available to the general public but only thru OEM's. Now we just a tuner with CableCard2 for the ultimate HTPC....well and a cable company to support CableCard2
Well I though HDMI was a mere rewrite of DVI and that DVI was already "digital-only". Am I wrong?
Also I thought Component cable was Digital only too and I think it was even previous to DVI. I may understand the change from component to DVI but the DVI->HDMI move.. Someone enlighten me please. Appreciated.
If you really care about stopping DRM, then DO NOT BUY THESE CARDS! HDCP is DRM at its worst and will not let you show certain content on non-HDCP enable devices. So, if you really do care about DRM and stopping it, and all, then DO NOT BUY THESE CARDS! Show them that we, the customer, do not want DRM.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
How long can HDMI cables be?
I would love to see a standard that would allow 100 ft cables for both video & USB. This would make it easy to move a loud computer into a different room, and you could hook up a DVD drive via local USB.
the first part is the first
3CCD full hd camera..
other consumer full hd cameras exist, (I own one) this is the first one with 3 sensors which some feel gives a superior recording.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I can't help but notice that these cables are selling for 50+ dollars. Obviously it is not as simple as twisted pair etc, however, I would love to know what justifies the cost?
On a Similar note, why does "Monster Cables" Advertise having gold plated contacts when silver is a much better conductor. (About 2x as good as i remember) and about 10 times as cheap! Don't even start to argue corrosion resistance....
I'm not sure the next crop of VTRs will have DVI.
Our new studio is having these :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-KDL40V2000-Widescree
DVI Interface: No
HDMI Interface: Yes
http://www.libraprobroadcast.co.uk/proddetail.asp
Which makes it a fait a compli really.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
HDMI cards with and without HDCP have been around for quite some time!
3 &postcount=1
Here is a list of at least a dozen available for over a year. (text search for HDMI)
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=102962653
Why is this news?
HDMI cards with and without HDCP have been available for at least over a year.
3 &postcount=1
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=102962653
Why is this news?
I got my Asus GeForce 7300GS HDMI card over six weeks ago! And this is in England where we're normally well behind the times :) I'm sure they'd been out for months before also. I'd spent a couple of months waiting for my Sharp LC37XD1E TV to appear in stock, and I'm sure HDMI cards were available way back then.
Great picture quality though - definitely the way forwards for HTPCs.
I have an HD MythTV box, with an ASUS EN7600GT/HDTI/256M/A...
r ch?category=MythTV
The card itself is quite good, though I only run 1080i via the component, so I can't comment on 1080p performance. The card features optical spdif input on the back and on-board spdif input for passing digital audio through the HDMI cable.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend this particular ASUS card either though... It is ruined by what has to be one of the worst cooling solutions for a card targeting HTPC enthusiasts. The fan on this card is by far the loudest component in my Mythbox and can be heard quite easily from 10 feet away (about the same loudness as a fridge humming).
I would never buy an ATI solution for a Linux server because the graphics drivers for ATI weren't that good last time I used them.
It's a shame Gigabyte could not pull their heads out of their asses and ship the passively cooled 7600GS HDMI they long ago promised before I had to buy a new card.
My experiences with MythTV can be found here: http://stacktrace.org/index_html/SimpleBlogCatSea
"...think back 40 years ago...."
"...15 years ago..."
Are you from the past?
Welcome to the present. We live in a time where there is great potential for the free exchange of information.
There are those that wish to "suppress the printing press", but ultimately attempting to roll back the clock 40 years to before copying, or 400 years to total publishing monopolies will not work.
If non-commercial duplication was freely allowed, would that kill innovation? No. Would it change some business models? Yes.
If copyright law was reverted to its original purpose and term length, would that kill innovation? No. It would encourage innovation. Would it change some business models? Yes.
DRM is a reaction to the Internet, and an attempt to maintain pre-internet-like control.
Which is a natural business reaction, but not one that a thinking society should accept.
Basically all new graphics cards support HDCP. Remember, it works just fine over DVI. The video part of DVI and HDMI, at least teh older standards, are 100% compatible to the point you can get a cable that goes from one to the other. Since it isn't expensive to add, graphics card companies are doing it these days.
Now it doesn't affect you at all unless you choose to try and use DRM'd media. HDCP isn't required when you are playing games or anything. It's no an evil DRM gremlin that tries to fuck you over.
So if you want to make a statement by not buying HDCP enabled devices, ok fine, but realise that it is fairly hard to do if you want new technology. If you are concerned about it screwing you over, don't be, nothing has changed. Just ignore the DRM'd media and you'll be fine.
That's always the real solution here: Don't buy in to DRM'd media. Boycott HD-DVD and Blu-ray. They can develop all these great new DRMs, you can have the hardware that supports them, doesn't mean you ever have to use them or give a shit.
You know that DVI and HDMI are electrically compatible for the digital video signal, right? They were made that way on purpose. You can get a cable that goes straight from DVI to HDMI, or a cheap adapter that changes one to the other. Yes, DVI supports HDCP too. The main difference is support for analogue video (in the case of DVI) and digital audio (in the case of HDMI). So if you want to hook your DVI video card in to your HDMI TV, do it. Just get a cable, Monoprice has them cheap. No voodoo needed.
No, it's not an excuse, It is a reality for some of us.
My brother is mentally-challenged, and is still chewing discs even as an adult, you insensitive clod.
Moving to digital formats like DVD is a godsend in term of backup possibilities, specially for all those discs that you can't find on the market anymore. It's just stupid that in most legislation, to do this [legal as per copyright law] action, I have to use tools that are considered illegal [by the DMCA, DAVSI, or other].
Pretending this is an "excuse" is **AA propaganda to criminalize people who prefer doing backups instead of buying over and over what they already have. The right to do personal backup is a right granted by the copyright laws and the **AAs are tring to illegaly get it out of our hands. Get your own children before talking smartass and giving tips about parenting to others.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
and when someone, for whatever reason, wants audio to go over the HDMI cable. This would be useful if someone has a receiver that supports HDMI and has no authentication problems with HDCP, but if your receiver only has optical/coaxial input, you're going to have to have another cable going from TV to the receiver. In the case of my HDTV, the TV doesn't have any sort of digital sound output, so you'd only get 2-channel analog when using sound over HDMI.
I think the subset of people that actually use a TV's internal speakers (opposed to an external receiver) and care about quality enough to use HDMI instead of component are very small.
> Low budget filmmaking is no more expensive in HD than SD.
Wrong.
Maybe the electronics and media aren't significantly more expensive, but those aren't where the real expenses are. Back in the old pre-HD days Hollywood was griping about upcoming HD, because of the secondary implications.
Makeup needs to be more carefully done. As someone else mentioned, every pore in the skin, and that includes every bit of makeup, including flaws. The makeup lines at the edges of the Klingon forehead that didn't show on SD media if you weren't zoomed in close, now do show in HD.
Set construction quality needs to be higher, fewer corners cut. What was conveniently hidden behind SD now shows in HD.
It's the secondaries, the things that also chew a lot of time to do right, and they're NOT on the digital compound price decline curve.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I remember reading up on the requirements for "HD Ready" tags 2 years ago on the eff homepage.
there were so many drm requirements for that trademark cert it made my head spin.
I decided then and there i would never buy anything marked "HD Ready"
I fully expect linux drivers for these cards to be DMCA'd to death, if the hardware based lockdown even allows the development of linux drivers (you probably have to reverse engineer the handshake.. then get hit with the DMCA bat).
then there's the fact that cablcard cant be read in these cards... making them completely useless for real pvr's.
as for the previous poster mentioning HD-DVD and BLU-RAY backup utility, atm it's in its most primitive states. they are still in development(theyre still reverse engineering the final 40% of the process) and far from layman usable. There is still a distinct possibility that, despite having a system worked out to repeatedly and relatively trivially crack AACS, that the number of updatable points will make it impossible for a dvd-decrypter style 1 click app (i see it requiring as much skill as proper use of avisynth for the next 1 to 1.5 years at the latest.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This, is a fascinating, summary, don't you, think?
I was thinking a bit lower than that where we don't build sets, we find lcoations.
http://www.britfilms.tv/index.php?id=4
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
It's news in the same way that ATI HDMI cards falsely claimed HDCP support was news last year.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
HDCP is probably the first case where the value of the product outweighs the cost of the encryption. People love HDMI. They love it so much they're willing to ignore HDCP. HDCP has become the friendly encryption. The encryption with a heart.
No-one is trying to break HDCP. No-one ever will.
No-one is trying to break HDCP. No-one ever will.
this is old, newegg has offered the 7600gt w/hdmi for atleast 2 months now
This may be true for things like television, where they could depend on a certain lack of detail carrying through, but in cinema it is a little different. High-grade film shows pretty much the same amount of detail as HD projection (plus or minus, depending on who you talk to). For the cinema, HD (really the digital aspect, not the HD aspect) should if anything lower costs. For television, where far more detail will be apparent than previously (higher resolution and especially increasing abundance of large-screen televisions), it will likely require stronger attention to detail and commensurately higher production costs (that, or horror of horrors people will just get used to seeing what actors actually look like).
I have a 720p LCD tv with a resolution of 1280x720, and I have a DVI to HDMI cable going from my Intel Imac to my tv set. Everything looks like complete crap. I don't know if it is due to the setup or what, but all videos have artifacts all over the place, and non video use is just as bad. It's about as good as watching normal TV, really .. but it is in no way HD. As soon as I turn off the TV and on to HBO HD or something, I drool a little bit and remember why I bought the TV. I'm convinced its my MiniDVI to (single link) DVI to HDMI setup losing signal, and I welcome the HDMI video cards :) It's too bad I can't upgrade my Imac with it. Thanks, Steve.
I have a question:
Let's say I have an unprotected/unencrypted video file in high resolution (like 1920 x 1080). Can I play my file (using something like VLC) throught the card's HDCP/HDMI interfact to my HDTV without any loss of resolution?
In other words, is the HDCP engine allowed to simply "pass through" content from an unprotected/unencrypted source without degrading it? Has anybody specifically tested this and seen it work?
Pace yourself, man. How will you manage to show even more contempt for Thursday's inevitable dupe?
Do you do significant amounts of makeup?
Another issue may be "sanitizing" your video. With SD perhaps people in the background were safely unrecognizable, whereas with HD you may need model releases (or whatever passes) because there's enough extra resolution/detail to identify. Same for "product placement" types of concerns.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
:) perhaps I should have qualified myself and covered the corner cases.
I'll try again :
For a lot of low budget films, the transition to HD doesn't always add significant cost to shooting. The problems we, and the filmmakers we have contact with, are currently more likely to be in the edit suite when it comes to coping with HD. The introduction of another HDMI enabled video card is a useful addition to the equipment pool and we would welcome it in our edit suite. Plenty of the equipment we are upgrading from SD to HD uses HDMI as its HD connector, so one less cable type to think about is a something I feel is postive.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Both the standard ATI and NVIDIA version of these cards come in AGP. I am assuming these are PCI Express only. However, my HTPC is a P4 2.8C with 1GB of memory. This is actually still plenty for a home theater computer. Adding a HDMI card would extend the life of this computer for a couple more years at least.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
This carries audio. I believe the previous HDMI cards only carried video.
Begging for modpoints since '03
I am *NOT INTERESTED* until DRM measures such as HDCP can effectively be bypassed. Why should I reward the RIAA and friends (like hardware manufacturers who cooperate with them) by buying products that are specifically designed to make my life more difficult? "Defective By Design", indeed. I will take a pass until the day I can control my own machines, thank you very much.