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2010 — the Year AACS and HDMI Kill Off HD Component Video
For home theater buffs who want (or already have) a high-def system using component-video connections, time may be growing short. Audiofan writes with this story, which begins: "Digital HD (high definition), like that enabled through HDMI and Blu-ray, is awesome. It offers amazing picture and audio quality. It allows you to conveniently connect one single cable to provide both picture and sound. It is royally going to screw up a lot of homes next year. Wait, what was that last part? After December 31, 2010, manufacturers will not be 'allowed' [to] introduce new hardware with component video outputs supplying more than an SD resolution (480i or 576i). Should this go through as planned, it's going to disable or throw a wrench in a lot of existing custom installations as soon as the end of this year." The AACS in the headline stands for Advanced Access Content System, the industry scheme to block "the analog hole" by controlling content from storage media to eyeballs.
There will still be plenty of HDMI to composite converters coming out of China, etc.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
Why attempt to force the market to change? Oh right, money. Someone stands to make a lot of money from a bunch of people being forced to upgrade.
I mean, they could just let the old tvs slowly die out and eventually noone will have a need for anything but HDMI, but where is the short term profit in that?
Somehow I still doubt it will work. People don't like being told they can't have their way and someone will find a way to give them what they want anyways.
What we have is a perfect recipe for greed!
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
It says that they "...will not be 'allowed' [to] introduce ____new____ hardware..." and then says, "...throw a wrench in a lot of ____existing____ custom installations..."
How are these things related? Is the submission suggestion that your component video output will suddenly cease to work? Or are they trying to make the leap of logic that old displays will not have any new gizmos to connect to them? I've never seen a piece of display equipment that couldn't be connected to an HD source through some trickery with adapters or an upscaler etc. What's the worry here?
It seems that lately every manufacturer is trying to impose new standard in order to maximize their future sales.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Where is this happening? Dare I assume the United States? Epic description fail.
I'm sure there will be a $1000 cable from Monster that has 'no analogue holes'. "Use this for your composite video to ensure you get the best composite signal with no analogue holes" Buyers will SWEAR their 480i show 'looks as good as HD'. I love Monster Cable, they collect 'stupid tax'.
Does this include VGA or DVI with analog composite outputs? Because the idea of a 640x480 CRT monitor makes me tear up.
When you're having trouble selling a product, try and limit your available audience even more!
We will have ways to split the HD signal anyways.
Do they honestly think they can stop someone from splitting the source device?
I have many Y adapters, Not all work well, but I am sure HD has many will have many solutions.
Output a laptop HDMI to a Capture card on another system, TADA
Why don't they just give up and stop making it hard for the common user
When I hear unbreakable technology it always sounds like a challenge just calling me
The Wii can still put out whatever they want over RGB and there is no law stating your device (TV) can't accept RGB as an input and still be included..
It states anything playing licensed MPAA content over RGB will be forced to be artificially limited to 480i.
Now what if you have your own video over 480i on say a camcorder or on a BR and would like to use RGB? That I do know if the law or the technology will differential that from "protected" content.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
If I were one with a little extra cash (or a lot of available credit), I might just buy up a lot of the desirable components now, and then make a modest margin by reselling them on Amazon or eBay after remaining stocks dwindle.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Up to about 2001-2002 I was a legitimate consumer, but when the trend of shafting legitimate consumers became the industry standards, I went 100% piracy.
My entire entertainment system is a lean, mean, swashbuckling, pirating machine. There is no hole in which to insert a physical media; why would I need a DVD or Blu-ray source, since I have no intention of buying any discs? DVD player went to the dump with my VHS.
Now my country does levy a blank CD tax...Oh yeah, I never buy any blank discs because EVERYTHING is on Hard drives or flash cards.
I'm laughing man, because I am so not legit.
Ok, queue up the haters, I don't give a shit what any of you think.
I seem to remember the same argument with Region Codes and DIVX. People voted with the wallet last time, why would this time be any different?
Even if they do get their way, all they will do is create a cottage industry of security-defeating technologies. And like always, the real pirates who make tons of money selling counterfeits will find ways around it.
It's the actual consumer that can't watch that latest DVD because of DRM that doesn't quite work right that get screwed.
- Brett
An overpriced underperforming platform get bypassed in favor of digital media players with increasing sizes of flash storage or hd storage.
Its a story of a clever technology undermined by its own advocates. Why buy a blu-ray player that may not play new favorites 3 months
from now when you can get a digital download. The old tech people may stick with DVD while the new tech people may switch
over to direct digital download. If Im gonna hook my player up to a network to get firmware updates, I might as well just get a network
media player.
There is so much streaming stuff out there now, torrents of stuff ripped from streams and paid downloaded movies that optical storage is not really necessary or useful anymore. I have never had more problems with optical media than anything else, discs that go bad after a certain time, coasters and silly copy protection schemes.
Blu-ray is the latest mainstream optical storage has to offer and it's a nasty proprietary format pushed forward by the notorious DRM worshippers that are Sony. The discs are too expensive and fewer people are going out to buy movies. There isn't much point either since when you buy it it's not even yours.
Unless low-cost holographic storage becomes available without restrictions or DRM I'd say optical storage has had it's day. and anyone developing optical storage these days has to be in the least position to force DRM on the market. The SD card guys have had much more luck with peddling DRM to the masses and I expect that SD-DRM usage will become widespread any day now
I typically try to express some kind of intelligent or informed opinion on /. stories, but all I can come up with here is, "Screw you, AACS." I have not yet moved to Blu-Ray or an HD TV, and this makes me much less likely to want to. Bastards.
Though not exactly on topic, I feel like I should post this like I always do...
"24K gold-plated connectors help protect the cable's optical lens to ensure consistent signal transfer"
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Rocketfish%26%23153%3B+-+8'+Digital+Optical+Cable/8315147.p?id=1174694191675&skuId=8315147&st=optical
None of this says HDTVs have to abandon analog inputs. There will continue to be models that feature them. It's more about Blu-Ray players and other devices that decode AACS protection on video not being able to output analog signals. The HDTV is the receiver, not the sender.
because one way or another, you'll get screwed?
Huh? We need a "poster misunderstood the point of the article" flag.
I think you have this backwards. The article is talking about high def streaming over component not being allowed by the devices that will stream the content to your TV. You're talking about the Wii's low-def streaming over component to the TV... the Wii would have to purposefully downgrade it's quality to be affected by this but it's already at SD so it wouldn't be.
480p component inputs on tvs will work fine its just 480p outputs on dvd/blue-ray disc players wont. Wii doesnt play DVD's
so it wont be affected by the AACS action.
In any event most wii players dont care about the difference between 480p and 480i
I hope they call it the WiiII
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
How many TV manufacturers will continue to have analog inputs on their TVs when a minority of devices use them? Most people only use VCR/DVD with their TV anyways, so if these lose analog, I imagine many if not most TVs will lose the analog support as well
I run a media PC. I want to buy a BD-ROM for it.
It's DVI -> HDMI for video, and a Tascam USB sound module for audio.
Should I be concerned about blurays breaking my setup in any form or fashion?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Purely FYI: AC means this cable. Thanks for the tip on monoprice, had not heard of them before. Geek fail.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I think your setup is perfectly reasonable. How much moralizing do you see companies go through when they employ slave laborers to make goods or outsource your job to some third-world worker for a pittance? They are taking things away from others just because they can, so why shouldn't you do the same?
Slashtards go on about how it's okay because "corporation are amoral" and they "have a responsibility to make as much money for their shareholders as possible." If that is the case, then it's perfectly sensible to do the same thing yourself. Pirating is cheaper than buying, and allows me to have more money for other uses, therefore it is the right thing to do.
As they have sown, so they shall reap. All hail the false idol of money and bow before the might of the corporate gods.
The SD resolution you'll be restricted to is NOT 480i. It's 540p (960x540 in Widescreen). It's still better than DVD resolution (720x480 non-square pixels).
Hands in my pocket
Component video cables are hardly ubiquitous. Lots of people have never even seen them and even less could tell you what they were if you asked. The majority of people with HDTVs bought a $150 HDMI cable along with them.
Whale
Any manufacturer who wants to make his TVs attractive to the millions of people who already use component video inputs from their existing DVD/Blu-ray players, cable boxes, Wii's etc. In other words, all of them.
I'm confused, I mean obviously this is bad, but what exactly will it mean? As far as I can tell after having read the article and the AACS page on WP, all I can say fo certain is that this means we will have to use HDMI cables connectors etc etc or do it illegally via SD or other. So could someone explain this to me a little better?
The reason they can enforce this is because they can refuse to issue patents related to Blu-ray to any manufacturer that does not agree to their terms, which a blatant abuse patent system.
The purpose of patents are to promote the development of novel ideas, and the primary mechanism for doing so is to allow the original inventor to be compensated when these ideas are used. A government-granted monopoly is completely unnecessary to accomplish these goals, and is a horrible anachronism in a free market society.
Patents should be reformed to require all grantees to license their patents to anyone who is willing to pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This would at least solve the problem of patents being abused to force agendas and limit competition, while still achieving the goal of compensating inventors.
I think you mean the "HDFury2"
http://www.curtpalme.com/HDFury2.shtm
I got one from Monoprice
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10114&cs_id=1011402&p_id=5035&seq=1&format=2
See the product review titled "Almost perfect" for my opinion.
Content and components developed and made by legitimate providers should, in theory, be better then simply just DLing, connecting the HDMI to your laptop and calling it a day. That's of course a pipe dream - pirated components and content is always going to be slightly better, but is this really the time to make the legit side even worse? I've been hearing they're not exactly tolling in dough and this won't really hurt anyone willing to use non-licensed components, only those who bother to actually pay them (otherwise known as the last people you want to alienate further).
The real analog hole is the display screen.
With all the camera and video technologies coming out, I wouldn't be surprised if creating an exact digital replica in the future was as simple as putting a camera in front of a screen and loading in a "record video on a screen" app.
Play the movie once, (perhaps even at a higher speed,) and you have a perfect copy of the video.
Sound might be a bit trickier.
Don't confuse a cable worth $10 you bought for $100, with the placebo effect. Ones and zeros look the same to a TV with glasses or without.
Same reason you can still get hooooge HD TVs that have the old antenna-coax screw-on attachment.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
go back to drinking ale with your bowling buddies up in the mountains, grandpa
I can almost see the day when I will turn off the television for good and I used to buy a lot of movies but now that is rare. The entertainment industry is walling itself off from it's own audience. I don't see how that is going to help them. All the technology is focused on the people who do not buy, the people who do buy keep getting shafted so they will stop buying also. DRM won't save the industry once it no longer has an audience.
Many stations broadcast digital TV free-to-air. Many even broadcast digital HDTV (720p) signals.
That "old antenna-coax" screw-on attachment is still useful if you bought a TV with an ATSC digital decoder built in, which will take the signal received from an HD-compatible antenna (you can buy them for around CDN$25, or build one for a dollar or two) and convert it to a picture for you.
You don't need cable to watch sports and get local news and weather (and some children's shows).
Due to the enforced end-to-end DRM nature of HDMI, switching components can be a pain in the ass. I've had no end of trouble getting HDMI switching correct. It seems that if a component is already on before my receiver is up, or switched to that component, that HDMI won't negotiate correctly and often requires the whole chain to power off and power back on.
Not that it prevents the piracy that HDMI exists solely to prevent...
Can the restrictions be interpreted as a market manipulation? Creating artificial scarceness to raise prises? Old business model trying to survive cornering the market? Wouldn't that be illegal in normal markets?
So once again we have more hoops for paying customers to jump through and perhaps have their legally purchased content automatically downgrade itself in order to "protect" the MPAA and member companies. Meanwhile everyone who has given up on the ridiculously outdated and self-defeating content distribution system suffers no inconvenience whatsoever.
The further along this train wreck progresses the more my outrage turns into bemused detachment. I haven't bought any non-indie media in quite a long time now (occasionally I catch a movie or concert). I do feel somewhat sorry for the people who haven't figured out how totally messed up the system is and are going to be badly affected by this, but I just can't bring myself to the point of actual outrage over it any more.
How many people are going to just give up trying to be "good consumers" and switch over to piracy based on this? I would expect it will be far more people than will be dissuaded from participating in casual "copyright infringement" by trying to make backup copies of their media or god forbid just trying to watch a movie they bought on the wrong type of TV.
I have no intention of ever buying into BluRay precisely because of the ability to play these sort of anti-consumer games. Wake me up when they start their attack on HD OTA broadcasts.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I am not sure he is confusing the cables, as I also believe that the monster cables look better. Can you provide a picture of a $10 cable that looks better than a $100 cable?
Since I have not switched my cheap HDMI cable with a Monster cable I can't comment on which produces better output from my TV.
Lot's of comments already so probably nobody will see this but it's been said before and it's the most basic truth that the MPAA and RIAA et. al. need to come to grips with eventually:
If it can be read it can be copied.
The only way to prevent people from copying their precious Hi-Def movies and super awesome digital music is to prevent them from PLAYING them. Which in a sick and twisted sort of way appears to be what they are slowly trying to accomplish.
For starters your would need a camera that has the resolution to see every pixel without interpolation. Then how do you get the correct pixel color value after it's been corrupted by 1) ambient light, or if you are in a dark room 2) the light from the adjoining pixels? Perfect copy? Hardly. Once a signal becomes analog (from the pixel to your eye/CCD) it's impossible to be perfect.
It should read "Greed killed off.... "
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So what makes an antenna HD-compatible? Did they change the frequency ranges used?
http://xkcd.com/129/
I would highly recommend purchasing Slysoft's AnyDVD HD. Yes, it will set you back $100, plus about $50/yr (they've gone to subscription since they continuously crack the BR keys - but they are very good at it). Once you have this in place, you can play the content you've purchased on any output from your machine. You can even back up the raw, unencrypted content so that you can play it with any software player which has the base (VC-1/x264) codec installed.
Trust me, if you have a Windows based media PC, you want AnyDVD (HD). And you want to support Slysoft with your money so that they keep on top of the cracks which prevent you from enjoying the items you've purchased.
(note: I am not affiliated in any way with Slysoft, except as a 4+ year satisfied customer with a 300+ title library on HD which I ripped from my own collection)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I did the slashdot non-normal thing and decided to check this claim wiht AACS LA. The press contact is listed as anna.vrecheck@edelman.com, however. After sending a request to confirm the statements in the main article. I get a failure: This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipients failed.
anna.vrecheck@edelman.com
Those who can, do.
Those cables are well worth it for the Wii if you have an HDTV. All the text and everything is much sharper.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
There are plenty of over the air broadcasts which are 1080i. All old TV antennas are digital and HD compatible. It is just hype that you need a new one.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Sums it up nicely for me. For a variety of reasons (primarily pricing for HD content), we got rid of the DirecTV satellite. For now it's just a Mac Mini, and whatever comes OTA, through Hulu, or Netflix. We still have more than we can watch. Sure, OTA is the only HD source (well, we still have our Xbox HD-DVD drive and a collection of movies), but that's fine.
Getting to the point, we don't have BR either, and part of that is because I consider it to be a consumer-unfriendly format. Just like we decided we don't *need* to spend the money on satellite, we don't *need* to put up with the hassle of DRM. I'm techy enough to get around it, but I'll go find other things to do instead.
So feel free, entertainment industry, to make consuming your product a pain in the ass. While you're doing that, I'll be finding other more convenient, and frankly more productive, places to spend my money like reading a book, coding up my next great idea, or (gasp) spending time outside.
Already happened to me! Bought a 52" LG Plasma TV. When I got it home, forgot to do the research and was surprised to find no analog audio output! I had always wanted a DVR so decided to kill two birds with one stone: Hooking up my old 1980s stereo was as easy as looking on amazon.com and buying this box with old school cable in and hdmi and audio rca jacks out. http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-DR570-Recorder-Built-Tuner/dp/tech-data/B001TOD3KK/ref=de_a_smtd
Good luck finding a torrent where somebody bothered to rip both the closed-captioning and subtitles with it
You are aware that you can download the subtitles separately from a lot of sites and can easily make any video player drop them in, yes? Not all are high-quality, but many are, and always at least good enough. In the rare case that they are out of sync with the video you have, use a player like smplayer, which has keyboard shortcuts for syncing. Takes a few seconds to make them sync at the start of the movie.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I'm already not buying one because they're all region coded. This isn't going to affect my purchasing decision at all.
I don't own a HDTV or a Blu-ray player, and have no immediate plans to purchase any of the above because I have better things to do with my money. I can live without these things. It would be nice to have, but if they're going to play bullshit DRM games with the hardware, then they can fucking keep it, I'll spend my money on other things, and they can go fuck themselves. I recommend everyone else do the same; vote with your dollars, that's the only way to make your voice heard in a capitalist system!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Uhm... very few digital sources rely on closed caption. DVDs have their own subtitle mechanism. Few VHS players have a digital output.
Most businesses in which need to run a signal a long distance need to use a Cat5 to Component system. My family owns three businesses and they all use a system in which cat5 is ran to all three of our TVs and converted to component right before reaching the TV.
As much as HDMI is great it simply is not as good as component for running an HD signal over a long distance. Component is much better with cat5 because it is split into 3 cords. That way you Cat5 can easily handle the signal. However Cat5 is insufficient for carrying the entire signal if your using HDMI.
The AACS should not have the authority to break so many people's installations. We certainly can't afford to take out our nearly one thousand dollar system of splitters and converters and I'm sure many businesses can't either.
A few years ago you could buy DVD players with DVI outputs, dumping up scaled 1080i without HDCP. Then a few years ago, when all the DVI ports disappeared so many of the players started refusing to dump 1080i over HDMI/DVI without HDCP. Instead they would only dump it at 720p or lower, that's when a lot of manufactures did the same thing to component. Its been really hard to find DVD players that would upscale to 1080i/p without HDCP for a couple years now.
Well, I think this cable looks better than this one. The solid black is much nicer-looking than the ugly gray curvy bit and red logo. The one looks like a cable should, the other just looks like a blob.
You need to buy this:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=101&cp_id=10114&cs_id=1011402&p_id=5035&seq=1&format=2
yes, wrap the $10 one around a hot chick, and add the $100 one to gotse.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
nothing, if you have a UHF/VHF antenna it should just work(as long as you get a decent signal and that it doesn't drop bits and make the sound stutter, and cause artifacts in the video)
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
I have a 70 ft. conduit run from my equipment to the projector in the back of my room. HDMI max run length is, what? 15 ft.?
But it costs more. It can go over Cat-5e up to around 60 meters or so, however you need 2 cables, not one. For longer distances or single cable there is a fibre solution but as I'm sure you guessed it is pricey.
HDCP is exceedingly weak. You can find devices to remove it, if you look around. Ok well you can also get cards with HDMI input for a computer. That would then be all you need to get a copy of the data.
Of course all that is unnecessary since AACS and BD+ have been bypassed. AnyDVD HD will remove all that stuff so you can simply copy the data right off the disc.
There is just no way to give someone a movie to watch, but then to restrict other uses. They have to be able to decrypt the data to watch it, that means all the keys needed are there somewhere.
Connect devices through wifi or usb.
Let me show you my thing; it's the most advanced on the planet.
I bet the amount of piracy that has happened since Blu-Ray and AACS came out that would have been prevented by this change (i.e. no 1080 output over unprotected outputs) is essentially zero.
Anyone who wants to pirate will likely A.Use a ripping program (perhaps on a copy of the disk they rented from Blockbuster or Netflix) or B.Download a copy from the internet
Ripping programs exist (or if they dont they likely will soon) that can run on Windows and can do single-click ripping of Blu-Ray disks into a file that you can then play with a suitable player (removing all the protection including AACS, BD+, ICT, Macrovision and Region flags in the process)
And with the growth of HTPCs methods to easily play the pirated content back on the 50" TV in the media room will continue to grow.
It's a win-win as far as industry is concerned: you have to replace your equipment, you have to buy all your movies again, they get to control the content in perpetuity in violation of copyright law, and they can threaten you with lawsuits for obscene awards and even win. And since it's collusion within an oligopoly, you have nowhere else to go. And it's all legal (after bribing politicians sufficiently well). Why wouldn't they like it?
Most blu ray rips on usenet have the subtitles in the file, toggle on or off in the player. It's one of the benefits brought on by MKV.
There's a young generation-and-a-half-growing up with the baked-in notion that consuming media "legitimately" is costly and a PITA compared to piracy options. As these people grow into more leadership roles in society, we'll start to see a sea-change in how media is consumed. The rise of the Internet was one such sea-change. The baby boomer generation that runs most things today barely figured that one out. But the boomers sure aren't surviving the piracy sea-change. Once the boomers are finally out of power, maybe then we'll start to see some real change in how media is distributed and consumed. These are deeply held cultural habits that tend to require a generation or two of evolution to evolve.
Whoohoo... we got a load of media moguls and their retard friends on the site, apparently. :D
And they can’t take reality... well... obviously!
Well, to those modding facts down: I laugh in your face, cause you are doomed! :D
And to those who still watch TV or a standalone TV: Welcome to the 21st century! Throw them away! Together with the wax cylinders, fax machines and telegraphing equipment!
You know, I just realized that there comes a time, when you have just outgrown Slashdot, and it starts to look... exactly like a very techy 4chan. Well, I also realized, that for me, that time is now.
Cause when the trolls are in power, every normal person becomes a troll.
So go fuck yourselves.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
considering that all tv are 720p to 1080p now, I don't see how this is an issue.
You still have a SD TV? Then here's your warning to upgrade.
Be seeing you...
Try it with Mario Kart. The scores and everything cleared up quite a bit when I used the component instead of the composite. Make sure you change the settings in your Wii to 480p after plugging the cables in, otherwise you won't see any change.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Depends which side of the fence you are on - Sometimes people just do not realise the consequences of their actions and copyright rules, more needs to be done in order to educate people to the rules.. .
tagging for links