Goodbye, HD Component Video

glogger writes "Jim Willcox, the video expert at Consumer Reports, bids farewell to our ability to get high-definition video via the analog component-video connections on Blu-ray players. Thanks to Hollywood pirate-paranoia, potentially millions of law-abiding viewers will have their choices restricted. Quoting: 'Hollywood studios now have the right to insert an ICT "flag" into a Blu-ray movie; if it detects that a player is using an analog connection that doesn't support HDCP, it downconverts the video's 1080p (1920 by 1080) native resolution to 960 by 540 (540p): better than DVD quality but only about one-quarter of full HD quality. This ensures that high-def video is available only through the copy-protected HDMI outputs.'"

Comments

i know what you need

[Anonymous Coward]

You need an HDFuryII http://www.hdfury.com/

Re:i know what you need

[hairyfeet]

And you just hit the nail on the head as to why BD is ultimately doomed. I've had several customers come in asking about BD and when they found out the extra gear and hoop jumping they'd have to do to rip it compared to DVD they were all "How much is an upscaling DVD player again?". Most around here have either figured out how easy it is to rip DVDs or has a relative that does it for them, and between that and media tanks like this one (which is one of my hottest sellers ATM, people just love the thing) while BD will have the videophiles I just don't ever see it reaching DVD level support.

But what really pisses me off about the *.A.As is the double standard bullshit they try to pull. They say "oh you didn't buy the (insert movie/game/CD) you bought a license to use it!" (and thus getting around first sale). Okay, I'll play. That means I get to replace it for free if anything happens to the media, right? After all I already have a license to use it? "Oh no" they say "You bought a copy thus you have to go buy a replacement!"

BULLSHIT! Total unbelievable bullshit! Never in history have we allowed ANY company to use either/or when it comes to copies and licenses.Physical media and licenses have clearly written rules and obligations under the law, and what these bastards are trying to pull is getting the protections of both and the responsibilities of neither. We are already being held back by a bunch that if anyone would have listened to them back in the day both video recorders and recordable media would have never existed, and now that we are finally getting all the pieces to where one can simply have all their media in a box that you can access anywhere they are holding everything back once again.

All they are doing with this kind of bullshit is yet again making piracy the more attractive option as there isn't any hoop jumping or bullshit to back up or copy that .MKV rip, no different than how the DRM and limited activation bullshit is making the pirate version of most games the more stable and nicer running version compared to the legit. If they would just listen to their damned customers for once, and give them good value in easy to use media, maybe we wouldn't have all this BS in the first place. Instead the *.A.As don't seem happy if they aren't finding a way to actively fuck over their customers, so is anyone surprised when the customer fucks them back?

Confused

[Anrego]

So... this prevents someone copying a BD disk with a VCR? Or a TV capture card?

I’m actually confused here. Do people actually copy digital media this way any more? What does this prevent?

This kind of sounds like something that has been in the works for a while and is now irrelevant (now that AACS has been dealt with), but the guy’s at the top are two stupid (or afraid of getting fired) to stop it.

Re:Confused

[Pentium100]

It does not. They lower the resolution, but if you record to (S)VHS you will get an even lower resolution (especially with VHS) so there is no difference. SVHS records about the same resolution as DVD, so there is no problem with the downscaled video.

This move is stupid - HDCP was completely broken, devices like HDFury are available. So, again, the only people who will have problems are the honest paying customers who have an older TV. Some of them will now learn about ripping, TPB and HDFury type devices.

Re:Confused

[Beelzebud]

I'm not sure how you draw a comparison to pirating media, to drug running. Drug runners are supported by the drugs they run, not pirated DVDs....

Re:Confused

[mrdoogee]

To further the pursuit of accuracy, I would say it is treating a gangrenous leg by hiring a polka band.

Re:Confused

[FriendlyPrimate]

Yes....when calling someone stupid, you have to be extra careful and be grammatically correct. Otherwise, you come off looking like a moran.

Hello HDFury

[Sycraft-fu]

Seriously, if you've need to get HD component video, or VGA, from an HDMI or DVI source, the HDFury products are what you need. We got one at work because we needed to hook an AVCHD camera, which only had HDMI out, to a projector that only had VGA input. Worked perfectly. Fully supports HDCP. The one we got, the HDFury 2 is switchable between VGA and component mode.

So not only is this a dick move, it is 100% ineffective. You just go and buy an HDFury and you are back in business. I'm sure there will be others as this ramps up.

http://www.hdfury.com/

Not what they say it is....

[mark-t]

They are doing this supposedly doing this to stop piracy.

I'd be willing to bet, however, that it's to force people to buy newer televisions with an HDMI input.

And of course it's only going to be effective at controlling unauthorized copying as long as AACS doesn't get cracked. Oh, wait....

Good luck with that

[c0d3g33k]

Until they fix the "give me a good reason to buy it" hole, their vision of a world of perfect DRM won't be quite as wonderfully lucrative as they imagine it to be. To date, I've neither purchased nor pirated any Blu-Ray media. This measure doesn't change that situation one bit. Won't pirate it, won't buy it. Hope that fortune you spent on DRM was worth it.

How do they plan for this to work

[AtomicDevice]

How is this going to make me *less* likely to pirate?

My choices are:
By a blu-ray - do I have the right player? Will it down-convert to less-than-advertized quality? will it cost way too much? who knows (except for costing too much, that I know is a yes)?

Or:
Pirate it for free at a good quality, I don't have to leave my house and new releases are ready to watch in an hour tops. Also I now have just a regular old video file that I can do anything with that I want.

Why studios haven't caught onto this is a mystery to me. Seems like piracy would be dead in the water if ALL movies were offered as unprotected files for a low cost at high speed. If anyone could download any movie ever made at 1meg/s for 1 or 2 bucks with no DRM BS why even bother playing the bittorrent roulette? would some people still do it? probably. Would most law abiding citizens happliy pay rental-prices-or-less to just buy the movie they want? probably. Could they stop wasting their time and money on anti-customer schemes and start worrying about making movies? probably.

High minded types will simply ascend...

[jedidiah]

High minded types merely "ascend" and avoid the limitations of the physical body... er, media.

Yeah. Talk about yet another reason to RIP or just plain pirate.

This will be the biggest burden to the most clueless users out there, once again proving that DRM only punishes the paying customer.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_ray#Advanced_Access_Content_System

"BD-ROM Mark is a small amount of cryptographic data that is stored separately from normal Blu-ray Disc data. Bit-by-bit copies that do not replicate the BD-ROM Mark have no known decoding method. A specially licensed piece of hardware is required to insert the ROM-mark into the media during replication."

The only people they're stopping...

[Assmasher]

...are legitimate users of video content, sometimes even when it isn't hi def...

My setup is a total pain in the a** because of HDCP.

I wanted to do something really simple this summer - show my cable box feed on the TV in our home gym (a glorified name for room with treadmill in it), so I looked at my options:

(1)Get another Cable box for that TV - no, I'm not interested in paying another $15/month just so I can watch TV in a room for an hour every other day.
(2)Run yet another HDMI cable to the TV - this was not really an option since it would be 35 feet from the cable box with various openings between the box and the destination TV - ergo, expensive, mess, and requiring HDMI amplifies and extremely long cable runs.
(3)Go wireless and get an Air Synch HD (or something similar) - up front cost is not cheap, but no new cables, no new box, only turn it on when I want, et cetera.

So, I get my new wireless HDMI system in, yay! Looks cool, setup seems simple - so I try it out. Cool, XBox 360 play over it just fine, BluRay player works over it just fine, cable box? Oh, whoops, green screen on cable. Never seen that before.

So, long story short, it turns out there's this little feature of HDCP that is only just now starting to bite people in the a** called "downstream devices." Apparently, a source device using HDCP can restrict the number OF HDCP CAPABLE DEVICES that can be chained together to get to your TV or projector. Note that it is a restriction on LEGITIMATE HDCP licensed devices ffs. Most HDCP capable devices have a somewhat large number of possible downstream devices (there's no requirement in the standard - the bastards) but some of them just one or two. This means that if you connect your source device, such as my Motorola DVR, to a receiver (which counts as an HDCP device in this chain) and your projector connects to the receiver you've maxed out the number of devices.

Along comes some poor schmuck (me in this scenario) and puts a wireless HDMI transmitter between my TV and my receiver - *bang* the cable box says "you're trying to pirate my HDCP encrypted signal, I will show you a green screen."

Do they really think they're preventing movie piracy when someone can simply use some soldering tools and an programmable gate array and components available over the internet and strip HDCP? Hell, you can buy HDFury and setup a good recording system.

The only people they're actually screwing are people like me who sit around for 15 seconds waiting for all their HDCP devices to decide to get along and show video and/or audio.

(BTW, I simply connected the cable box to the receiver with component cables and optical audio - but I guess that solution will be on its way to the trash can as soon as Motorola can get around to it, eh?)

</RANT>

Re:The only people they're stopping...

[mike260]

In your analogy, there's a mile-long queue of skilled thieves outside your door and they're busting open your locks every 5 seconds with zero effort and no repercussions. I think that in this situation, yes, people *would* tell you to stop forking out for new locks.

They might also question your policy of strip-searching invited guests before letting them into your house.

Did anyone else read it as:

[jbeaupre]

"This ensure that high-def video is available only through the copy-protected HDMI outputs or from Bittorrent"?

Damn dyslexia...

Re:wow

[Hatta]

Higher quality picture? Seriously? What, then, is the pirated version ripped from? The original film print?

If you're using component cables you will soon get a higher quality picture from a pirated BluRay than an actual BluRay. That's the entire point of this /. article.