Next-Gen DVD Players to Rely on HDMI?

RX8 writes "For those thinking about upgrading to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD when they become available, you may want to think again. According to Designtechnica, the next-generation players will not support 1080i or 1080P and quite possibly not even 720P using the component video connection, it will have to use HDMI. Why? Because of copyright enforcement. Hollywood wants these new players to get rid of component video all together. So if you have an HDTV and want to use these new players, chances are you are out of luck. Neither the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD camps are officially saying anything about this yet, but early players are only showing these high resolutions using the HDMI connection."

Re:HDMI or HDCP?

[prefect42]

You're confused as to the difference between HDCP and HDMI, which is not surprising as a lot of articles seem to. HDMI is little more than DVI + sound + signalling. HDCP is the 'content protection' that is causing the fuss. HDMI actually looks quite nice, as you get fewer cables, can shovel 8-channels of 192kHz 24-bit uncompressed audio down it, and get signalling that should be able to provide a single remote system with the minimum of fuss. How well the signalling will work in practice...

One of the requirements of HD Ready is that you support HDCP, to prevent the problem of people buying HD tvs and then not being able to watch in HD. There are a fair few TVs out there with DVI (that support HDCP) but not HDMI.

The real problem is HDCP

[Shawn Parr]

DVI and HDMI can be converted back and forth very easily. It is a dongle basically.

But not all HDMI and DVI TV's incorporate HDCP, which is the copy protection system.

So even people with HD TVs with HDMI will not be able to use these new formats at full resolution unless they have a relatively new set that has HDCP, and it is compatible with whatever HDMI spec (did you know there are different specs? 1.1, 1.3?) and the HDCP spec used by the new systems.

Imagine buying a HDTV this summer, then for Christmas getting a BR player that doesn't work full quality because your set doesn't have HDMI 1.3 and whatever current version of HDCP...

This is a huge issue, and even the early adopters are getting fidgety about it. While some people may switch out their whole systems, at this point it will be a minority by far. Even on the high end hi-fi and videophile forums there is a lot of discussion of people not being happy about this.

Eventually we may run into a situation where the hardware manufacturers stop caving into the producers demands if we have a situation where even the typical early adopters will not bite.

Re:I'm tired...

[ThinkDifferently]

Who held a goddam gun to your head and forced you to buy a new TV?

Congress, telling me the "old" TV format will go away; it's just a matter of when.