Next-Gen DVD Players to Rely on HDMI? 169
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:Serious "LITTLE" problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
So sure you could split the ecrypted signal into s-video or whatever other form you want, but it's not going to show the video that you want to see on the screen.
So here's my question... Analog inputs still work, but are in lower resolution. How do the analog inputs running in low res mode compare to a current generation DVD running over analog inputs?
Re:Serious "LITTLE" problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, I'll bite.
I'm as anti-DRM as anybody, but statements like yours and the article submitter's are more than a little overly dramatic. It's highly likely that "the first few thousand people" who get home with their shiny new discs will have HDMI inputs in their TV's - it's difficult to buy an HDTV these days without one and has been for about the last 5 years. Even my $600 Samsung CRT HDTV has a DVI input, which is fully compatible with HDMI (HDMI is just DVI with audio, so all it takes is a cable with HDMI on one end and DVI on the other to make it work).
The earliest HDTV's only had component inputs. But with the rate HDTV's sold in the early days vs. the rate they're selling now, I'd wager that the vast majority of HDTV's in homes are HDMI-capable. Even many early adopters have probably upgraded their sets by now with larger models that perform better, have more inputs and cost a lot less. HDTV has been around for around 10 years, remember. It's not a new technology anymore.
The joke is that the AUD$8.95 DVD is here to stay.
Yeah, you don't have an HDTV, I guess. (I admit, I don't know what the HD situation is in Australia. But here in the US, it's almost difficult to buy a non-HD set anymore.)
These new formats are specifically for people with high definition displays. DVD is not good enough for those people. You're talking the difference between 720x480 (and that's assuming the disc is anamorphic, otherwise it's more like 480x360) and 1920x1080. That's a huge difference, and it's the entire reason these people bought HDTV's in the first place. If they didn't want that extra resolution, they would have just stuck with standard-def. So there is a large market for these new formats; if you spend $2,000-$3,000 on a TV, you want a format that takes advantage of it.
Standard-def formats will continue to exist, just as standard-def TV continues to exist now. It's no "joke", and you're not saying anything anyone doesn't know. 5-10 years ago you probably would have said "the joke is that VHS is here to stay" in a discussion about the new DVD format. Change doesn't come overnight. But once you see the difference 1080i or 1080p makes over standard definition TV, it's very hard to go back.
Now, all that said, I give it a matter of months before some Chinese or Taiwanese company comes out with an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player that outputs full resolution over component. It'll be one of those "oops!" moments that the manufacturer claims was unintentional but results in a run on that particular model. Eventually, everyone will be doing it... just as happened with region codes on DVD players.
Re:This is ribiculious... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've noticed that outsiders have a difficult time understanding this concept. They seem to think that the public somehow decides which shows get on the air and which do not, or which shows stay on the air and which do not, despite copious amounts of evidence to the contrary. They also seem to think that market forces have something to do with the process, a load of horseshit that anyone who actually works within the industry will recognize by the stink right away.
First rule: if it's ever about money OR power, power wins. Period. End of discussion. Fuck the market, fuck the revenue losses, fuck what the public thinks, it's power uber alles, and all the way. Once you grasp that you suddenly begin to understand why a host of highly-rated shows have been inexplicably canceled over the years, while other real losers have managed to hang on season after season. Profitable shows get cancelled because someone in authority doesn't like the show, or doesn't like someone on the show, and feels like sticking the knife in just to prove that he has a big dick; unprofitable shows hang on because the reverse is true - someone in power likes the show, or is getting regular blowjobs from the lead actress, or whatever it is that floats their boat.
If you want a semi-famous example, just look at Gail Berman's track record at Fox. She's been directly responsible for the untimely deaths of more than a half-dozen profitable shows simply for personal reasons (and is thought to have been involved in putting a half-dozen more into the coffin as well). She kills shows mainly because she harbors a seething hatred for beautiful young actresses who get a lot of attention, despite the fact that none of these actresses has ever done a thing to Ms. Berman. Her behavior, and the reasons for her behavior, are so well-known it's a running joke in the industry. This one person is in large part responsible for the reason why Fox is known as 'The Place Good Shows Go to Die'.
So when you see the movie/TV industry propose something which will do nothing at all about piracy, yet will piss off most of their customers, and you ask why they'd even consider such a thing, the answer is simple: it's about power. Money has nothing to do with it. The money doesn't matter because the obsession with power supercedes it. Always.
The folks who run the movie/TV industry have always been little tin-pot dictators, and unchallenged little tin-pot dictators, up until the point that broadband made it possible for the consumer to give them a big "fuck you, assholes" - even if it was only a minority of consumers. Think of how much they hated the VCR and how hard they fought it; despite the fact that the VCR meant huge new potential revenues, it also meant a loss of CONTROL - control over WHEN people watched shows. Not that it mattered for shit to the bottom line when they watched a show, but the very idea that Joe and Jane Consumer could make the choice for themselves was utter blasphemy. How dare those little fucking proles think that the choice of when to watch a show was theirs to make?
Now take that hatred over that loss of control and apply it to the current broadband internet situation and imagine just what sort of frothing, enraged lunatics you're dealing with. Again, huge profits are just waiting to be made, but the price is a big loss of power; so guess which concern is more important? They'll do anything and everything to stop YOU from taking back some of the power they've held against you since TV was first invented, and to hell with profitability. As far as they're concerned you're
Re:The formats will flop (Score:5, Interesting)
Right. I cannot possibly be the only one without all this next generation hi-def crap. I mean, it's all you hear about, it's all you see advertised, but 90% of america CANNOT all be spending $2300 on a TV. It's just not happening.
I'm still rockin' my 20" TV I've had since I went to college (it's dorm sized) even though I now have my own townhouse, etc. My TV at best has a composite input (like, standard RCA), and my stereo is Dolby Digital 5.1, minus the
And you know what? My next upgrade is going to be a TV in the 32-36" range. Yep, appearantly, they still exist, but Circuit City, Best Buy, and all the retailers don't advertise them and refuse to help you with one - they want to push you into the $2000 Hi-Def flat screen yada yada widescreen next-gen high-profit-margin. No Thank You, I'm on a budget of probably $600, which believe it or not will buy a decent 36" or a pretty good 32", something with at least componant and s-video inputs.
But, it's probably going to be 5-10 years before I switch to something that can do 1080i or 720p. I mean, I'm sure it looks great, but I'm a fan of "looks good enough". Besides, I just got glasses, so to me, even regular 360 lines of resolution over an RCA cable looks fantastic, whereas 2 months ago, even it looked blurry. See? I just got Hi-Def with a trip to the optomitrist!
Someone has told these people that everyone on earth has or is getting a High-Def TV, and multiple devices that can display to it, along with multiple things encoded in hi-def. The problem with this is that it's just not true. It's too expensive; no one can decide on a standard (720p, 720i, 1080i, 1080p, 480p, HDMI, component, DVI, VGA, etc etc); and no one wants to repurchase their collection of DVDs.
Thanks, but no thanks. Get your ducks in a row, get the prices down for those of us who aren't living on credit cards and conspicuous consumption, find a standard, and make it backwards compatable. Then we'll talk.
~Will
Funny quote (Score:1, Interesting)
I think they're talking about the HDCP layer of an HDMI connection.
Of course HDCP can only be considered "robust" if you define it as "proved broken before first implementation" [wikipedia.org]
HDCP and Blu Ray (Score:3, Interesting)
They are saying that it's up to the studios to disable this via the medium if they choose too. The box manufacturers want to stay as far away from this arguement as possible, they don't want the bad blood with the consumers. It could well be that the studios do choose to do this, aside from HDCP, Blu Ray also has the additional feature of being able to black list boxes. Apparently what they are doing is embedding the key of the machine that decoded the stream into the video output. That way the studios can pick up that key out of a ripped copy and then disable that unit for all future releases. Based on this, they don't want to introduce any further copy protection onto the Blu Ray discs such as a more advanced version of CSS encoding or other encryption.
However, a lot of this is up to the studios in how they want to protect their content when it's published. What happens thereafter the box manufacturers don't want to know.
Well that's what I was reading the other day anyway.
IT'S ACCESS CONTROL, not copy protection (Score:2, Interesting)
They are designed to restrict access to the copyrighted works only to limited, licensed, subset of devices that are designed under the tight control of media giants. MPAA wants to decide how you consume their content.
They want you to sit thru the commercials without skip ability. They want to dictate terms to both display manufacturers and end users about the type of display device used. They want region control that works to protect their price discrimination systems (DVD had a crappy first try). They want piece of the pie every step of the way.
Once they control everything, they can start jacking up the price, tighten 'region coding' and other trade barriers, and add up things like 'phone home'. And once that's done, they can start charging per view etc. Or start monthly subscription 'clubs' with latest releases only available to 'premium members'.
Yes, first it will be 'value added services', but media giants think long term. Once it's normal that your MPAA approved Black Box Player is in constant connection over encrypted link to MPAA server farms, with no competition, and no way to play legal content other than MPAA approved, they can start tightening the screws. Oh, and all other ways will be illegal by then. Including movie playback on PC. Hardware makers will get to put their sticker on the black box, and fight to the death with each other on commoditizing the MPAA-approved solution, but that's their part of the pie.
It's all about maximizing the profits. Current plan is to make customer pay more.