HD DVD to Screw Early HDTV Adopters

orionware writes "Apparently the folks who designed the Advanced Access Content System (AACS)for the new HD DVD formats have decided to stick it to the early HDTV adopters. If your set used the older component video, expect to watch your new HD DVD at a quarter of the resolutions. To thwart piracy of course." From the article: "AACS says the new players won't output a full-HD signal from their component-video connections, since those jacks are analog instead of digital and thus have no copy protection. The 'down-rezzed' signals will be limited to a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels -- exactly one-quarter the 1,920 x 1,080 pixels that you'll get through the copy-protected digital connectors on the players. The potentially huge problem with this strategy is that the only HD inputs on a lot of older HDTVs are component video."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[H3lldr0p]

Here's the thing that I don't get about attempts to control content like these: Doesn't this just smell ripe for a class-action lawsuit? Seriously I can see a group of pissed off owners of these devices crying "Fraud" over the fact that the player automatically downgrades the signal to their televisions. Throw a few smart lawyers into the mix and you've got a huge mess on your hands. Years of bad PR at the very least. They are also running the risk of having either the courts or the legislature or both of stepping in, and despite all of the money thrown at the political groups, having them create new laws which prevent them from doing or requiring the hardware manufactures to do this sort of stupid sh*t. So why risk it? Are the profits so great that they'll risk the entire business? Isn't anybody in these companies trying to think of a smarter way?

Granted they could always hope for the sweet sort of deal that NetFlicks got, where nothing really happens to the companies in question, but last time I checked that deal was starting to go down in flames...

Incompatible formats once again

[brain1]

This is shaping up to make the VHS vs Beta wars look like a border skirmish. The real losers are going to be the consumers that suddenly find their beloved $2500 HDTV and $300 HD-DVD they just got has been suddenly obsoleted by some jerk that thinks the entire buying public is a bunch of pirates. Their attitude is that they need all these restrictions just to keep US - the public - honest? Go jump in a lake!

IMHO, the MPAA, RIAA, et. al, are going to make the consumer public so mad that they essentially put themselves out of business. What then? Add more DRM and restrictions to products claiming their plummeting sales are due piracy?

I'll just pass on HDTV until these jerks finally self-destruct and we can get rid of them.

-dh

Question about possible class action

[stilleon]

My mom purchased a Sony HDTV two years ago (I told her to wait because of unresolved issues like these, but did she listen????). It only has HD component ins as HDMI and so on were not even spoken about. I see that Sony is part of the AACS defining group. Well, they advertised that their HDTV was the future of TV (obviously not), and that the component inputs would be capable of accepting HD from future products (that's what the sales guy said). Well, they sold a product that they are now crippling its abilities. Is it possible for early adopters to sue to get compensated for now having to buy a new set just to use HD-DVD or Blu-Ray?

this is already happening with upscanning dvd

[enrico_suave]

This type of a-hole (analog hole) closing tom foolery is already in place with "upscanning" HDTV players designed to take the 480p and output it at 720p/1080i/etc. You get 720p via digital (so called protected) outputs, but get crap (low rez) out via analog component. In effect the DVD upscaling device you bought is intentionally crippled out of the box.

The end game doesn't look good for fair use, and the ability to move content around freely between devices :(

E.

If at first you don't succeed...

[CinciTech]

"...try the exact same thing again." Or maybe more appropriately was Ben Franklin's quote: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

So they release one copy protection after another, spending gobs of money that translates to increased cost to the end user, and ultimately they're all cracked in less time than it took to develop them. Why not try a different approach for a change, instead of having the audacity to think that eventually you can come up with an unbreakable copy protection?

The bottom line, (imo), is that some people will always pirate, and some will always pay the asking price. Forget about these two groups, and focus on the people in the middle who would buy your product if you simply made an offer they'd be interested in paying for. Piracy is about getting something for less than what you could get it for off the store shelf, and unless you cut costs and lower DVD prices, these people are going to copy/burn/download/bootleg your product unless you make the retail package, (being more than just price) more appealing than the piracy route.

As it stands, what I see here is that you can legitimately buy the DVD, and play it at reduced resolution on your early HDTV, or you can wait for the copy protection to be broken and get a pirated copy that plays at full quality. Where's the incentive for buying your product now??

Some random points

[Phreakiture]

Some random points that occur to me:

• I have a 27" TV. It is an early, analog HDTV, but at that size display, unless you are sitting really, really close to it, 960x540 will be plenty
• Joe 6-pack, when his TV breaks, will probably buy another SDTV. Until his TV breaks, he will not buy another TV. He doesn't want to spend $700 on a TV, never mind $2000+ when he can have one for $99.99 at Wal*Mart.
• As such, Joe 6-pack will not adopt HD-Ray, because DVD is sufficient. His SDTV is barely capabale of exceeding VHS quality, so DVD will look only slightly better than VHS to him, and HD-Ray will look no better than DVD.
• I reap a significant benefit with my 27" HDTV even watching SDTV content, because of it having a deinterlacer. This was a major selling point for me. There is some minor banding (which is a little annoying at times), but for the most part, the picture is fantastic, even at SDTV.
• Short of DV and D8 casettes, which are used for shooting home video and not used for distribution of commercial content, DVDs are the highest-quality SDTV medium you will find in most homes. Technically, they are EDTV, because the MPEG stream may be encoded as progressive scan (and many DVD players can play them as such, and deinterlace interlaced streams), and the resolution is well above that of even the cleanest of composite video signals. DVDs look fantastic on my 27" HDTV.
• 960x540 is only 50% better than 720x480. Many store that sell TVs still can't get an HDTV signal to demo their HDTVs, so who is going to notice that HD-Ray might be better than DVD?
• HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are starting a format war, and people will, therefore, stay away in droves.

The bottom line is that it doesn't matter. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will die if they can't clearly show superiority to DVD and their competition. Doing what they are doing, they will fail to show superiority to DVD in many installations. They're stillborn.

Now, you have to keep in mind that, as a Slashdot reader, you are part of a minority. You are technologically literate, and probably willing to dish out more than most people to get better technology. The majority don't care about the technology, just as long as they can see something. Hell, quite frequently they don't even care whether or not the aspect ratio is right, or know what an aspect ratio is! The view with which you and I approach technology is going to be skewed, period. We are technophiles, and most of our friends are technophiles. Most importantly, we who would be interested in this technology if it weren't such a clusterfuck are the minority.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will die.

Re:Low res pirated movies

[MrAtoz]

Indeed. One of the little-noticed lessons from the success of iTunes et al.: it proves that music customers are perfectly happy purchasing audio files that are of noticeably lower than CD quality. "High-definition" quality, in the music arena, is just not important to a growing chunk of the market. Why should video be any different?

It's funny, too, because I remember all the fuss about what a mistake it was to settle on 44.1 kHz for CDs because of the quality issues. Now, 128 kbps audio is good enough to pay money for -- good enough to be a substitute for CDs.

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[theJML]

What about the fact that DVD Players don't work for life!? I mean, if I buy a HD-DVD Player, get me 30-40 HD-DVDs (not a huge number by any stretch) and then the player dies, WTF? I have to Re-Buy ALL of my movies?? THAT is why I won't by something that's tied to the player.

Region coding

[metamatic]

The same companies have gotten away with region coding for years, and that's a pretty clear violation of international trade laws, specifically the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade section 2.2.

http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/17-tbt_e .htm [wto.org]

I'm kinda surprised the EFF hasn't shown any interest in pursuing this.

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[edunbar93]

That sounds like a great way to kill sales.

You don't get their point of view.

Their point of view is like my boss's when it comes to paying employees. "If I lay off three people (out of 8), then I make that much profit from their salaries" he thinks. He doesn't think "if I have three extra people around at a time when it gets super busy and we make lots of sales, then the company will grow, and not totally drop the ball. So I should generate more sales".

The MPAA is thinking "if we bootfuck our customers and force them to buy multiple copies, then that will stop piracy and increase our sales", not "the more restrictive we make our product, the more people will need to steal our stuff, and the more we drive them to our competition". It's just a reason that people won't move from DVD to new technology X. Namely, because it doesn't work.

Re:Can anyone say "class action"?

[bemenaker]

You sue, the media content producers, the consumer elctronics producers, and the distrubitors for colluding to rip-off the public. The HDTV standards were SET in the 90's. This is a fact, I know this because that was when I started designing home theaters.

You claim that these companies claimed, and there is historical evidence, that they needed the adoption of HDTV's to be able to start selling HD content. To be able to switch TV to HD. So those industries got together, created a standard, people went out and bought EXPENSIVE TV's based upon those standards, with the expectation that in the next 5-7 years, that everything will be HD. Yes, the life expectancy of a TV fall in that range easily.

Now you have the same industries that were pushing you to buy this TV based on THEIR standard so they could start selling, and distributing their content, changing the standard under you.

People bought these expensive TV's with an expectation brought on by the industry that they will be compatible in the future. Had they known, they wouldn't have bought, and waited until the new standard was set. That is justifiable reason to seek legal remedy.

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[pla]

Hasn't hurt iTunes.

Sure it has. They've just done well regardless.

I currently buy a lot of music - at least a hundred bucks a month, almost all on indie and used material (I did the "boycott all RIAA music" for a while, but it didn't work and only made me suffer - So now I just limit myself to buying methods that circumvent the RIAA's pockets but still get me what I want).

I will not, ever, buy from iTunes as long as they use DRM. the vast majority of my digital music library, I legally own; But I will turn to piracy before I'll accept DRM'd content. Aside from that, I consider iTunes a really great idea... Quick, convenient, better granularity (ie, you can buy one song without getting the rest of an album of crap), and a decent selection. But DRM makes it less than worthless to me. It says "please, sir, may I have another" as I hand them my money for the privilege of having them insult my integrity.

So, have I, and people like me, "hurt" Apple over their use of DRM? Well, I haven't cost them anything, but I also haven't "switched" where I dispose of a considerable chunk of my discretionary income.


And FanBoys, spare me the lecture on how not-really-restricting you consider Apple's DRM. I don't care. They have DRM, telling me in essence "We do not trust you, we consider you a thief, but we'll take your money anyway". I do not, and will not, accept that from any company.

Re:HDTV adopters screwed by HD-disc rules

[Dare nMc]

> "We do not trust you, we consider you a thief, but we'll take your money anyway". I do not, and will not, accept that from any company.

isn't that every retailer now? that is for sure every credit card company.

So no stores with those scanners after the checkout, guess your getting close to online sales only.

Does that apply to CreditCard verification, you know the Address/zipcode, and 3 digit verification code?

I know I feal when I am ID'd to buy beer (would apply to tobacco, lottery, spray paint, etc) that they are looking at me, and saying they dont trust me.

I AGREE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I too have a 51" TV (Sony) with only the analog component inputs. It will do 1080i, but there's no device that will feed the component input at that rez.

It's worse than mentioned in the article - upconverting DVD players won't even do component output (at 720 or 1080). So, I can steal a disc at it's fullest resolution, but can't even play purchased legal disc on my TV with a hi-tech upconverter. Way to kill that market!

My LCD TV is 37" - but (like most) is only 768x1280; so for the one device I have that WILL accept DVI/HDMI digital input, 1080i is a waste of money.

I agree- most people aren't going to replace their TV until they need to. Until then, many like me will be content with DVD. With a good hi-res large TV, DVD resolution even at 480p is acceptable. It's not like I'm suffering, or trying to watch my 26" TV from 1985. It took from 1985 til 2002 to replace my last TV. When will I replace this one?

How badly do I need to see "Caddyshack" or "Something About Mary" in 1080i? I don't think anything can improve the video of "Sky Captain". Heck, TV shows were passable at broadcast quality, they're fine on DVD. Very few shows DEMAND being seen at 1080i - I'll wait. Actually, computer-generated movies (Toy Story, Bug's Life) are frighteningly sharp on DVD at 480p.

I'll wait until the manufacturers see the light. I suspect the hundreds of millions of households that just spent the last 7 years investing in DVD technology and content are in no hurry to change... DVD was a cheap quantum leap over VHS. BluRay (BluR?) or HD will have to be as convincingly better and as cheap before it goes anywhere...