Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Jane, get me off this crazy thing

CD manufacturers say we're pirates and wipe their plentiful posteriors with the Redbook standard...

DVD manufacturers giggle with glee at the inclusion of Macrovision, adding false sync pulses in the vBlank interval, using the NTSC/PAL/SECAM standards as TP, TP for their bungholes.

And then the whole "5.1 discrete audio? Not unless it comes out analog!" thing...

Now... this... someone get me my shovel. Said it before, I'll say it again. Time to go back to books and live theatre.

Bren R.

Looks like HD DVD players sales just dropped a few more million.

Someone will come up with a hardware hack that ignores the flag and get sued, but not before the hack is released to the wild. Hardware vendors will tweak their newer products so the hack doesn't work, but somone else wil figure out how to circumvent that one, too. Leapfrog is a fun game.

Before the third round of revisions and hacks take place, the issue will be moot because analog HD will have died.

You saw it here first.

Almost makes you want to go back to vinyl. Maybe this watching movies in your home wasn't such a good idea, either. This just might make DVD-A successful.

The hack will be difficult. The spec requires that the device be updateable so that such hacks can be overridden. Enjoy our brave new, DRMed world...

All the philosophical issues of copy protection notwithstanding, how many pre-DVI and HDMI sets have 1080 native resolution anyway?

It's not necessarily a matter of DVI and HDMI. It's a matter of whether those inputs are HDCP compliant. And I bet there are a bunch that aren't. And it's not like they're knocking it down to 720 (and there's plenty of those out there), they're knocking it down to 540 (potentially).

I find it hard to believe that they are making these players so consumer unfriendly. With Sony having BlueRay on the PS3 and now Microsoft announcing they will be having a HDDVD add on for the 360, the stakes are getting mighty high.

We, the consumer, can always choose not to buy!!!

The strongest vote a person can cast is with the wallet.

The only people that this will not affect are the ones with throw away money, and there are plenty of them. I'm happy with analog and a ctr television. I mean how good do we have to have it anyway?

Is there anything new there? The option to cripple analog outputs has been around for a very long time now.

The good news, I read a report that Sony claims all the movies they release will NOT utilize this so component only HDTV's are safe (for their releases).

My guess is that this won't get used very often because of the bad PR it would receive. If somehow they figure piracy is benefiting from being able to record that analog stream perhaps that woudl change. Hope not.

The only other optismistic thing I can come up with would be if the industry did use this a lot, perhaps it could expose the craziness of how DRM is trappling on our 'fair use' to the point that the masses might actually realize what's going on and give a crap. Right now we are only a tiny minority that pays attention to this issue and many of us don't even fully understand it. (I try to thou )

I'm glad that my only HD device has what they are claiming will be the right mix of digital input and copy protection complient encoding/decoding, but man, oh, man... What a rip! I feel for those with non-"compliant" HDTV sets. You KNOW it will be that one movie that you really want in HD and it WILL be the one that the studio decides to downconvert on analog signals...

Let's see...this is absolutely idiotic because most people copy DVD's on their computers, not through recording through composite cables. There is no reason to do this to the thousands of people with composite imputs on HDTV's when that isn't even covering the base of the largest pirating source.

Software is going to be made (like there is with current DVD's) to rip them on the click of a button.

In reply to:

---

Let's see...this is absolutely idiotic because most people copy DVD's on their computers, not through recording through composite cables. There is no reason to do this to the thousands of people with composite imputs on HDTV's when that isn't even covering the base of the largest pirating source.

Software is going to be made (like there is with current DVD's) to rip them on the click of a button.

---

You might want to read a little more about how DRM works on next gen DVDs vs current ones because it will be a LOT harder to "crack" this time. And there is a system in place if it gets cracked they can change the code on everythign new being made. (nutshell)

"Hard" is of course relative. Even if the DRM itself on the next-gen discs proves to live up to the hype of how secure it is, there's still the transport to consider. Ed Felten has already demonstrated how HDCP can be cracked. Once that's done, the digital video stream could easily be recorded.

Nice to see the little technical details.

So much for my component and composite video cabling-only to the projector.

At least I have not installed vapour barrier and drywall over the main wiring hub. I stil have a chance to run some way over-price HDMI cable (or will it have to be DVI for Outlaw Audio components?). Maybe it will have to be both. NOT happy about throwing more money out the window!

It seems to me.........the DVD mfg's (of players, AND media)
are going out of their way to "kill" the business, much the way the music industry has with the cd.

I must say though, I don't have much sympathy for "pirates".

Ahrrrg.

This could depend on if you even want one of these HD or Blu-ray players right away. For now my LG upconverting dvd player upconverts over component cables so no need to worry about HDCP for now.

True. The LA Times review of the Toshiba HD-A1 is far from flattering, both of the player itself as well as the marginal bump in quality offered by the format.

Thanks for the link to the review. You're right, it makes HD-DVD sound like too much of a pain right now. Although he didn't review the discs on large screens or projectors. Wonder if that would have made a difference.

"I started on a 32-inch Sony HDTV that was about two years old. It had no capability to accept the most current digital hookup technology — HDMI — so I used the analog audio and video cables included with the player."

I stopped reading the LA Times article after this line. The review is amateur-ish. Why would anyone review a state of the art technology with a with the old red, white, and yellow RCA cables? Of course you are not going to know the difference!! It wouldn't surprise me if this guy's next revalation was that the speakers on his TV produced less sound quality than a full range 5.1 system. The only conclusion he comes up with is "screen size matters", which we knew already.

Nonetheless, the potential fact the majority of home theater hobbyist do not have an HDCP complient screen (count me as one, I bought my Panasonic 47" HDTV 2.5 years ago) means that this format could be dead from the start. Not only would we have to spend $1000 on the new player, but then we would have to spend more to replace a TV that is only 3 years old.

royce73, you are so totally right. I read the article too fast and didn't even catch that he used the RCA cables. Geez. Amateurish indeed! Misinformation lives!

In fairness, the article got better from there:

"Next, I switched to an almost new, 23-inch Samsung LCD set with HDMI hookup. The HD DVD image looked great. But a plain, old DVD of the same movie looked just as great on the set. In fact, the images looked almost identical"



What's next hooking up the player to your 1977 19" B&W TV?

Agreed, the largest TV he used was 37".

If you liked that one, you'll love this one: screwed.

Next will be a couch that won't let you get up until the shows finished

Or a device that won't let you close your eyes until the commercial is over.

I notice with a lot of recent DVDs that you can't hit "Menu" during the previews.

Luckily Chapter Forward works. Look, I want to watch a Family Guy episode, I don't want to be forced into watching the preview for the latest Rob Schneider waste of celluloid every time I pop the disc in.

Bren R.

In reply to:

---

Almost makes you want to go back to vinyl. Maybe this watching movies in your home wasn't such a good idea, either. This just might make DVD-A successful.

---

Already there! Give vinyl a chance, you won't be sorry.

I give vinyl a chance all the time. But I'll leave my kinky sexual habits out of this.

Aw, c'mon, Peter - go for it!
You could always start a new post in The Water Cooler...

Vinyl is just too sticky... Sorry not for me. On the other hand, I guess I could live with leather if necessary.

yeah and if you were a relatively hairy individual, you probably wouldn't be for long.

In reply to:

---

"Hard" is of course relative. Even if the DRM itself on the next-gen discs proves to live up to the hype of how secure it is, there's still the transport to consider. Ed Felten has already demonstrated how HDCP can be cracked. Once that's done, the digital video stream could easily be recorded.

---

I have already read that article, I showed it to a friend of mine who is way smarter and reads about HDCP all the time (slow days at work). Anyway he believes there are some flaws to the articles presumptions and concludes he doesn't think cracking it would be as easy as the author suggests. I wish I could convey all of that better but I'm not capable.

Bottom line, we're not going to know until its out, hell HDCP isn't even completely finalized yet!

In reply to:

---

HDCP isn't even completely finalized yet

---

Respectfully disagreeing, the spec for HDCP rev 1.1 was finalized in June of 2003, and approved by the FCC in August of 2004.

I mispoke, AACS, the actual encryption for next gen DVD's is what I meant (it was delayed) and it is only finalized on a interm basis.

There is more to it that I don't fully understand, but HDCP on video cards is not complete either. Its just one giant mess (DRM).

I don't think that I have seen any of this new gear advertised in any of the stores in our area, just yet.