Sigh. So, we have the music industry whose DRM schemes and other anti-piracy measures have thoroughly failed, and are only hindering consumers who stick to the letter of the law. Now we have Hollywood who’s going to do it all over again: the AACS LA is busy killing off component video – even for existing, currently-owned equipment.
As most of you will know, HDMI is awesome. It carries both HD video and digital audio over a single cable, has a relatively sane connector, and has become the standard on just about any video device, ranging from TVs to DVD players. Sadly, with the coming of Blu-ray, coupled with HDMI, component video will be killed off.
Blu-ray carries an encryption scheme called Advanced Access Content System, which is a form of DRM to restrict access to and copying of content on Blu-ray video (or HD-DVD in the past). It is managed by the AACS LA, which has the most delightfully entertaining description on its website:
The Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator is a cross-industry effort that develops, promotes and licenses technologies designed to enhance digital entertainment experiences. This technology will facilitate the ability to offer exciting, new, flexible entertainment experiences for consumers to enjoy in stand-alone, networked home and portable device environments.
Anyway, the AACS LA is quite busy plugging the “analog hole”; you can copy content off Blu-ray discs using, for instance, the (analog) component video output on your Blu-ray player. However, after December 31 2010, manufacturers are no longer allowed to introduce new Blu-ray players with component video outputs capable of HD output; they must limit those outputs to SD (480i or 576i). Existing models may continue to be sold until the end of 2013.
This sucks enough already, but you could argue that at least you’ll be able to prepare yourself by buying a capable player before the deadline, and then, you won’t be affected. Wrong. Even existing Blu-ray players, even the one you may have sitting underneath your TV right now, will be affected, thanks to a lovely little piece of technology.
After January 1, 2011, the producers of Blu-ray disks will be able to include an “Image Constraint Token” with any Blu-ray disk which will disable HD over component video, limiting it to a 480i/576i resolution – even though your player is perfectly capable, and bought well before the cut-off date. They want to ensure that HD content only runs through HDMI.
In their provisions, the AACS LA actually refers to all this as the “Analog Sunset”.
What makes this so much more incredibly frustrating than it already sounds is that this won’t prevent copying of Blu-ray discs in any possible way, since AACS has already been cracked wide open long ago, and has been spread across the internet. In other words, this nonsense only affects normal consumers, who will see that their expensive Blu-ray players, connected over component video (contrary to popular belief, HDMI doesn’t have to be better than component), will suddenly start playing SD content. It’s doubly frustrating for countries like my own, where personal backups are perfectly legal.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: content providers are stupid ignorant idiots.
Now I finally know why regular DVDs I put in my HD-DVD player (I haven’t bothered to buy a Blu-ray player yet) started to run in “SD” rather than being upscaled!
My HDTV is only 720p, only has a single HDMI input and a single set of Component inputs…
So, I run everything through a slightly older Sony 7.1 receiver which has *zero* HDMI inputs, and several Component inputs. This allows me to attach multiple 720p devices along with their optical audio to a single source, which I then connect to my TV.
I used to have the HD-DVD player attached directly to the TV via HDMI, but decided to instead plug my media center PC to this input and use the Component video for all my other devices…
Ever since I did that, my HD-DVD player refuses to upscale regular DVDs… wow, what a PITA. I never realized that was intentional due to the Analog vs. Digital. I guess now I have to consider upgrading my perfectly good receiver because it doesn’t support HDMI…
I *hate* that my equipment is becoming irrelevant for no good reason other than greed and fear of piracy…
This is not exactly on topic but it is in the same category:
http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg
Why screw customers?
Wow … is that really worth complaining about? If it annoys you so much, just read a book.
Cannot help, but to agree with pretty much everything – the Big Media is once again hosing the law abiding customers… Truly, there is no limit to the greed and lust for total control of big corporations… Interestingly enough, I don’t think they are even trying to combat “piracy” as such – it seems to me that the goal is much more trivial, and revolves around putting their hand deeper in the pockets of those of us, who are not tech-savvy enough to fight back…
…indicating whether or not the application of DRM has had any effect (positive or negative) on the bottom line for the companies using it? Has it earned them billions of dollars from the consumers who used to copy, but now purchase? Has it caused purchases to increase or decrease?
[Yes, I know this article is not about DRM, but the reference to it was made for comparison’s sake]
Edited 2010-02-20 01:18 UTC
Well, MSN music and Yahoo music are dead while iTunes Music has gone DRM-free and Amazon MP3 is only bringing in proffit for Amazon. What’s that tell you?
I don’t think the iTunes library could be called UNsuccessful before going DRM-free. But I see your point. Still, those aren’t facts and figures. Those are “feels like” sort of statements.
I use the Amazon MP3 service simply because it is DRM free. If it had DRM then I wouldn’t use it.
Eventually these companies will realized that the tighter they make the leash the harder the slaves will fight back…
There are certainly people who pirate software and media that can afford to pay for it. I’ve met plenty of them.
DRM has worked well in the PS3 and a lot of people who would normally pirate have probably bought some of the games.
Piracy really starts to cause problems when there are far more pirates than legitimate customers. We’re seeing this with pc gaming, especially single player games. Crytek used to be big on pc exclusives but lost interest after seeing Crysis pirated to hell.
DRM for PC games seems to be another story.
Edited 2010-02-20 09:05 UTC
Yes, but this can be seen as evidence that DRM is ineffective. As Thom said in the article, this is another case where DRM/copy protection is hindering paying customers. Pirates are unaffected by the restrictions, since any trace of them has long been removed by the crackers. And I am pretty sure that there aren’t any titles for the PC that haven’t been cracked.
So you have a situation where paying customers have to put the CD in the tray or have their machine rootkited, while the pirates enjoy the game hassle free. So the way to battle piracy is to remove DRM not enhance it. Last time I checked, offering an inferior product for more money than a free alternative (albeit illegal) is not a valid strategy.
I am not familiar with the state of piracy on the PS3, so that could be a place where DRM is effective
The question is: When will DRM become enough of an annoyance that the rest of the sheeple start to care? We geeks care, but we’re small enough as far as a market goes that the big movie guys don’t care at all what we think and, if they pitch this as a “well, you just have to upgrade every so often, that’s just the way it is” line most people won’t raise hell over this as they should. When it comes to technology, the average consumer will believe anything a marketing or sales rep tells them, and you can bet they’ll be telling lies left and right about this one.
One thing’s for sure though, we know where the movie studios here in the states are spending their money since it sure isn’t going into actually coming up with some creative movies these days. Oh well, guess that’s why I prefer books.
I don’t think they will. I don’t think they care or think about these things at all.
I think about it often because I work for a copyright firm that manages rights mostly for written media (books, newspapers, scientific papers/journals, etc.)
Sometimes I am torn… I just wish people in general would at least recognize that someone else worked hard to produce something and deserve (if they so desire) some form of compensation for it. So if they ask for you to purchase a license, you should – and not steal it. But to enact all kinds of hokie stop gaps in an (often futile) attempt to forestall the criminals, they are branding the honest folk as criminals as well – or at least showing that they have no trust or confidence that the majority of people are honest and willing to compensate them for their product.
[edit was for a typo]
Edited 2010-02-21 03:30 UTC
I just wish people in general would at least recognize that someone else worked hard to produce something and deserve (if they so desire) some form of compensation for it. So if they ask for you to purchase a license, you should – and not steal it. But to enact all kinds of hokie stop gaps in an (often futile) attempt to forestall the criminals, they are branding the honest folk as criminals as well – or at least showing that they have no trust or confidence that the majority of people are honest and willing to compensate them for their product.
I do think most people do recognize the value of hard work and are willing to compensate for it generally. It’s just when the DRM goes awry that they stop caring.
Me too am an honest citizen, and I love playing games. But, with Ubisoft’s recent DRM-move I will never again by games from them atleast: their games, even single-player ones, require constant internet connection, will drop you out of game immediately if they lose the connection, and so on. There is no way you can play those games when you’re on the move, not at home, or if there’s f.ex. something wrong with the connection. That’s a situation where DRM has gone wrong; it creates insane hurdles for honest buyers without ANY actual benefit. And that’s just one example, there’s dozens more out there.
Companies should treat their honest customers’ much better and not try to squeeze every single coin out of them. Because, in the end, the harder you squeeze the more you end up losing.
But there is a legitimate concern with pc gaming piracy. The piracy rates for single player games are over 80%. Multiplayer games, especially MMOs have much lower piracy rates because of server side processing.
I’m not suggesting that their plan will work or will be worth the effort, but in theory it can make piracy extremely difficult and their motivation is at least understandable.
Some companies have ditched the pc entirely for consoles so be glad that Ubisoft is at least making an attempt to support pc gaming.
I’m not suggesting that their plan will work or will be worth the effort, but in theory it can make piracy extremely difficult
Ah, no it won’t. There’s been similar games and applications before too but they’ve all been cracked. The most common approach I’ve seen is to just invert the mechanism that checks if the server responds: where it before was “Got response, proceed” they just invert it to “Got no response, proceed.” Of course it’ll take some time for the pirates to get through the encryption and CRC checks etc, but eventually they’ll still manage to do it and the end result?
Well, pirates will be able to play the game without hassle, both when on the move without Internet connection, at home with unstable connection, and even years after the authentication servers are down, whereas legitimate consumers won’t be..
and their motivation is at least understandable.
Of course, their motivation is understandable in most cases. Unfortunately, their approaches aren’t. The harder they make things for legitimate buyers the more they actually encourage piracy. You need a certain compromise between no protection at all and going too far, and if you go too far anyway you should atleast find some way to make it worth it for the legitimate users.
Yes if it is basically just an online file and key check it will be cracked. The cloud saving system can be redirected to open local files or at the least hacked so levels and checkpoints can be changed by the player.
However if they don’t provide a full local instance of the game they can make duplication extremely difficult for pirates.
The reason that this is so silly is that no pirate would ever copy a movie this way. To record a movie onto another disk this way would take at least is long as the movie plays. A pirate who had the original disk would just use a ripping program and burn the image onto another disk. That can be done in minutes on a fast computer.
The ever changing media formats have long been the bread and butter of the recording industry. Many consumers have paid for the same content many times just on different media. Most of the money that the movie industry initially made from DVDS was not from new titles. It was from movie collectors upgrading their collections from VHS.
Crippling component video output will not stop a single pirate. It will however persuade tens of thousands of movie collectors that upgrading their movie collection is not worthwhile. When those movie collectors don’t go out and repurchase their movie collection on blue-ray, the movie industry will blame it on piracy.
It doesn’t matter who they blame it on, the money still won’t be coming in from everybody re-purchasing their content. Didn’t they learn anything from watching this whole thing play out in the music industry? They seem duty-bound, somehow, to repeat the same circular fiasco and the end result will be the relaxing of DRM anyway. I guess they just have an excess of money they have to waste.
Unfortunatly those “honest” customers are like in this Penny Arcade comic. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/
Let’s all face it there is just too few bullets and too many assholes.
“I just wish people in general would at least recognize that someone else worked hard to produce something and deserve (if they so desire) some form of compensation for it. So if they ask for you to purchase a license, you should – and not steal it.”
And you giving us the moral lesson again? First of all almost every software or movie has work of a group of people, company in it. You are a damn fool if you think most of them enthusiastic and put their soul into the products. They are just normal people like me and you who go in to cash their f–king paycheck do the facetime, spend 8 hours in the office then get off on dope, beer or on their whore.
So why the hell would I care about buying any software when I can download it. Warez is so widespread that people like you who would actually pay for shit is down at 5% of humanity.
But to get back on DRM and videos what I said even more applies. Why the hell would people buy any shit movie when the average watches it once then delets it.
“Companies should treat their honest customers’ much better and not try to squeeze every single coin out of them.” lolz get a job and think about what I just said…
Edited 2010-02-22 20:46 UTC
The PS3 has had less people trying to crack it for a number of reasons…
It’s not as successful as the ps2 was, and doesn’t have anywhere near as many exclusive games as other platforms.. Most games you can play on the ps3, can also be played on an xbox 360 which can already be easily modified to play pirate games.
People wanting to run legitimate homebrew had less reason to crack the ps3, since it could already run a limited set of homebrew through linux.
Blu-ray discs and burners were expensive, meaning that pirating the games wouldn’t be much cheaper than buying them.
It’s also locked up like Fort Knox.
Make all the excuses you want but it’s impressive that it has stayed uncracked for this long. It isn’t as if hackers haven’t tried. There have been partial successes but nothing complete.
People will notice the difference and complain. Ebay will be full of cheap hack devices that bypass the restriction.
I really hope shit like this will educate more people that digital restriction management has to be outlawed.
I see big law suits in US and the EU will probably intervene too.
Once people get that there are so many digital goods they don’t really own things are going to change.
Which will be illegal to purchase and distribute ala DMCA…
More likely, they’ll just use this as an excuse to go out and spend money they don’t actually have on new shiny equipment. E-waste recyclers will be flush with old equipment.
Now that I think about it – perhaps I really should just start ripping all my content to a server and use that media PC for the playback instead of the upscaling HD-DVD player.
Edited 2010-02-20 01:21 UTC
I moved to a custom Linux-based media server about two years ago now. I also have an enormous collection of VHS movies.
Every movie I buy in digital form is ripped to the server for playback. Then I forward the data over the network to whichever machine which wishes to make use.
I haven’t got around to a media-center like setup using a remote, I just have a wireless mouse on the table in the living room 🙂 Works, for now.
–The loon
I really like your attidute, I mean if something doesn’t work lets break law instead of I don’t know maybe BOYCOTT whole things. But no no, you must get it and it doesn’t matter how. This attidute is main cause of piracy, not price, not DRM, just f–king “I want it all” attidute that youth of today has. Weird, I just had deja vu like I had posted something like this before, oh well I got Penny and I’m heading to Arcade.
Karitku bullshitted…
I tried boycotting, then I discovered I had been added to the stats as a pirate even though I did no such thing.
–bornagainpenguin
PS: Also spell check–use it.
Edited 2010-02-22 03:04 UTC
Could you please show some proofs? All I see is lot of talking and very little action. I personally don’t buy organic food since it’s evil(double farm land needed) or buy stuff with crappy adds. If you believe so much that DRM evil don’t buy anything, you don’t need to. There is tons of games without DRM from small developers, there is tons of movies from independent movie makers, support them and you send clear message.
Before you spout off to other people to use spell check you might want to take a look at your own post.
darknexus sniped…
Which part? According to Firefox the only errors are from the post I quoted. Am I really expected to litter quotes by others with [SIC]?
Karitku asked…
See: http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/5804
–bornagainpenguin
Edited 2010-02-22 18:37 UTC
Ouch, must have misread who quoted who there. Sorry about that, just another reminder not to post when I’m exhausted I guess.
I usually hate to get into these tiresome DRM discussions, but at this point I just felt I had to jump in. While I agree with your statement in principle, I feel that I must point out something. Pirating movies does not “stick it to the man”, nor does it really hurt productions on many movies. What it does do is stifle the production, distribution, and release of independent movies. I am not talking about those crappy 1/10 home made train wrecks that make their way through the internet. I am talking strictly of smaller indies and self produced films that are made by talented people.
Problem here is that even if you can self finance a film, you still have to get it out there. That is part of the reason that Sundance Film festival and many others were created. It gave an opportunity for smaller films to gain an audience and hopefully a distribution. Otherwise the movies either die there or sometimes wait years for DVD release.
So when large studios and distributors face losses, naturally the first to go is the budget for these independent and niche films in favor of more guaranteed success like Avatar, Transformers, and G.I. Joe. As much as I despise everything about Transformers, I do at least appreciate that the money made will insure that a couple of movies more to my liking will now get greenlit or released. Take it for what it is, but the simple economic fact is that the more money total a company like New Line has, the more movies they will get out the door (both large and small).
Both Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola have long depended upon the large commercial success movies (Casino, Godfather 3) in order to produce smaller ones such as Bringing Out the Dead and Youth Without Youth. Ditto the distributors that bring their movies to the theaters, the studios that market, etc..Neither Bringout out the Dead or Youth Without Youth are what studios would consider brilliant ideas for a smash box office hit, yet they did get made, and they did get released.
The only thing pirates succeed in doing is just insuring that more risky/niche/indie are tossed aside in favor of large crass pop culture giants like Transformers. I happen to be at this moment waiting endlessly for several movies that have yet to find distribution….partly because the large studios simply will not take the risks. You can’t say they are completely risk averse, it is simply a matter of how much risk one can absorb in a given year. The ONLY reason a movie like District 9 was made was because that studio had deemed it safe enough for release this year.
I don’t. I rarely watch movies (and always on someone else’s dime,) I get my content (most of it legal, with the exception of Top Gear) from the internet.
Anyway, let’s say both AACS and HDCP were 100% secure. There’s still a *DIGITAL* hole, at 100% quality, even. LVDS, between the display controller and the display panel.
Exactly. All this is an extremely pointless waste of energy for no actual reason. Blueray was supposed to be unhackable and it took, what, less than a year before BD rips were available for download?
I’m sticking to my old awesome equipment and normal DVDs for as long as I can.
I am happy enough with the quality of DVDs. I just recently bought a new DVD player when I could have gotten a blue-ray. The cheapest blue-ray players cost around $150 while a DVD machine can be as low as $30. Pay all that extra money for what? More DRM.
I have no desire to feed the blue-ray parasites, and I hope that technology fails.
Ditto. I’m getting my HD content from my satellite TV provider, thank you very much. I’ve not bought a Blue Ray player nor do I plan to buy one and, sure as hell, I don’t plan to buy my DVD movie collection again in HD format! As many people share this last point with me, it’s going to be hurting content providers, which would just love having people buying their stuff over and over again.
As I wrote: not gonna happen, I have better uses for my money.
Rehdon
I am sure that there are many people like my wife and myself. We still have a SD television and a regular old fashioned DVD player. We don’t watch much television (mostly PBS, local and national news) and feel no need to upgrade. This action further reinforces our choice to not upgrade. For our extra video that we do watch we use our computers (to stream movies from Netflicks and TV shows from Hulu or direct from the TV networks sites). In my opinion, Blueray is not needed (at least at our household). I could care less and will give up watching a television at all if they lock it down to where I can’t watch it without being locked out of things by the industry. They can shove their Blueray locked stuff where the sun doesn’t shine.
Edited to clarify a sentence…
Edited 2010-02-20 03:28 UTC
That will not work. The reasons follow.
1. If BD content will be playable in Windows on usual hardvare: analog speakers, DVI monitors, then anyone will be able to construct DirectShow filter-graph wich streams decoded video and audio to some open codecs.
2. If that will not be possible, and some mad association make all to restrict playback to DisplayPort or HDMI interfaces, then, there will be encryption keys, which must be shared between, say, all ‘Vendor’ displays. They will leak – there are a lot of ways to get them.
So… The whole conception of DRM is pointless waste of money. Why they keep trying to restrict access to content which they going to publish? Insane idea.
P.S. Excuse me my english
will never own bluray. will never own an hdmi equipped projector. it all comes with too much crap, and I’m not that interested in making movies look sharper.
Blu-ray is awesome. The clarity of the picture and even the extra sound definition is amazing.
Anyone who says they’re happy with the quality of DVDs (especially “upsampled” – snake oil) simply has not watched a good piece of 1080p footage on a 1080p TV.
What’s not awesome is the continuing DRM restrictions. As if HDCP wasn’t bad enough, now they’re going to stop SD output through Component?
I’ve set up other people’s TVs that way! (they’ve been too cheap to buy an HDMI cable off me, or have lacked a spare HDMI port). I’d hate to be in their shoes, suddenly having new Blu-ray discs appearing in SD. That sucks. Exactly how many people pirate Blu-rays through the component video port? Probably less than five, in the whole world! Everyone else just uses AnyHD or MakeMKV.
There are three things hampering adoption of Blu-ray:
1. The new specifications every couple of months that threaten to obsolete older players
2. The disappointing picture quality of TVs destined for the American market, which makes Blu-rays look only slightly better than DVD
3. The DRM getting more and more restrictive – if I could be guaranteed to play or rip new BDs on my Linux box I’d definitely buy more.
Absolutely agreed. The difference between upscaled DVD and Blu-ray on 1080p is mind-blowing. The clarity and sharpness of the imagery is mind-blowing.
I don’t have a Blu-ray player yet though, as my HDTV is HD Ready only, not Full HD (=1080p). On top of that, they’re too expensive for me. The amount of DRM bullshit is making sure I won’t be buying a player for a LONG time to come.
Anyone who says they’re happy with the quality of DVDs (especially “upsampled” – snake oil) simply has not watched a good piece of 1080p footage on a 1080p TV.
Don’t be so arrogant. As an example I have been watching 1080p footage on a 1080p TV at my friend’s house yet I still think DVD quality is enough for me. Of course it looks nicer, but it just doesn’t make the viewing pleasure that much better that I’d bother going out and buy HD equipment.
What he/she said. I’ve been known to watch movies full screen on Youtube before (and not the HD variety either) on my PC’s LCD monitor. As long as the image isn’t distorted, I am fine with it. Most of the movies I watch are downloaded in divx/xvid format. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind VHS if the tapes didn’t wear out and you could jump around like you can with a DVD. In fact, I still watch a lot of porn on a VCR
Well if you guys are fine with plain then more power too you. And I don’t think it is arrogance, the difference is not small. Besides that there are plenty of people that argue that Upscaled DVD is close to HD. Well it is not, there is no comparison. That being said I don’t think it is worth going out and buying all new BDs of movies/tv shows you own on DVD though. At least, not for me.
I love when people spout subjective crap.
I’m one of the people with a fairly large DVD collection (around 300 movies) that will continue buying DVDs for as long as I can. I love DVD. The resolution is fine.
I have a 1080p Bravia I got for free that I rarely actually use. I’ve watched plenty of movies in BD/HD-DVD format on it last year and while it does look good, it isn’t “mind blowing”, to me, at all.
Granted, I’m perfectly happy watching full length movies on my Treo 800w where a widescreen movie is 320×137 or so.
Now, I love watching normal TV shows like sports or documentaries in 1080p when I can and video games, especially local multiplayer ones, are much better in HD due to more screen real-estate. But I’m also perfectly happy watching my movies on my 50″ SD rear projection 4:3 TV in my living room.
And how is your opinion any less subjective?
Some people value Blu-ray more than others. Of course there are going to be subjective opinions here.
My opinion is the Blu-ray is definitely worth it if you have an HDTV and Netflix. To really get the full benefit you need a decent sound system as well.
I can’t stand most Hollywood movies but I do enjoy watching the few I like in high def. It’s a better experience than going to the theater. Sure the screen isn’t as big but the lack of annoying patrons and overpriced popcorn makes up for it.
I’m watching Zombieland on blu-ray right now, it’s a great flick for people that like Evil Dead.
I’ve noticed with guests that people with good eyesight appreciate Blu-ray the most. Some people are actually more impressed by the sound than the image improvement.
Speaking for myself, the sound on blu-ray seems identical to that on DVD so, given that sound is all I care about anyway, plus all this ridiculous DRM crap with blu-ray, and I’ll just stick with DVD. Sure, you could quote me technical specifications on how the audio is much better on blu-ray, but in practice I just can’t hear one little bit of difference. Subjective, but hey most of life is subjective.
Of course it is subjective. There is a difference and I won’t go quoting the specs. You have to have the right sound system to take advantage of it. Same as you did for DVD when it first came out. A Dolby Surround receiver just did not cut it, same for BDs you need the right equipment to hear and appreciate the difference.
It is just as subjective… And I stated it as an opinion. His was stated as positive fact. That is the difference.
Positive facts like Blu-ray is awesome? Yea he really should have included a source for that statement.
Here is another subjective statement : You really are annoying.
:p
Why are you watching sports and TV in 1080p? I don’t even think anyone broadcasts sports in 1080p. They are all broadcast in 1080i for a reason. Interlace is better for capturing motion, and TV sports have been recorded in 60fps and supersampled to interlace for decades. Starting to send in 30fps would be insane.
ah, maybe it was in 1080i. My mistake.
First off, I have had experience with a few different, relatively new HDTVs where the picture aspect ratio can only be adjusted when it is fed an analog signal, which, in combination with a DVD/Bluray player that also provides no aspect ratio adjustment, means that you are forced to stick with Component for your HD needs, or else watch a horribly distorted picture on your expensive equipment. So basically what this means is that a huge group of consumers who own such TVs are going to get royally f$#%@d in the ass, as their expensive, brand new HDTVs transmogrify into slightly bigger versions of their crappy old SD TVs.
It’s exactly as Thom said–those who are really interested in copying Bluray video will do so. Using a computer or some dubiously illegal little black box with HDMI in/out, it will be a cinch. This is only hurting the average consumer. It’s especially mean-spirited when you consider the people who are responsible for HD video’s success in the first place, the enthusiasts and early adopters. Forcing them to pony up hundreds or thousands of dollars once more to upgrade their TV is just a stab in the back.
Exactly and those nice HDTV’s that came out before HDMI are going to suck so much worse then an old analog set in regards to SD. Let’s be real here that some LCD flat panels are not the best for displaying SD pictures. Sometimes old CRTs look better playing SD content then that nice shiny 1080p HDTV that won’t upscale the signal. “Hey is that blur effect part of the movie?” 😉
Edited 2010-02-21 01:28 UTC
After January 1, 2011, the producers of Blu-ray disks will be able to include an “Image Constraint Token” with any Blu-ray disk which will disable HD over component video, limiting it to a 480i/576i resolution – even though your player is perfectly capable, and bought well before the cut-off date. They want to ensure that HD content only runs through HDMI.
This might be a stupid question but can you actually get higher than 480i/576i on composite? Isn’t the limitations of composite video why we are using HDMI in the first place?
Composite != component.
Take a look at the stuff you quoted. They’re talking about component video, not composite.
See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_video
Edited 2010-02-20 12:12 UTC
The problem is that companies want to sell us bits and want to convince us that bits are like physical things that have scarcity (in economic sense)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity
Digital copying is perfect, easy and very cheap and this fact will exterminate the need of intermediates like recording companies.
They should to sell you SERVICES and CONVENIENCE. I, for example, buy musical DVDs from my favorite artists because I want to help them and because it is convenient for me have a physical DVD to play on my house. But I have also many pirated and non pirated (ripped from original CD/DVD) mp3 and video files on my computer from artists wich I am not a big fan or movies that I cannot buy or that don’t are sufficient good to pay for them.
I also bought many versions of commercial linux distributions with pleasure but I never buy a non-OEM windows license because I don’t like it. And I only pay for some OEM windows licenses because there are not an alternative.
No the problem is that people like you forget that society does not create laws based on convenience.
Intellectual properly laws recognize the fact that for certain types of work greater than 99.99999% of the effort goes into the creation, not the reproduction. If you allow people to copy whatever they want then certain types of content will not be produced, period.
No one wants to invest 5 million into a research team just so some big corp can take the team’s work and sell it under their own name.
Oh and recording companies provide more than mere copying. They provide services to the artist like music production, distribution, marketing and promotion.
Edited 2010-02-20 23:44 UTC
Those who write the rules, define the game.
Those who play the game, condone it.
So, if you choose to play their game, don’t complain.
And use HDMI, not Component!
– Luposian
Although I could maybe wrongly suspected the industry to hold unconscious employees with fixed-grown roots in ancient traditions in their positions, perhaps they should consider these positions if they do not hold the ability to see forward. Though it may be as simple as one has a real fear of meeting their customers wishes and needs. The desire to protect the established distribution of the movies is certainly not the weakest. Why do they need to control how the consumer use content and on what equipment they use it?
Seemes to me that all the DRM people got fired from the music industry after a massive fail, and now all have gotten new jobs in the movie business instead. DRM is pushing people away from their products rather than attracting positive feedback and response from the consumer who want to pay for a product.
Just one point: forcing users to use HDMI means that ALL DRM schemes will be used during playback – not only AACS. For example BD+, which is upgradeable and may create some problems for pirates.
In defense of generation Y. We’ve all been sold on the utter bullshit that we will all be sportstars and millionaires for so long, that when we leave school and realise that no we are not beautiful unique snow flakes we are quite angry about it. We are aware of what’s going on in the world. The inequalities, the rich vs poor divide, the destruction of the natural world etc. Many of us choose not to give more money to people who have far too much money and would rather pirate and spend it elsewhere. After all this is the industry that told us we could all be rich and famous in the first place. They’re reaping what they’ve sown.
Yet another reason why I won’t buy anything HDMI – especially anything HCMI.
(And yes, I do not own, nor do I plan to ever buy, a Blu-ray player.)