Hollywood Studios Win Again
Consumers just can’t win.
AACS, a system to be used in both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD) players, will require that those players downconvert video over their analog outputs. But only if the studio decides to use this feature.
… the affected analog signal must be “down-converted” from the full 1920×1080 lines of resolution the players are capable of outputting to 960×540 lines—a resolution closer to standard DVDs than to high-def. Standard DVDs are typically encoded at 720 horizontal by 480 vertical lines of resolution.
The 960×540 standard stipulated in the AACS agreement represents 50% higher resolution than standard-def, but only one-quarter the resolution of full high-def. Whether a particular movie is down-converted will be up to the studio.
I have a feeling that every studio will end up using this “feature”. Though if this “feature” is used, it’ll be specified on the movie’s packaging, which is a good thing. It’s like a warning that you’re about to be smacked upside the head. At least you can brace yourself for it.
Check out our new sister blog on Home Theater, HTBlog.net
January 20th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
It isn’t even just analog inputs that will be downrezed. If your TV has a DVI input that is not HDCP compliant, then the output will also be downrezed.
Tens of thousands of HDTVs were just rendered useless.
The crazy thing is that this horrid “feature” will not stop piracy. Not by a long shot! Instead, it inconveniences and enrages honest people who just spent $1000 on a new video player and $20 for the latest movie. Now they will have to spend another $2000 on a new TV to view HD movies. In the end, everyone loses, except the pirates who will continue on their merry way.
January 20th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
There’s a simple way for us, the consumers to deal with this kind of nonsense. DON’T BUY IT. I for one will vote with my wallet, and despite the fact that I tend to be an early adopter of technology (thus target audience for these people), I will NOT spend a penny on a single, crippled [BlueRay|HD] DVD. I paid a premium for my high definition projection TV, at a time before HDMI and DVI interfaces with HDCP were even available, but my TV has a pair of perfectly good high band component inputs. If I can’t get high definition video from a player into those inputs, I’m not gonna bother with that player, wheter it has a HDDVD logo or a BlueRay logo on it. I think it’s also a high time that consumers are made widely aware of this ploy by Hollywood, and fight it in the same way that Circuit City’s DIVX players were fought.
January 20th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Actually, it turns out that many of the studios DON’T like this. In what is perhaps an ironic twist, Fox—the studio most outspoken about copy protection, and the reason Blu-Ray has BD+—has specifically said they don’t intend to use it.
Furthermore, at this point, titles are actually required to have, on their packaging, some sort of indication as to whether ICT is employed or not. That is, you’re going to be able find out WHEN YOU BUY A TITLE whether it’s going to screw with your analog outputs or not. So if some studios use ICT, and others don’t, and the market share numbers for the former suffer because of it, maybe they’ll change their minds.
Finally, it’s an interesting question just how much of a difference this is going to make to Joe Six Pack. If they have an old-style HDTV with component-only inputs, there’s a good chance that it accepts 1080i only. And what is more, if it’s a digital TV, then it’s very likely that it uses bob deinterlacing to produce a progressive signal. That means that it’s displaying only 540 vertical lines of resolution anyway! For such displays, 960×540 is half of the resoluton of 1920×1080, not one-quarter as it would if you were displaying it on a true 1080p display.
Finally, ICT doesn’t affect the digital output. The situation is worse than your first commenter said: if your display does not support HDCP, you won’t be able to display content with your DVI connection [i]at all[/i].
The folks over at AVSForum.com have some great threads going on this stuff.
January 21st, 2006 at 4:52 am
This is completely out of hand. The fomats should be all for the consumer but instead they seem to be working all for the studios. Also, people who watch pirated movies don’t care if they are recorded from poor quality camcorders so 960×540 isn’t going to put them off at all - in fact its a big upgrade to what they are getting now!
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:52 am
[…] Xbox360, HD-DVD and Video Output Crucible and I were just discussing Xbox360 and its connections to the tele. The 360, of course, will not be available here in Australia until March, so everything’s just hearsay around here. Anyway, the gist of our conversation involved the annoncement that Microsoft will be releasing an HD-DVD add-on for the 360 later this year, and the fact that HD-DVD will down-convert to a standard-definition signal unless you use DVI or HDMI. Now, the down-conversion “feature” is supposedly an opt-in thing, but I’m guessing that HD-DVDs without said feature will be few and far-between. So where does that leave Xbox users? Surely there’s no point buying the HD-DVD upgrade if all you can do is watch movies at standard definition? Or does Microsoft have a way around this? Can the 360 output a digital video signal? […]