It's official: BOTH Blu-ray and HD-DVD downrez component (1 Viewer)

[Ken_F]

http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6300812.html


One positive bit of news:
Customers can vote with their wallets by choosing not to purchase Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks flagged for component downconversion.

 

[Sam Davatchi]

This sucks!

I also read this news here:
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/060120j.php


I purchased my huge HD Plasma TV a year ago and I'm not going to change it soon. It has no HDMI connection for sure but it has DVI connection but I didn't know there are different DVI connections! How can I check if it's 'DVI with HDCP'? I will not get "HD" DVDs if I cannot play them on my "new" HD TV. Too bad for them!

 

[FrancisP]

So they can screw the consumer should be added to the article. That's why I would be hesitant about using a HDMI connection even if I had one. SD looks a lot less troublesome to me than HD.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

I suppose that when these discs are reviewed here there will have to be *two* reviews of the provided video quality:

* One for the "pure" HDMI 1080i/p transfer
-and-
* One for the "downconverted" 540p transfer.

I suppose that, just like anamorphic downconversion with the legacy DVD players, the quality of the "downconverted" image will vary based on a combination of the downconversion circuitry of the player and the upscalling/interlacing ability of the older HDTV.

What a mess!!

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Which will be worthless because there will be so many permuations of players and monitors (or intermediary devices like AVRs) doing the downconversion that the reviews won't help most readers get any sense of what the disc will look like on their own system.

Way to go, Hollywood.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

It's funny, all I want to do is hand over my money to Hollywood and the like, but they are giving me no reason to.

Like I said in the other thread, I'll gladly be an early adopter for an HD optical format, but I will only buy titles that do not downrez.

 

[Jim Smith]

On the brite side this could have been worse. We could have had full 480p downconversion on all players mandatory. Instead we are getting 540p downconverting and only on certain titles. My television can't handle anything higher then 540p anyway. However I still will be more stingy on downconverting titles simply for the principle of the matter that any downconverting is stupid. I think when non-downconverting titles sell higher the rouge studios will change there minds.

 

[Aaron_Brez]

The rouge studios? Is that Warner, Universal, and Paramount, since HD DVD will have red packaging?

(sorry)

 

[BrianShort]

Sam: I think that if your set has DVI, you should be fine. Please someone correct me if I'm wrong. Sure glad I waited a while to buy my HD set. The only thing I wish now is that it was bigger and supported 1080p! (42" Sony)

edit: Oops, I missed the "with HDCP" part! Hopefully things will work for you.

 

[Aaron_Brez]

There are sets which have DVI but not HDCP. Most LCD computer monitors, certainly, and some early DVI TV sets. Not on the last couple of years' models, but if you bought an older DVI TV this could be a problem...

 

[BrianShort]

So how will this affect HD-DVD and BD play from PCs? Would they be downrezed too if you were using a regular computer monitor, or had your PC hooked to your DVI TV?

 

[Sam Davatchi]

My TV is a Plasma Hitachi 42PD-5200E (bought in France).

 

[JackKay]

I wrote this in another thread:

It's going to be interesting to see how each studio uses the ICT flag. I wonder if they will use a window system. A movie like KING KONG may initially come out flagged, then after time when it's demand has wained, it would be released unflagged.

Time will soon tell.

 

[Aaron_Brez]

BrianShort,

Yes, it will affect PCs using "regular" monitors. Your PC can "re-uprez" it back to higher resolution, but it is required to "start" from 960x540.

Sam,

It was a bitch to find, but on the Hitachi website FAQ page I found:

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Thanks a lot Aaron for your time.

By the way, this argument that they don’t allow it because of piracy is really bizarre. I mean when was the last time that pirates pirated DVD with recording the component output?!!!!! Eventually the copy protection will be broken and they will copy the exact content digitally like what they do today for DVDs. I don’t know, tell me is that impossible?

 

[Ricardo C]

This isn't meant to be a justification of the studios' decision, nor a dismissal of people's concerns, but a few quick experiments donconverting HD screencaps to 960x540 (using nearest neighbor conversion, the crudest algorithm possible) and then blowing them back up (using Lanczos, arguably the finest process available to the average Joe) reveals only a VERY slight loss of detail.

When I have more time, I'll experiment donwconverting some actual clips, re-encoding them at 960x540, then playing them back upscaling them via ffdshow. But I feel very confident saying upconverted BluRay/HD-DVD is not exactly going to look like upconverted DVD, but rather much, much closer to the original source than most people think.

 

[Edwin-S]

What equipment is going to be required to upconvert to 1080i if the component outputs are downrezzed to 960 x 540?
If the quality of the upconverted image equals 95% of the 1080i HD signal then what is the point of downconverting to begin with. All it does is cost owners of component-only sets more money for an upconvertor.

The whole point of downconversion is supposedly to combat piracy; however, if an upconverted signal is close to "true HD" then how will the downconversion fight piracy?
The people ripping off copies of these films don't strike me as the type to be worrying about a 5% or 10% loss in image quality. Hell, they won't care if there is a 50% loss. They will still copy the content and then pass it off as "HD quality" to unsuspecting consumers. That is why they are called "pirates", because they're thieves in every sense of the word.

Anyway, mass piracy by copying an analog signal is completely inefficient. The vector for organized theft of HD discs isn't going to come from recording analog signals. It is going to come from the hacking of the AACS by some computer geek with the need to prove what a "genius" he/she is.

 

[Jim Smith]

Edwin-S the quality drop between full 1080i dowconverted 540p will definutly be alot more then 10%. It will be 50% at the very least. Anyone who isn't blind of stupid will notice the drop. However 2/3 of digital televisions have digital inputs, nearly 1/2 of component digital televisions aren't capable of higher then 540p, I don't think too many titles will do this, plus Blu-Ray at 540p will still have a definute improvement over 480p DVDs. So overall this situation could have been so much worse.

 

[Ricardo C]

I'm no cryptography expert, but what I've read seems to indicate that by the time someone cracks AACS, the formats using it might well be already obsolete.

 

[Ricardo C]

Well, so far I don't see a "50%" drop, so what am I, Jimbo?

This used to be such a nice place when people could disagree without being rude.

Sorry, I forgot myself... We now return to "TEH SKY IS FALLING OMGZZ0RZ!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!" on the HTF channel, all hand-wringing, all the time.