Dvorak on HDTV (1 Viewer)

[Ray Turner]

If this has been beat to death, forgive me- I get on once a week and can't read it all

In a recent PCMAG article, Dvorak claims present HDTV's are or will be obselete

"What happened was that the Hollywood folks, who are just freaked over the possibility that we'll be copying HDTV movies, have promoted copy protection that requires the decode circuit to be built into the display, not into the set-top box. This requires the set-top box to send a signal to a connector that new HDTV sets will have. If you're thinking of buying an HDTV, don't, unless it has this connector and circuit—whenever they are finalized. I suspect that this copy protection mechanism will be used for certain broadcasts, too, since there has been a lot of talk about copy-protecting DSS and other transmissions.

The concept is that when copy protection is put within the circuitry of the display, you can't decode something with a set-top box and then grab the signal as it comes out of the box and before it gets to the screen.

Meanwhile, the HDTV-promoting Consumer Electronics Association is going to eat crow if all the current HDTV sets turn out to be white elephants. I see no evidence that this mess will be resolved without a lot of burned consumers. All the Hollywood studios are belatedly demanding the new system. I suppose an expensive retrofit could be developed, but it probably won't be. Nothing is designed nowadays for fixing or retrofitting.

And I'm guessing that those expensive set-top boxes will also have to be replaced. According to most sources, all the latest schemes allow copy-protected broadcasts and movies to be viewed on the old HDTV sets, but they will fall back to lower resolution. Welcome to the bleeding edge. Anyone even thinking of getting HDTV before this issue is completely resolved is just throwing money away. Funny how your local newspaper or TV station hasn't been covering this consumer issue, isn't it?"

I recently bought a Sony HDTV but no box yet-and I worry!

 

[David WS]

This issue has been covered in great detail in may other threads. But to put SOME of your concerns at ease. The DVI/HDCP scheme is more directed at things like D-Theater, D-VHS, HDDVD and PPV HD Sat signals. The OTA STBs are not the concern for Hollywood. The concern is for Movies not regular old TV. This doesn't mean that there is no reason for concern, but it also means that your HDTV will not be completely useless. The future is a little cloudy right now.

 

[Marc Rochkind]

An analog connection, such as we are using now with, say, component video, will continue to work. All of the new stuff is for DIGITAL. A set you buy today will be obsolete in the sense that it will no longer be the latest technology, but not in the sense that it will no longer work just as well as it ever did.

 

[Mike_New]

An analog connection, such as we are using now with, say, component video, will continue to work. All of the new stuff is for DIGITAL. A set you buy today will be obsolete in the sense that it will no longer be the latest technology, but not in the sense that it will no longer work just as well as it ever did.

This is a little misleading... Yes, given a high-definition analog source, your set will still display it. However, in the future, such sources may be less available then they are today.

- Mike