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What would keep you from buying into the HD formats? (1 Viewer)

FrancisP

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Actually it is not the copy measures but the sophisticated
firmware and what it could potentially do. Then you have one of the developers of BR's copy-protection urging studios to implement shutdown of HD players over recorded
material. Then you have the studios pushing limiting time-shifting to 90 minutes in Congress as well as broadcast flags. There is clearly a push on to limit the public's
ability to time-shift. It could lead to the inability to enjoy time-shifted dvds.
 

DaViD Boulet

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But those copy measures you're talking about don't apply to DVDs (even recordable ones). I'm not aware of any HD DVD or BD player having anything to do with adding new copy-measures to existing DVD software beyond what's already established for that format. I don't think that's ever been proprosed and I don't see how it could technically work since red-book DVD already has it's own specs in place.
 

ChristopherDAC

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Francis, what are these "time-shifted DVDs" you keep talking about? I can't understand you. You're mixing recorders up with playback-oinly devices with HD with SD with firmware with hardware with software and making no sense. What is a "time-shifted DVD"?

Are you talking about recording programmes from TV and burning them to DVD? Certainly you can't "time-shift" commercial DVDs which you own, because they're yours all the time. I did know a broadcast engineer who used an old timebase corrector to record the DVDs his kids rented onto VHS if they hadn't watched them by the return time [and was scrupulous to erase them afterwards], but that's about as far as it goes.
If you're talking about backups -- and perhaps you can make perfectly-legal, unquestionable backups [per the Copyright Office's interpretation] if you buy "authoring" DVD-Rs which allow you to copy the CSS key, and thus copy the disc without ever decrypting it, but it might be more economical just to buy two DVDs -- that's not "time-shifting", or at least it isn't unless and until you break the original.
 

Aaron_Brez

Supporting Actor
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I think Francis is saying the analog hole bill, with its provision for restricting recordability of the analog signal (only PPV or VOD are subject to the 90 minute restriction) could curtail the ability to record those programs to DVD, thus "time-shifting to DVDs, and not necessarily time-shifting the DVD itself.

And my answer to that is: don't order pay-per-view or video--on-demand if you're not going to be around to watch it.
 

ChristopherDAC

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But that still has nothing to do with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. I find the proposed legislation odious -- especially since the technologies it mandates to be implemented are, apparently, proprietary and the subject of a confidentiality agreement, as one of our other members discovered -- but it is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Francis seems to think that buying a Blu-ray player will blow up your VCR and dump your hard drives directly to the MPAA's private server farm, and I don't see where he gets it. There's not some kind of consipiracy at work: it's the same people trying the same stupid tricks with all media at once, but one part of the push doesn't reinforce any of the others. People accepted Macrovision VCRs and Macrovision+CSS+Region-code DVDs and WMA-DRM, after all, so why wouldn't they accept the same kind of thing on everything they buy?
 

Aaron_Brez

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There is a lot about DRM that is weird and odious and secretive, but as yet I have seen nothing which indicates that anyone's privacy will be in question unless they want to do some very specific things (make a legitimate copy to hard drive). By far the worst DRM issue, IMO, is analog downrez, and mostly that's because it's a stupid business decision that can only hurt the formats at launch.

But, yeah, I think the DRM thing is overblown. As long as it's transparent to the general consumer, the market, collectively, will not bat an eye. Some particular users may-- especially those who have extensive collections of DVDs on hard drive for HTPC usage-- but most people don't (yet) use their content that way.
 

george kaplan

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Hell, I hadn't even considered this. If I can't send an HD disc into my Iscan HD+, which then gives me aspect ratio control as well as overscan control (I eliminate all overscan on my RPTV when I watch a dvd), then there's no way in hell I'd touch it with a 10 foot pole.

And, while I don't pretend to be able to follow all of the back and forth as far as the general debate, here's my question.

Are we 100% guaranteed that an HD disc player can't be set up so that if a certain disc or type of disc were to be inserted it wouldn't shut down the machine? Cause assurances that the studios won't do something they can do are no assurances at all.

At the moment, I'm waiting to see how this all plays out, and only know for certain I'm not buying anything that has to be connected to the internet, but when it comes to Hollywood trying to screw you over and take away your rights, it's pretty damned hard to be paranoid, and not just realistically worried.
 

Aaron_Brez

Supporting Actor
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The players can be set up such that AACS can, if they go through large motions and possibly even go to court, be locked out of certain new disks.

BD+ apparently contains the ability to lock out players that have been tampered with.

The players do not have the ability to be shut down merely because you've put in the wrong disk-- a friend's home movie gets mistaken for a pirate disk, for instance. The shut down instructions have to come from the disk.

I don't like this because it leaves room for malicious hackers to shut down people's machines by releasing lots of pirate disks into the wild with shut down instructions, but some would assert people buying pirate disks are bringing that upon themselves.

Bottom line: it is theoretically possible for Hollywood (through AACS and the justice system) to revoke your player's license to play AACS disks or certain AACS disks. But the players don't "go bad" just because you've played a non-AACS-approved disk. That's just not in the license agreements or in any of the specs.
 

Dan Hitchman

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If you can't copy at all (like with the broadcast flag), or only chosen items for a fee ("managed" copies)... the big corporate monsters own pretty much ALL information. You can't then easily spread around info. that could damage them.

This is one of the steps of them shredding first amendment (and a bunch of other) rights.

Again, when Congress (or The Man's lapdogs) allows mega-corporations (owned by only a few individual CEO's) to control more and more public information services and other media outlets they are eroding the tenants of this great country of ours.

Asimov, Heinlein, Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, and other futurists were completely right.

Sinclair and Clearchannel Broadcasting, and their actions are further proof of this.

And most of us sit on our asses and do nothing to stop them.
 

Manus

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Well said , Dan. And it all started with Regional Coding . How many different nationalities have interacted to bring you your movie entertainment ? In a global Internet community (like here for example) Hollywood is the only Taliban-like group actively trying to turn the clock back and eroding as many 'Sonsumers Rights' as they go.

Hollywood is a lazyarse inward-looking self-serving zoo that would rather sell you 6 seperate editions of 'Men in Black' on dvd than create 3 good movies and release maybe 2 different versions. They dont deserve any respect and they definitely don't desrve any trust.

Enjoy what you can , while you can,
~M~
 

MarcoBiscotti

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I'm with George 100% and had never heard of this scaling issue before reading through this thread; I don't completely understand how it would effect that facet though?




O-T, George: How do you adjust overscan through your Iscan?

I have an HD Leeza but set the overscan through my projector remote when calibrating and alligning the picture. Is there a remote function on the Iscan that allows you to do this bypassing your projector?


There is no way in hell that I will ever buy into ANY new format that would effectively render my scaler useless and not allow for aspect ratio adjustment.
 

george kaplan

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They have an underscan option, where you can shrink the picture down a little at a time (I don't know if it's technically pixel by pixel or not). In any case, I simply do that until there is at least a tiny little bit of black on all 4 sides (depending on the aspect ratio, some sides will have a lot of black), and that way I'm seeing the whole picture without having loss anything to my tv sets overscan.
 

DaViD Boulet

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As far as scaling,

If the best PQ is the goal:

the best solution with a digital display would be leave images alone that are already at your display's native resolution (if you have a 720P display, you don't want to re-scale 720P images), but for images that need to be up or down-scaled anyway, you'd want to be able to make these adjustments during the initial scaling process so the image just gets scaled once (like an HTPC would do)...scaling a 480 image to 720P and then *rescaling* the 720P image to remove overscan could visibly degrade the image since you're trying to recalculate points that are very close to each other.

The more "distance" between the original and the scaled image the better as far as minimizing scaling artifacts.

Does the I-Scan let you do this "all in one" scaling...both upconverting from 480 to 720 or 1080 and adjusting for overscan and aspect ratio all at the same time? That's a *sweet* device if that's the case. I'd love to play around with one in my HT to see the results!

BTW, I'm hopeful that managed copy and HDMI copy protections won't get in the way of scaling and aspect-ratio control. But we'll have to wait and see!

(don't see how it could given that so many digital displays *have* to re-scale the image coming in...feed a 720P signal to a 768P Plamsa and it has to re-scale...feed a 1080I HDMI signal to a 720P or 1080P projector and it does some digital recalculating as well. Those displays wouldn't be able to show a picture if scaling wasn't allowed unless the exact native signal was feed...so I don't see how this could really be an option).
 

george kaplan

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You know David, I'm not really certain. I do know that it scales the picture up in quality, and allows you to do 1:1 pixel mapping with your display, and allows you to have the aspect ratio control.

I can only say that I don't see any degradation in picture quality when I use it to remove overscan. Certainly I'm happier seeing the whole picture with the quality that I get, than not seeing all of it with (to my eyes) little or no improvement to picture quality.

There's lots of info here.
 

FrancisP

Screenwriter
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Jun 15, 2004
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I am worried that one day I will take the roadshow version of The Alamo that I copied off of TCM, and is not available on dvd, put it in a HD player and are informed that I have violated copyright laws and the player either shuts down or refuses to play the disc. That seems to be what one of the developers of BR copy protection is advising Hollywood to do in one of their white papers on copy protection. As to the 90 minute limit on time shifting it is the proverbial camel
in the tent. I think the studios want complete control over how their product is used be it hard media such as dvds or cable/on-air so they can milk us for more money.


It has something to do with the invasive firmware that will be contained in both BR & HD-DVD. It is much more sophisticated than what is in SD players today. Without
it, a lot of schemes that Hollywood could cook up couldn't be implemented on SD players. I don't see anything happening soon due to the fact there are SD players and discs out there. But I do wonder what happens if HD is the only option. Then Hollywood doesn't have any competition. That's why I hope eiither HD fails or better alternative let it become a niche market with SD remaing the standard. As long as SD is out there the studios are constrained.
 

DaViD Boulet

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Francis,

For as long as you live, you'll most likely be able to buy a conventional DVD player or DVD-ROM drive for your PC (just like CD-only drives and players aren't vanishing anytime soon).
 

StephenP

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May 23, 2001
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Wow, some serious conspiracy theories in here. There is no way a new HD player can look at an SD disc that you burned yourself and then destroy itself or the disc. Once a disc is burned, all of the copy protection stuff is no longer there, and in the case of movies burned from TV etc was never there in the first place. The new players dont know what the files are that they are playing, it could be a copied dvd or a film of your child's birthday party, once they are on the dvd they are just video files. The codes and security stuff are only on the original discs that you buy, that stuff isn't copied when you burn a dvd.

Trust me, Hollywood doesn't wan't non-hacked machines being shut down, how many poeple do you think will buy a second machine when there first one gets zapped? NONE thats how many. There is nothing they can do about cracked DISCS, because the stuff they look at to see if it's authentic is what has to be removed to crack it. They can make it hard (or impossible) to crack, but once it's done they can't do anything about it. The main thing they are doing with all this BD+ stuff is looking at your machine to see if there is a hack inside it that lets it read pirate discs. Then you may be in trouble, but you know that when you get your machine altered.
 

george kaplan

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Sorry, but I don't take your word for it that there is "no way". It seems that all they have to do is have the HD player search for a code, that if it's missing, it refuses to play. That would be an easy way for an HD player to not function on discs with no copy protection.
 

Aaron_Brez

Supporting Actor
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Messages
792
George,

Yes, it would, but then why bother providing DVD-R and DVD-RW read support on the players at all?

I'm sorry, but to me this just seems like looking for excuses to be worried about something. And, frankly, there's already enough legitimate stuff to be worried about without going out of our way to invent more.
 

DaViD Boulet

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But that's making up new stuff that's not part of HD DVD or BD.

The studios aren't blocking content that's not copy-protected...they are only trying to block content that's been PIRATED. Your home-made DVDs of your baby's first steps will play just fine...as will your DVD recordings of Happy Days.
 

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