Sony Announces Blu-ray Movie Pricing

[Titanio]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_hdcp_support/

PS3 1
PC 0
XBOX360 ?

That's a pretty shocking article. Wow. Funny how the nVidia cards in Sony's PCs are compliant though.

360 isn't HDCP-compliant, btw. At least I don't think you can be, just with component-out. It'll be interesting to see how they get around that with the HD-DVD add-on. A bit OT, I guess. The situation with PC cards is incredible though.

 

[GB123]

That's a pretty shocking article. Wow. Funny how the nVidia cards in Sony's PCs are compliant though.

360 isn't HDCP-compliant, btw. At least I don't think you can be, just with component-out. It'll be interesting to see how they get around that with the HD-DVD add-on. A bit OT, I guess. The situation with PC cards is incredible though.

Was thinking the same, unless the HD-DVD add on has a HDMI output, which would basically make it a stand alone player .. hmmm

Unless the 360's output has digital/analogue switching controlled via software.

 

[London Geezer]

Was thinking the same, unless the HD-DVD add on has a HDMI output, which would basically make it a stand alone player .. hmmm

Yes the add-on would need its own video output because component cannot carry HDCP obviously (the output being analog and the copy protection being digital)... So it might just end up being a very stripped down player you can attach to the X360 for style reasons, at a cheaper price than a standalone player... if it's cheap enough, it might take off...

 

[London Geezer]

Unless the 360's output has digital/analogue switching controlled via software.

Even if it does, the hardware does not have HDCP (like the article explains about the PC videocards which say they support HDCP but have nothing in hardware for it - making them useless). Software won't do. HDCP must be there in the hardware from the manufacturing stage.

Although ATI has had “HDCP support” in their GPUs since the Radeon 8500, and NVIDIA has had “HDCP support” in their GPUs since the GeForce FX5700, it turns out that things are more complicated -- just because the GPU itself supports HDCP doesn’t mean that the graphics card can output a DVI/HDCP compliant stream. There needs to be additional support at the board level, which includes licensing the HDCP decoding keys from the Digital Content Protection, LLC (a spin-off corporation within the walls of Intel).

After some investigation, Brandon and I determined that there is no shipping retail add-in board with HDCP decoding keys. Simply put, none of the AGP or PCI-E graphics cards that you can buy today support HDCP.

 

[NavNucST3]

That's a pretty shocking article. Wow. Funny how the nVidia cards in Sony's PCs are compliant though.

360 isn't HDCP-compliant, btw. At least I don't think you can be, just with component-out. It'll be interesting to see how they get around that with the HD-DVD add-on. A bit OT, I guess. The situation with PC cards is incredible though.

Now what I need is for someone to figure out if the Nvidia 6600 that is in my Mac is compliant.

The funniest thing about this debacle is you could play one of the HD movies downsampled to 480p and some people would still swear they were watching it in HD, which, of course, is a win for all these different industries. I would rather have the movie say "You are not allowed to play this movie on your computer, because we decided to screw you, nothing we built is HDCP compliant, oh, and good luck trying to return this movie to the store, you've already opened it! Thx Management"

 

[London Geezer]

Now what I need is for someone to figure out if the Nvidia 6600 that is in my Mac is compliant.

The funniest thing about this debacle is you could play one of the HD movies downsampled to 480p and some people would still swear they were watching it in HD, which, of course, is a win for all these different industries. I would rather have the movie say "You are not allowed to play this movie on your computer, because we decided to screw you, nothing we built is HDCP compliant, oh, and good luck trying to return this movie to the store, you've already opened it! Thx Management"

Actually when the player downscales the Bluray movie for lack of HDCP, it downscales to something like 900x540p which is slightly higher than DVD (700x500 more or less) and because of much higher bit-rate of the Bluray format will still look quite a bit better than a normal DVD (less compression, better colour, less grain and all things connected to bitrate). Not a huge difference, but i'm sure i'd notice the difference especially because of the difference in bitrate.

 

[GB123]

Actually when the player downscales the Bluray movie for lack of HDCP, it downscales to something like 900x540p which is slightly higher than DVD (700x500 more or less) and because of much higher bit-rate of the Bluray format will still look quite a bit better than a normal DVD (less compression, better colour, less grain and all things connected to bitrate). Not a huge difference, but i'm sure i'd notice the difference especially because of the difference in bitrate.

I doubt you would, dvd bit rate is good for almost everything, even catroons and anime with fast detail and colourful scenes.

I don't know what difference the horizontal resolution would make either, at least in terms of seeing an obvious improvement.
(edit- after thinking about that it occured to me that no TV can display 900x540p so that wouldn't be the case)

The funniest thing about this debacle is you could play one of the HD movies downsampled to 480p and some people would still swear they were watching it in HD

Yup,,,,

I suppose it doesn't matter hugely, if people are happy with 480i/p then everyone is happy.

I think hdcp is guna fall flat on its face, its way to confusing to consumers and will cause bad feed back for a lot of titles thats use it i should imagine.

 

[Titanio]

It's worth noting it can be enabled/disabled on a per-title basis as per the studio's wishes.

IIRC, though, you'll still get 50% more resolution than standard DVD over non-HDCP connections from Blu-ray/HD-DVD, if the studio does choose to enable constriction of resolution for those connections.

 

[London Geezer]

I doubt you would, dvd bit rate is good for almost everything, even catroons and anime with fast detail and colourful scenes.

I don't know what difference the horizontal resolution would make either, at least in terms of seeing an obvious improvement.
(edit- after thinking about that it occured to me that no TV can display 900x540p so that wouldn't be the case)

Lots of high-resolution plasmas and LCD, including LCD monitors or any monitor really will be able to display that strange resolution just fine. The downscaling here is due to the lack of HDCP, not because the screen is low-res. There are a lot of 720p/1080i panels out there without HDCP, and that's the issue i'm addressing now.

Also, if you're telling me a ~9Mbps DVD will look the same as a ~50mbps video, whatever the resolution, then well that's just you, and probably lots of people too. But i did say, it won't be a huge difference, but i'll be able to see it.

 

[Carl B]

Wow that video card thing is a total fiasco - there goes my next video card upgrade! Looks like I have to wait for Vista to come out for board makers to get on the ball.

 

[GB123]

Lots of high-resolution plasmas and LCD, including LCD monitors or any monitor really will be able to display that strange resolution just fine. The downscaling here is due to the lack of HDCP, not because the screen is low-res. There are a lot of 720p/1080i panels out there without HDCP, and that's the issue i'm addressing now.

It would have to resample it to the screens native resolution yes. (which is just degrading the picture more if you ask me)

Also, if you're telling me a ~9Mbps DVD will look the same as a ~50mbps video, whatever the resolution, then well that's just you, and probably lots of people too. But i did say, it won't be a huge difference, but i'll be able to see it.

I guess if you want to see something so bad you will see it ey?

 

[London Geezer]

It would have to resample it to the screens native resolution yes. (which is just degrading the picture more if you ask me)

Not sure you're understanding this...
On normal TVs, Bluray/HDDVD players are wasted pretty much because the additional detail is lost, but then again no one without HDTV will buy the players.

On all 720p HDTVs without HDCP, the Bluray/HDDVD players will output a 940x540 image which will generally look better than a DVD becasue of much higher bitrate.

On HDTVs with HDCP (like the one i have), you'll see whatever resolution your player and TV supports - for me it's glorious 720p.

I guess if you want to see something so bad you will see it ey?

Well i won't see it, cause i'll be watching at full res - or at least at 720p.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wow that video card thing is a total fiasco - there goes my next video card upgrade! Looks like I have to wait for Vista to come out for board makers to get on the ball.

I wonder how much this nonsense is putting off people buying new hardware? I've a friend who didn't buy a HD TV in January due to uncertainty, and I'm not going to bother and it's established. A friend just contacted me saying it'd be better to skip HDDVD and BluRay and wait for the next solution.

To be frank, I hope there is a huge backlash and slump in sales and it knocks some sense into these industries. All these different companies need each other to work, and need to sort themselves out instead of farting about with half-baked pseudo-standards they don't adhere to. [/Wishful Thinking]

GB123 : I tend to see DVD encoding artefacts on most DVDs I watch. I'm sure I'd see the difference between higher bitrate downsampled and low bitrate.

 

[London Geezer]

GB123 : I tend to see DVD encoding artefacts on most DVDs I watch. I'm sure I'd see the difference between higher bitrate downsampled and low bitrate.

Not only encoding artifacts but a general graininess and lack of detail on even the best DVDs out there.
If one's perfectly happy with DVDs then he wouldn't be interest in Bluray, would he!

Trust me, anyone with an HDTV is aching for some HD movies because DVDs can look very bad on HDTVs, even with the new upscaling HDMI DVD players - like i have Well, they are aching if they know something about this whole HD thing, which is all to be seen at the moment.

 

[GB123]

Not only encoding artifacts but a general graininess and lack of detail on even the best DVDs out there.
If one's perfectly happy with DVDs then he wouldn't be interest in Bluray then would he!

Trust me, anyone with an HDTV is aching for some HD movies because DVDs can look very bad on HDTVs, even with the new upscaling HDMI DVD players - like i have

I agree upscaling looks nasty and leave the picture soft and dull.

I fully understand that people with HDTV are aching for HD content.

But i was refering to Blu-ray downscaled for SDTV or those with 720p and no HDMI or HDCP, somehow we ended up on LCD/PLASMA >> 720p >> HDTV.

I had a point somewhere amongst all this side tracking that if you you have 720p set and your tv doesn't support hdcp then the picture will be downsampled to 900x540 and then your TV will upsample it back to 1280x720, this just won't do.(after all, all fixed pixel displays upsample the picture to it's native resolution)

 

[London Geezer]

I agree upscaling looks nasty and leave the picture soft and dull.

I fully understand that people with HDTV are aching for HD content.

But i was refering to Blu-ray downscaled for SDTV or those with 720p and no HDMI or HDCP, somehow we ended up on LCD/PLASMA >> 720p >> HDTV.

I had a point somewhere amongst all this side tracking that if you you have 720p set and your tv doesn't support hdcp then the picture will be downsampled to 900x540 and then your TV will upsample it back to 1280x720. (after all, all fixed pixel displays upsample the picture to it's native resolution)

Yes that would be the case, and it will still look better than DVDs, which output a low-bitrate signal (with no detail and very grainy in some cases) at 480i/p, which the set also has to upsample to whatever native res it has!

In the end the TV will always resample to accommodate the image to its native res, but an upsampled VERY high bitrate video at ~900x600 will look better than an upsampled DVD video that never goes over 9mbps.

See my point now?

So you have: DVD < downsampled Bluray < 720p Bluray < 1080p Bluray. (The Bluray will be the same disc, and the different outputs will depend on the HDTV, i'm not saying there will be 3 version of the same Bluray movie)

And i'm quite sure the downsampled Bluray will start showing a big difference over DVD purely because of bitrate, i'm not sure if there will be more difference between DVD to 720p Bluray or between downsampled Bluray to 720p Bluray. It will all depend on the HDTV.

 

[GB123]

Yes that would be the case, and it will still look better than DVDs, which output a low-bitrate signal (with no detail and very grainy in some cases) at 480i/p, which the set also has to upsample to whatever native res it has!

In the end the TV will always resample to accommodate the image to its native res, but an upsampled VERY high bitrate video at ~900x600 will look better than an upsampled DVD video that never goes over 9mbps.

See my point now?

So you have: DVD < downsampled Bluray < 720p Bluray < 1080p Bluray.
And i'm quite sure the downsampled Bluray will start showing a big difference, i'm not sure if there will be more difference between DVD to 720p Bluray or between downsampled Bluray to 720p Bluray. It will all depend on the HDTV.

LOL i'm aware of this yes..

But what im saying is by how much?, and would the average person notice it.

For the extra quailty you get is it really worth spending xxx amount on a new blu-ray player, if it doesn't give a substantially overall better experience.

 

[London Geezer]

LOL i'm aware of this yes..

Personally i don't care, i'll be getting 720p Bluray video and i'll bloody love it. Then if i feel the need to go for a 1080p set, maybe i'll splash out on it... All depends on many things really.

 

[NANOTEC]

If upscaled DVDs don't look good on your setup then 1. You have crappy equipment or 2. You have good equipment but it's crappily adjusted. A modest $4K home theater setup can rival and even surpass the real theater experience if setup correctly.

 

[London Geezer]

If upscaled DVDs don't look good on your setup then 1. You have crappy equipment or 2. You have good equipment but it's crappily adjusted. A modest $4K home theater setup can rival and even surpass the real theater experience if setup correctly.

Well it really depends on the DVD obviously. Madagascar looked so good, at times i was wondering how the Bluray version will top it, cause it just looked perfect at times.

Other DVDs are just a bit crappy and the equipment i have shows the flaws in all their glory.

My setup comes to a total of about 2 grand in UK pounds i think, which in dollars will be almost 4 grand. Samsung HDTV, Philips upscaling HDMI DVD player, Sony 5.1 surround. Not the best setup BY FAR but well above average and well enough to satisfy my geeky needs.

You can rest assured everything is connected properly. Really.