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HDMI-Enabled Graphics Cards Debut
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Mar 13, 2007 07:41 AM
from the no-way-things-can-go-wrong-here dept.
from the no-way-things-can-go-wrong-here dept.
TrackinYeti writes "HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface), is the first industry supported digital-only interface, that requires a single cable to connect an output source to an HD-ready device, such as a television or monitor and deliver HD video, plus multi-channel digital audio, like Dolby Digital and DTS. Recently, Asus Computer released versions of their GeForce 7600 and Radeon X1600 cards with HDMI outputs on them, driven by an on-board Sil1930 controller. These are some of the first graphics cards to hit the market that can output HDMI natively with an integrated HDCP cipher engine and support HD-audio as well. Just the thing for that HTPC?"
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oh boy oh boy oh boy oh ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess this is good for folks who build home theatres out of their computers, but then why do they need a 3D accelerator to show TV or videos?
Tom
Re:oh boy oh boy oh boy oh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:oh boy oh boy oh boy oh ... (Score:4, Insightful)
My longest run was 350 feet without any problems, but that was on a smallish screen, only 13 feet across.
Parent
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I didn't spend big bucks on cables either...both cables were in the $30-$50 range. The image looks great in both cases.
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Xbox 360 Controller for Windows [joystiq.com]
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Vista's Aero GUI. GPU hardware acceleration for video processing. PC gaming on the 60 inch plasma or rear projection screen.
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Anyways, I'm not entirely sold on the need to jump on the HD/BD bandwagon. They're still pressing DVDs. I'll wait till the last possible minute to upgrade [if I do at all]. Especially while they're still fighting over what resolutions to support... < 1080i == teh lame.
If my monitor can do 1280x1024 just fine, why can't a more expensive TV do 1080i or 1080p?
Tom
Re:oh boy oh boy oh boy oh ... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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The way you are thinking would be that as soon as I play an interlaced video on my computer, the display resolution is automatically hal
Just means more DRM controlled hardware.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise she might be ill and not feeling up to her usual daily routine of running around the park/garden/trashing-the-house generally so we stick on a bunch of disney/animal films and play them whilst she's chilling out on the sofa and she slyly grabs one whilst i pop the the kitchen to fetch some kiddy medicine.
wouldnt it be nice if i could play backups of my original copies, and not have to worry if that happens.
of course one day i'd like the ubiqutous server-under-the-stairs but in the mean time i'd rather not have to fork out another £20 quid because the only PHYSICAL COPY of the movie who's CONTENTS i purchased the RIGHTS TO WATCH got used as a teething ring.
Parent
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I store all my kids movies on a home server and stream them to an Xbox running XBMC(which can read from a simple SMB share).
I made this decision when I had a damaged "Beauty and the Beast" disk. I wrote disney to ask what the replacement cost would be if I turned in the damaged copy and they said "buy a new copy". They are not in stores anymore and I dare you to get in a bidding war on fleabay. So I netflixed it and ripped it. Never looked back. Ripped m
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the point! The point is that we shouldn't have to break the law to use the media we legally purchased!
Parent
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I simply wanted to provide initial poster with a known working solution to backing up disney DVDs which I have found to be highly problematic in most copy situations.
AnyDVD seems to work well at the sector based protection that DVDdecryptor can't handle very well, while DVDdecryptor can rip all the wonderful stream information.
AutoGK makes nice reasonable sized files in Xvid or Divx format that XBMC can play flawlessly. It's an end-to-end solution that actually w
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah there is; it's called the DMCA. It says that even if you would otherwise have the right to make the backup (due to Fair Use), you aren't allowed to because it requires circumventing the CSS encryption on the DVD.
Parent
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If you charge for physical media, and your kid wrecks it, then that's your problem (sorry). If you backed it up, then you solved your problem.
But these days, that isn't what's happening. They think they control your rights. They don't let you back up, because it "isn't within your rights". But it's still on a physical media, which can be wrecked by your kid. Since they're so adamant that you aren't buying media
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And back on topic, toddlers (cats, dogs, vacuum cleaners, etc) are incompatable with HDMI.
For the life of me, I don't know why this connection ever became a standard. For thos
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Seriously, though. Shit happens and kids aren't careful. Backups are a necessity in information situation, including movies and games. If the company you work for lost even $50 worth of anything, they'd not be real happy. Why should a family be any different?
Does 8800GTS has HDTV support? (Score:2)
Play HD DVD and Blu-ray movies on your PC with PureVideo HD technology.
Available on HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs, high-definition movies are bringing an exciting new video experience to PC users. NVIDIA® PureVideo(TM) HD technology lets you enjoy cinematic-quality HD DVD and Blu-ray movies with low CPU utilization and power consumption, allowing higher quality movie playback and picture clarity.
But wait, only these cards are supported: nvidia's list of cards [nzone.com]
But hrmmm...it
Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever I read 'high definition' these days I think: great, another product that's broken by design.
Someone wake me up when they've passed that part...
Why HD? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would rather the studios get cracking on some good content rather than having us watch the same, boring, stale content in OMG U CAN SEE THER POREZORS!1!!one! I get more entertainment value out of my free podcasts than out of my television. The content is stuff I actually care about, and while the production value isn't always the greatest it's almost always worth the price of bandwidth. And I can watch or listen to them at work.
And the worst part is that when the studios make good content, it's canceled or sunk very quickly. Most people have probably never heard of Idiocracy, but everyone I've heard who's seen it says it's awesome, but it only ran for one weekend in 8 theaters because some exec got scared because it made fun of all the idiots of the world. And then there's Firefly, and Dr. Who, and Torchwood, which got shown out of order and canceled, butchered unrecognizably to add commercials, and completely ignored respectively.
To put it another way: I don't see any reason I should upgrade to HD just so I can get the MPAA regulating what I watch or be able to see the blades of grass on the field where millionaires in tights jump on each other.
MPAA is not the only fruit (Score:3, Informative)
HD cameras and equipment are available to most filmmakers currently using SD.
HD Digital cinemas [broadway.org.uk] are not just exotic rarities.
Lots of material is currently being gathered in HD and dropped down, particularly sport.
An HDMI enabled video card is *exactly* what some have been waiting for. Now we can preview our work on a TV screen, which has a different colour space to computer monitors.
So, in summary, quit yer bitchin' cos you're talking out yer arse
Re:MPAA is not the only fruit (Score:4, Insightful)
That's all well and good, but if the content is going to be bad, no amount of high definition will fix it.
Parent
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I'm aware that whether it's SD or HD doesn't make it any better, but the content producers and the content distributors are marketing HD like it's going to make Gigli an Oscar-worthy production.
It's like a cult, really. They're saying that if only I spend thousands on an HD system, all the content they spew at me will be engrossing and entertaining.
exactly what some have been waiting for (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, no. If you really wanted digital video on a TV screen you'd be using HD-SDI (with embedded AES audio). You can get some nice cards from Bluefish [bluefish444.com].
HDMI is a useless specification. It does nothing not already done by HD-SDI (and over co-ax, the cheapest possible cabling!), except for the Digital Compatibility Prevention.
Re: (Score:2)
> Now we can preview our work on a TV screen, which has a different colour
> space to computer monitors
Wouldn't a DVI to HDMI converter [google.com] work?
Re: Your Inquiry (Score:4, Funny)
Dear Consumer,
We appreciate you voicing your concerns on this pressing matter and are glad that you choose us for your entertainment purposes. It's people like you that make mass media what it is and we thank you. Unfortunately, many of the shows and movies you listed were not watched by a lot of people so we had to cancel them. The problem is that we need one billion dollars in ad revenue instead of the mere millions that a company would receive by airing quality entertainment and not pandering to ratings. (I mean, who, these days, can afford to run a company on the millions?). You mentioned an interest in the movie and/or television program "Idiocracy," I'm glad to inform you that on the violence channel, one of our best hits "Ow! My Balls" is entering it's 25th season with no end in sight. Perhaps if you enjoyed some of our other quality entertainment, you will find this enticing.
P.S. Don't you dare use other internet media outlets for your entertainment purposes or we will consider you a pirate and sue you for living. And if you don't buy/see our movies we will consider this profit loss due to the aforementioned piracy.
Yours Truly,
The Mass Media Overlords
Parent
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There, fixed that for you. Or did you honestly think you are so important that your opinion of a very subjectve medium is the only one that matters?
Re: (Score:2)
It's more than just my opinion. The vast majority of content these days is geared towards the lowest common denominator and the lowest cost. Rather than taking risks and respecting their audience, they've decided that we're all morons and that we'll take what they're feeding us. There are a few shows and movies that do make it through, but they're few and very far between.
This is why I've gone to other, possibly illegal, ways of getting content that appeals to me. And I know I'm not the only one.
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One thing that's encouraging for me is that the barrier to entry is being consistently lowered. Spielberg and Lucas started out on 8mm cameras making low-budget films with their friends. The big name directors of the future are on the Internet right now, making low-budget films with their friends, but they've got the technology to do very professional-looking work. And because of the Internet, a lot of people can see their work.
Things like Galacticast or Star Wreck or the fan-produced Star Trek: New Voyage
Is this anything but a sales gimmick? (Score:2, Interesting)
Bad Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
As Richard Stalmann predicted (warned) (Score:5, Insightful)
Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing", large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. (...)
Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does;(...) It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage.(...) These malicious features are often secret, but even once you know about them it is hard to remove them, since you don't have the source code.
In the past, these were isolated incidents. "Trusted computing" would make it pervasive. "Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.
The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function.
Read the rest in the above linked article. It is an interesting reading, even for the ones familiar with it, as we march slowly and steady to the worst case scenario predicted there.
What's the deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? They have been out for a while now. (Score:3, Informative)
Why does the article and summary act like they just hit the market?
They really are only useful for HTPC's connected to HD tv sets.
Another junk review (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead they go through another boring loop of 3D benchmarks. I hate these two-bit hardware sites that only knows how to overclock and run benchmarks.
I'd trade it for a PCI-based CableCard reader (Score:3, Interesting)
We're still waiting for CableLabs to stop fellating the movie industry and license someone to make a PCI-based CableCard reader. I mean, I'd subscribe to digital cable service today, if I could tune it and record it on my PVR PC without needing to tape an IR emitter to the front of a set-top tuner.
Their loss, I suppose.
This is worse than DVI+HDCP (Score:2, Interesting)
HDMI = single data link with HDCP
DVI = single data link with HDCP + dual data link for very hi res screens + Analogue
With the use of DVI to VGA adaptors and DVI to HDMI cables you get the most flexibility.
My Nvidia 7950GT card has DVI and HDCP for quite a while. A $10 cable gives me HDMI output...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As for amps - you do have a point. I've been without one for a while, so the "big" tv just gets the one cable. (okay, more like a dozen once you add the comp input, plus the two sd inputs and the coax..what a mess). I'm grasping at straws here, but it would also be useful for sending the HDMI to a splitter and fe
Little bit of DRM advice... (Score:5, Insightful)
"HD Ready" is newspeak for "DRM ridden". (Score:3, Interesting)
there were so many drm requirements for that trademark cert it made my head spin.
I decided then and there i would never buy anything marked "HD Ready"
I fully expect linux drivers for these cards to be DMCA'd to death, if the hardware based lockdown even allows the development of linux drivers (you probably have to reverse engineer the handshake.. then get hit with the DMCA bat).
then there's the fact that cablcard cant be read in these cards... making them completely useless for real pvr's.
as for the previous poster mentioning HD-DVD and BLU-RAY backup utility, atm it's in its most primitive states. they are still in development(theyre still reverse engineering the final 40% of the process) and far from layman usable. There is still a distinct possibility that, despite having a system worked out to repeatedly and relatively trivially crack AACS, that the number of updatable points will make it impossible for a dvd-decrypter style 1 click app (i see it requiring as much skill as proper use of avisynth for the next 1 to 1.5 years at the latest.
not here, thanks (Score:2)
I do not want pigopolists to force me to replace it all when I must go HDTV.
screw 'em in the market, so they understand it.