DVD Player With DVI Output

ffierling writes "Why are there no big name DVD Players with digital video outputs? With all the available digital displays (LCD, plasma, DLP, etc) and the obvious benefits of an all-digital connection, it's easy to conclude the threat of litigation from copyright holders is holding up the big name manufacturers. So how is it V Inc. can sell their Bravo D1 DVD Player with DVI output? Are they below the MPAA's radar, or just quicker to market?"

Forgive

[desenz]

The ignorance, But why is that such a bad thing for the movie companies? Are they worried someone will use the signal from the DVD player to rip it?

Macrovision? Pshaw.

[Speare]

When this thing is offered in the USA with Macrovision disabled, all regions playable at any time, and no forced chapters, then I'll whip out my VISA and buy one. But not until then.

Just another excuse...

[Anonymous Coward]

for Monster to sell yet another overpriced cable. Have a tough time believing they will come bundled...

1920x1080???

[tomstdenis]

Hmm... DVDs are 720x480, tv's are like 640x480....

forward thinking bastards.

Why don't they just stop all the chinanigans and stop to make a device that does 640x480 through say 2048x1536 or something. If you need more than that many pixels to enjoy plotless drivel you might as well go join a militia and blow up shit for real.

Instead no, people will make crappy incremental updates. Call it "new and improved" and sell the thing for 200$ more than the previous.

Bullshit. My digital cameral can already capture 2048x1536. You think people can make a TV to display it!

Tom

Re:sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

Not when you can get a decent progressive scan capable player for $100.

DVI is nice and all for the likes of viewing your PC on your TV, but for the source most people will never be able to tell the difference between DVI and component video.

Re:Submitter does not understand the subject.

[bigdavex]

DVI can be no more "digital" than composite or s-video.

Sorry, go fish.
The DVI standard includes a digital mode and this player is using it.

Re:sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont see what the MPAA has to do with DVD players w/ DVI output. Are they just afraid that i'll be watching American Psycho on my new 23" Apple Cinema Display?

DVI is no problem. How about Firewire/Component?

[-tji]

As other have mentioned, firewire can be copy restricted, using and encrypted in transport. Also, it's a high bandwidth, uncompressed data stream, which is not easy to copy.

The MPAA still does exert some control here, as you can tell from the lack of DVD players with FireWire interfaces. mitsubishi has been talking about them for years, to fit into their cool Havi [mitsubishi-tv.com] system. But, because of the all the MPAA usage restriction hysteria, they can't bring one to market.

Also, they block any analog outputs over 480P (e.g. component video, YPrPb, outputs at 720P or 1080i). These are analog outputs, which are not easily copied (try recording your VGA out). But, they still won't allow them because of the CSS license restrictions and lack of Macrovision.

This is also closely related to why you cannoy buy an HDTV DirecTV receiver with a Firewire output, and thus cannot record HDTV programs off satellite. The technology has been viable for years, D-VHS recorders are available and cheap, but the content providers prevent DirecTV from adding this feature. This slows down the adoption of HDTV, and stifles innovation. Don't you just love the MPAA?

Q: Why not FireWire?

[daveschroeder]

A: Because the movie/tv industry is deathly afraid of it.

The promise of FireWire is a single cable, and an intelligent system, connecting all of your electronics devices together. Not just final output (like DVI), or tied to a host (like USB), but a peer-to-peer, universal, high speed bus that can carry content as well as control data. Any of your devices can communicate with one another, and, where applicable, control or send information to one another - all the while sending pristine digital content.

DVI is more attractive to some because it's a final output format, with less fundamental chance of being manipulated or captured by anything else. And copy protection can be enforced in the "monitor" or display device, if need be...FireWire could connect all of your equipment, including your computer, appliances, and more. It could even do it wirelessly.

Imagine one single, intelligent cable chain connecting all of your entertainment equipment - no more rat's nest of endless cabling, no more dumb devices unaware of anything but themselves...that is one of the purposes, and the promise, of FireWire.

Re:How many TV's have DVI input?

[illumin8]

My Sony 40" Trinitron (40KV-XBR800) has DVI input, as do most hi-definition sets manufactured in the last few years.

IMO, you would be foolish to buy a new HDTV without DVI-HDCP as most set-top boxes are moving to this format as a method of copy protection (encrypting the signal between the set-top box and your TV in order to eliminate video capture and upload to the net).

Re:sweet

[modecx]

No, you're right. There's varying standards for televison display that are supposed to provide a secure channel between two devices that support it.

The MPAA needs to be dragged into the street and shot.

Re:My mac has DVI output already.

[claud9999]

I suspect you have an nVidia chipset in your Mac...I did a side-by-side comparison of my G4 (with bundled video and Apple's DVD player) and my Duron (with ATI card and PowerDVD) and the pixelization and color was FAR less with the Duron.

As an example, watching the opening scrolling-text stuff at the beginning of The Matrix caused some heavy aliasing/pixelization on the Mac.

I'm sure a bit of it has to do with the PowerDVD player having some tweaks to take advantage of DirectX but I'm sure much of it has to do with ATI's DVD-friendly capabilities. I sold my G4 and now use my (sadly...noisy/power-hungry) Duron for movie watching now.

I would certainly prefer a standalone player (that didn't have a big fan to cool it) with DVI out, but I can wait 'til they become commonplace/cheap. (In fact, shouldn't it be cheaper to produce a DVI-only player, not having to do D->A? 'course, they'll probably never have a pure-digital deck...)

DVI Discussion

[Mia'cova]

I recently (Saturday) purchased a rather nice 46" sony projection TV. It's 1080i (HDTV) compatible and has a single DVI input. I'm planning on attempting to configure my computer to output DVI to the TV before I resort to s-video. Apparently it's difficult to get one's computer's DVI output to sync properly with a TV's input. Does anyone know of any resources to help plan this? Or any tips?

Also, the other thing I'm wondering. I've heard that the DVI inputs that are now being placed on most "high end" (lets say $1500 - $2000 +) TVs are intended to be used for the cable/sat/whatever HDTV boxes of the future. If that's true and DVI is being put on TVs with one specific purpose in mind, I wonder if over the next five or so years we're going to see more DVI inputs on our TVs to handle more devices. DVI cables are cheap (compared to, lets say, those $100+ monster component cables) and wouldn't be subject to interference since they're digital. If I was making decisions while designing those TVs, I'd love to keep everyone stuck on component where companies can suck up hundreds of dollars on 4' cables. So what do you guys think the industry is planning on doing with DVI? I've yet to see more then one DVI input on a TV. If they were planning on replacing everything with DVI, I'd expect to see at least two (DVI and your broadcast television). But I'm only seeing one... hrmm. Thoughts?

Re:wrong conclusion

[evilviper]

What's most funny is that no one today would likely think of "ripping" a DVD from a capture card, just because all it takes is a $50 DVD drive and a braindead piece of software. And yet the manufacturers stick by their "no RGB" guns as if it actually means something.

It means a hell of a lot actually.

If you have unencrypted access to the data, you can legally make a copy of the DVD. If you don't, then you cannot legally copy the DVD. The technical ability to make a copy doesn't bother them, only the legality... You can see that very clearly by looking at their unending efforts to get the broadcast flag mandated by the FCC in HDTV. Neither will put an end to any serious criminal copying, but they put and end to fair use, which seems to be their sole intent (why else would CSS be so terribly crappy?)

Re:My mac has DVI output already.

[i_am_nitrogen]

You're using DVD software that doesn't do deinterlacing or 2-3 pulldown removal. Ogle and mplayer support 2-3 pulldown removal based on encoding flags (I don't know about xine, but I bet it does too). Mplayer also supports a simple deinterlace filter for non-pulldown stuff. Rumor has it there's also work being done to bring the deinterlacers from tvtime and dscaler to xine and mplayer.

Re:DVI has copy protection

[jfanning]

There are discs with no CSS encoding.

One of the Linux documentaries was released with no protection. I can't remember what the name of it was though, but it was mentioned on Slashdot.

The DVI Output is COPY PROTECTED!

[pivot_enabled]

Come on guys get a clue. The DVI signal (which contrary to other silly opinions CAN be used to make perfect little digital copies if you are clever) includes something called HDCP [digital-cp.com] (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) which is transmitted over the I2C pins on the DVI connector. If you are not decoding this signal you get a lousy snowy picture. And yes your computer system includes those same pins and you will ultimately find yourself dealing with precisely the same problem when you play DVD's on your computer so you might as well start crying now.

Alternatively you could start working on building yourself an HDCP pass through dongle right now. Can't be all that hard.

The motion picture industry is certainly concerned about you making copies of DVD's but let's face it those have been cracked already. They are a somewhat lost cause. What they are now attempting to guard against is people making copies of High Definition video. The content that will be coming out on blue laser equiped DVD's at 720p+ resolutions. The notion is, that end to end encryption is the answer. By putting the decoder in the display you are screwed. OK not really but it does become ever so slightly harder.

BTW Samsung makes a VERY nice DVD player (DVD-HD931) [samsung.com] with DVI out that additionaly does scaling to 720p and 3:2 pulldown using the Faroudja chip. Now at $250 that is a bargain and a half. If only the damn thing would put that signal out RGB so I could watch it on my Sony 1271 projector... I'd be a happy camper. We need the Europeans to put out 720p on SCART connectors (OK so maybe just I do). Curious that none of European market machines include the Faroudja chip.... Actually really irritating is more like it (once again possibly editorial).

So.... this is all FULLY above the Radar and be prepared to grab your ankles because you know what is coming...

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much

Re:DVI is no problem. How about Firewire/Component

[red floyd]

Here's a thought. Why can't some manufacturer use DeCSS or qrpff or one of those bad boys.

Because it's in a consumer player, with no mass storage or connectivity save the A/V outputs, the MPAA would have a damn hard time making the argument that it's piracy. And they wouldn't have to pay the license fee to the DVD-CSS consortium either!

Sigma Designs - good or bad?

[heath_ams]

This is probably a good player. But it's just another incarnation of the Sigma Designs DVD kit.
See: Sigma Designs DVD Kits [sigmadesigns.com]
And remember that Sigma Designs hasn't been too forthcoming with the OSS Community?
DivX Networks Press Release [divxnetworks.com]
XVID also has comments [xvid.org] (look for "Sigma")
Anyway, there are several players out there already using these kits.
KISS Technology [kiss-technology.com]
Revoy [revoy.com] -- to name a couple.
I bought one of these players myself (the KISS DP-500) and they are great, but still full of little bugs and the community is just building now to get into the GPL part of the source - just not sure how much of it we will be able to modify and now much will remain closed-source.
Here [aspiron.ee] is a community of KISS owners so you can see what types of issues people are dealing with on these Sigma players.

Check out the DP-500

[zorglubxx]

I dont think this player is that hot. Check out the KiSS DP-500 [kiss-technology.com] which additionally supports DVD-RW and DVD+RW (the Bravo only supports DVD+-R), OGG and Divx 3.11, 4 and 5. The DP-500 also comes with a 10/100 ethernet port so that you can stream audio, video and jpegs directly from your computer. There's also a webradio feature to stream directly from the internet.

Yes there are still a few bugs in the software, as someone mentioned above, but they are slowly being worked out with new software releases.

Re:wrong conclusion

[radish]

the "industry agreement" is that no DVD players will have RGB outputs

I'm sorry but that's complete rubbish - virtually every DVD player ever sold in europe has RGB outs - it's totally standard over here. And all TVs from the last few years have RGB in. You're actually less likely to get s-video outs (although I'd guess 90% have both). Even outside europe I know RGB is common place in Aus, and I've seen it on US players too.