2010 — the Year AACS and HDMI Kill Off HD Component Video 424
For home theater buffs who want (or already have) a high-def system using component-video connections, time may be growing short. Audiofan writes with this story, which begins: "Digital HD (high definition), like that enabled through HDMI and Blu-ray, is awesome. It offers amazing picture and audio quality. It allows you to conveniently connect one single cable to provide both picture and sound. It is royally going to screw up a lot of homes next year. Wait, what was that last part? After December 31, 2010, manufacturers will not be 'allowed' [to] introduce new hardware with component video outputs supplying more than an SD resolution (480i or 576i). Should this go through as planned, it's going to disable or throw a wrench in a lot of existing custom installations as soon as the end of this year." The AACS in the headline stands for Advanced Access Content System, the industry scheme to block "the analog hole" by controlling content from storage media to eyeballs.
Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:5, Insightful)
There will still be plenty of HDMI to composite converters coming out of China, etc.
Why force the market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why attempt to force the market to change? Oh right, money. Someone stands to make a lot of money from a bunch of people being forced to upgrade.
I mean, they could just let the old tvs slowly die out and eventually noone will have a need for anything but HDMI, but where is the short term profit in that?
Somehow I still doubt it will work. People don't like being told they can't have their way and someone will find a way to give them what they want anyways.
Money Money Money (Score:5, Insightful)
What we have is a perfect recipe for greed!
Summary contradicts itself... (Score:2, Insightful)
It says that they "...will not be 'allowed' [to] introduce ____new____ hardware..." and then says, "...throw a wrench in a lot of ____existing____ custom installations..."
How are these things related? Is the submission suggestion that your component video output will suddenly cease to work? Or are they trying to make the leap of logic that old displays will not have any new gizmos to connect to them? I've never seen a piece of display equipment that couldn't be connected to an HD source through some trickery with adapters or an upscaler etc. What's the worry here?
Where? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Money Money Money (Score:1, Insightful)
Decent HDMI cables are about $3-5 USD. Decent RGB cables are at least twice as much and unlike HDMI, some of the more expensive RGB cables perform noticeably better.
Yes, Just like the last few times. (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to remember the same argument with Region Codes and DIVX. People voted with the wallet last time, why would this time be any different?
Even if they do get their way, all they will do is create a cottage industry of security-defeating technologies. And like always, the real pirates who make tons of money selling counterfeits will find ways around it.
It's the actual consumer that can't watch that latest DVD because of DRM that doesn't quite work right that get screwed.
2010 The year blu-ray gets bypassed... (Score:4, Insightful)
An overpriced underperforming platform get bypassed in favor of digital media players with increasing sizes of flash storage or hd storage.
Its a story of a clever technology undermined by its own advocates. Why buy a blu-ray player that may not play new favorites 3 months
from now when you can get a digital download. The old tech people may stick with DVD while the new tech people may switch
over to direct digital download. If Im gonna hook my player up to a network to get firmware updates, I might as well just get a network
media player.
Optical storage is dead anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
Blu-ray is the latest mainstream optical storage has to offer and it's a nasty proprietary format pushed forward by the notorious DRM worshippers that are Sony. The discs are too expensive and fewer people are going out to buy movies. There isn't much point either since when you buy it it's not even yours.
Unless low-cost holographic storage becomes available without restrictions or DRM I'd say optical storage has had it's day. and anyone developing optical storage these days has to be in the least position to force DRM on the market. The SD card guys have had much more luck with peddling DRM to the masses and I expect that SD-DRM usage will become widespread any day now
Re:Summary contradicts itself... (Score:3, Insightful)
No more intelligent responses... (Score:5, Insightful)
I typically try to express some kind of intelligent or informed opinion on /. stories, but all I can come up with here is, "Screw you, AACS." I have not yet moved to Blu-Ray or an HD TV, and this makes me much less likely to want to. Bastards.
So, basically, don't bother buying blu-ray? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shrug. Only affects legitimate consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
You've failed to grasp that as far as these "content cartels" are concerned, there is NO such thing as a legitimate consumer. To them the world is consists of them, and pirates. There is nothing in between, and all are guilty.
Re:Why force the market? (Score:3, Insightful)
a lawsuit could probably turn this around pretty easily of people were willing to do it. That of course, is it's own problem: in order to turn around bogus crap, you have to spend exorbitant amounts of money just to turn around small stupid inconveniences that chip away at your rights.
Re:Money Money Money (Score:2, Insightful)
Weirdo.
Everybody knows pointy 1's and rounder 0's are better.
Re:Summary contradicts itself... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No more intelligent responses... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, considering the fact that we are the early adopter crowd that does have some relevance.
How else is grandpa going to know that there's the nifty new tech out there that he should be buying.
He's certainly not going to stumble upon this himself. And no, all of the ads and displays at Frys and Best Buy aren't going to clue him in.
After 70 years of media saturation, he probably doesn't notice any of that stuff anymore (assuming he doesn't have his hearing aid turned off).
If I can't play it in the device of my choosing, then I'm not really interested. My only BD device only has a USB output as it is.
Re:Why force the market? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the 1920s proved that.
I used to think that people don't learn history. They do. What they don't learn is the ability to see how the current, "new" situation is similar to things that have happened before under similar conditions and can be expected to yield the same results. So every new development like this is a surprise to them. When it succeeds only in creating a market (underground, if need be) for non-compliant players that do what the customer wants, I guess the businesses behind this will be surprised too.
It's only reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
I think your setup is perfectly reasonable. How much moralizing do you see companies go through when they employ slave laborers to make goods or outsource your job to some third-world worker for a pittance? They are taking things away from others just because they can, so why shouldn't you do the same?
Slashtards go on about how it's okay because "corporation are amoral" and they "have a responsibility to make as much money for their shareholders as possible." If that is the case, then it's perfectly sensible to do the same thing yourself. Pirating is cheaper than buying, and allows me to have more money for other uses, therefore it is the right thing to do.
As they have sown, so they shall reap. All hail the false idol of money and bow before the might of the corporate gods.
Impact (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bye bye Wii (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Money Money Money (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not. It's a very nice-looking cable.
We're mocking you.
Patent Abuse (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason they can enforce this is because they can refuse to issue patents related to Blu-ray to any manufacturer that does not agree to their terms, which a blatant abuse patent system.
The purpose of patents are to promote the development of novel ideas, and the primary mechanism for doing so is to allow the original inventor to be compensated when these ideas are used. A government-granted monopoly is completely unnecessary to accomplish these goals, and is a horrible anachronism in a free market society.
Patents should be reformed to require all grantees to license their patents to anyone who is willing to pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This would at least solve the problem of patents being abused to force agendas and limit competition, while still achieving the goal of compensating inventors.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:2, Insightful)
Like people need another reason to not use legit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are the manufacturers getting more greedy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the first time they've removed the old standard by legal caveat, rather than simple obsolescence.
Component can easily handle very high definition, but it won't be allowed because (snicker) of course it's only possible to (chortle) copy video if you (guffaw) have access to an analog data stream of it. (HA HA HA !!!!! snort)
I mean, it's just not going to be possible (tee hee) to make an unlocked copy (ha ha) of the video at its full resolution.
BWAAHAHAH!!!!! Sorry, sometimes I kill myself.
Don't you worry none, as soon as BluRay turns on this flag there'll be an MKV extractor and you won't have to fret about this silly flag nonsense.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Annoying?
The whole thing is easily automated, drop in disc and in a little while you have a nice HD video file that can be played out whatever input you want.
Re: Don't confuse... (Score:3, Insightful)
The more the industry does this, the less I buy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shrug. Only affects legitimate consumers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Shrug. Only affects legitimate consumers (Score:5, Insightful)
Now my country does levy a blank CD tax...Oh yeah, I never buy any blank discs because EVERYTHING is on Hard drives or flash cards.
I'm laughing man, because I am so not legit.
Ok, queue up the haters, I don't give a shit what any of you think.
You know what I think? You're not going to have to re-buy all your stuff when they come out with the next standard after blue-ray. You'll just have to download things again. Not too shabby.
Pirates laughing all the way to the home theatre. (Score:5, Insightful)
So once again we have more hoops for paying customers to jump through and perhaps have their legally purchased content automatically downgrade itself in order to "protect" the MPAA and member companies. Meanwhile everyone who has given up on the ridiculously outdated and self-defeating content distribution system suffers no inconvenience whatsoever.
The further along this train wreck progresses the more my outrage turns into bemused detachment. I haven't bought any non-indie media in quite a long time now (occasionally I catch a movie or concert). I do feel somewhat sorry for the people who haven't figured out how totally messed up the system is and are going to be badly affected by this, but I just can't bring myself to the point of actual outrage over it any more.
How many people are going to just give up trying to be "good consumers" and switch over to piracy based on this? I would expect it will be far more people than will be dissuaded from participating in casual "copyright infringement" by trying to make backup copies of their media or god forbid just trying to watch a movie they bought on the wrong type of TV.
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no intention of ever buying into BluRay precisely because of the ability to play these sort of anti-consumer games. Wake me up when they start their attack on HD OTA broadcasts.
They will never heed the most basic truth (Score:2, Insightful)
If it can be read it can be copied.
The only way to prevent people from copying their precious Hi-Def movies and super awesome digital music is to prevent them from PLAYING them. Which in a sick and twisted sort of way appears to be what they are slowly trying to accomplish.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:3, Insightful)
Just download a version with protections removed.
All it takes is 1 person to figure out how to get around it and it's out on the internet.
So if my options are to buy all new gear that has HDMI instead of component or download the movie.
It's getting downloaded.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:3, Insightful)
Annoying? After getting the media center configured, I don't even have to go search for a disc every time I want to play something now. I just select it from a universal remote. Sure, it's not the easiest thing to do, but you can pay someone to do it for you if you want, and then you no longer have to sit through the asinine 20 minutes of trailers and shit on a movie that you bought, ostensibly to watch the main feature, not forced to watch trailers for movies that have already been released.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything higher than the 720x480 that an older CRT will do is high-def. 1280x720 is almost triple the amount of pixels of standard-def video. The definition does not depend entirely on the display device... it depends on the source. Just because you can stretch SD video to your monitor size doesn't make it HD.
Re:Summary contradicts itself... (Score:4, Insightful)
What good is a "high quality" picture if you aren't allowed to watch it?
"High quality" is intentionally quoted as all the extra crispness and chroma filters they run the original source through to make some BR content can make the BR look worse than the original and/or the DVD.
VHS to DVD was an obvious improvement in both quality and convenience.
DVD to BR is meh at best.
Re:The Real Analog Hole (Score:5, Insightful)
Why analog? At some point that content is being decrypted inside the screen. It should be possible to open the thing up and dump it and get a 1:1 digital un-encrypted copy. Sure, it's technically daunting but it only has to be done once per video.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's the point of TFA: You're fucked.
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Or just get the disinfected version from Pirate Bay.
Media industry does a pretty good imitation of The Three Stooges nowadays.
Personally, I say "so fucking what?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:3, Insightful)
The irony being rich. People who are willing to obey the law, are going to have to pay good money and endure moderate inconvenience to do the right thing to be able to continue paying good money. People who break the law, well they will continue to break the law. Why I even think this irony was on penny-arcade today.
As an owner of an 8 year old DLP HDTV that only has component video, I do feel unjustly targeted.
Re:Shrug. Only affects legitimate consumers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just buy the unofficial ones (Score:5, Insightful)
People who are willing to obey the law
That's where the problems start. Good people have to be willing to ignore and break bad laws [wikipedia.org] en masse, not doing so is to participate in your own oppression. (And participate in the political process to abolish those laws of course.)
Re:Why force the market? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not as similar as you think.
A reasonably intelligent person can produce alcohol with a few tools brought from the hardware store. You need a medium to large specialist manufacturing base to attempt to produce 'non-compliant' hardware.
Technology has moved on. Now we're reliant on the big companies to provide for us. Increasingly, the individual will not be able to compete on his/her own.