Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Sony, Others Won't Degrade HD Content on Analog Outputs
Posted by Jeremy Charette in "NEWS" @ 02:00 PM
"Just when you thought you'd never hear any encouraging news about hi-def content protection, here's a ray of sunshine for anyone who bought an HDTV without HDMI connectors: It seems Sony and several other movie studios won't make their Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies play at reduced resolution on your sets after all. Sound and Vision is reporting that Sony's first wave of Blu-Ray discs won't use the "Image Constraint Token" that would force players to down-sample video being piped out through a player's component video outputs...According to HDBeat and AVS Forum, Sony isn't the only studio with such a policy: Disney, Fox, and Paramount apparently won't use ICT either. Some quick background here: The AACS copy protection scheme that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs will use allows content owners to set a flag called the Image Constraint Token. When this flag is set, content output over an analog connector is automatically scaled down to 960x540, leaving a picture that's better than DVD quality, but not nearly as good as full resolution HD...What's more, publishers are required to disclose their use of ICT on the packaging for their discs. So even if the studios eventually decide to go wild with ICT, at least you'll know what you're buying."
Two good things: looks like ICT is not going to be used after all, and it also appears that if you're buying a down-rezzed disc, at least there will be a logo on the package to tell you that up front. The uproar over down-rezzing has been tremendous over the past few weeks, and it looks like movie studios are responding in favor of the consumer. Frankly, I don't think down-rezzing is going to be necessary. The anti-pirating measures incorporated into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray should be enough to keep the black market at bay until the next new format war begins. As for file-sharing: even at high compression levels (which look terrible), HD-quality video files will be huge! I don't think you'll see a sudden surge in the number of HD movies on BitTorrent anytime soon, at least not until the average consumer has a T1 piped into his or her house.
Two good things: looks like ICT is not going to be used after all, and it also appears that if you're buying a down-rezzed disc, at least there will be a logo on the package to tell you that up front. The uproar over down-rezzing has been tremendous over the past few weeks, and it looks like movie studios are responding in favor of the consumer. Frankly, I don't think down-rezzing is going to be necessary. The anti-pirating measures incorporated into HD-DVD and Blu-Ray should be enough to keep the black market at bay until the next new format war begins. As for file-sharing: even at high compression levels (which look terrible), HD-quality video files will be huge! I don't think you'll see a sudden surge in the number of HD movies on BitTorrent anytime soon, at least not until the average consumer has a T1 piped into his or her house.
