IP: HDTV white elephants

[David Farber <dfarber () earthlink net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: "Gregory Soo" <grsoo () hotmail com>
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 12:08:19 
To: "David Farber" <dave () farber net>, "Edmund Meitner" <ed () meitner com>,
   "Paul Marriott PhD" <apm () technologist com>
Subject: HDTV white elephants

--------------------------------------------------
John Dvorak (April 2 2002):
http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1493&a=24658,00.asp

...It appears that the new copy-protection schemes being dreamed up by
Hollywood will make every single HDTV set sold to date obsolete. And buyers
of new sets are not being told about this situation in a dubious attempt to
dump very expensive inventory. I'm sure those of you who spent $5,000 to
$10,000 for what may become an albatross are going to love reading this.

What happened was that the Hollywood folks, who are just freaked over the
possibility that we'll be copying HDTV movies, have promoted copy protection
that requires the decode circuit to be built into the display, not into the
set-top box. This requires the set-top box to send a signal to a connector
that new HDTV sets will have. If you're thinking of buying an HDTV, don't,
unless it has this connector and circuit-whenever they are finalized. I
suspect that this copy protection mechanism will be used for certain
broadcasts, too, since there has been a lot of talk about copy-protecting
DSS and other transmissions.

The concept is that when copy protection is put within the circuitry of the
display, you can't decode something with a set-top box and then grab the
signal as it comes out of the box and before it gets to the screen.

Meanwhile, the HDTV-promoting Consumer Electronics Association is going to
eat crow if all the current HDTV sets turn out to be white elephants. I see
no evidence that this mess will be resolved without a lot of burned
consumers. All the Hollywood studios are belatedly demanding the new system.
I suppose an expensive retrofit could be developed, but it probably won't
be...
--------------------------------------------------

For archives see:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/