Is "standard resolution" good enough for your HDTV? (1 Viewer)

[Thomas Newton]

You know how some people were saying a while back that the manufacturers might set up HDTV receivers so that they would not pass a HDTV-quality signal to HDTVs with analog inputs? Thus depriving the owners of the TVs of the benefits of their investment?
I saw a box that was crippled in this, or similar fashion, in a store the other day. It was a Sony satellite TV and HDTV receiver. Right on the front, there was a little sticker saying that you could view "copyright-protected" programs in "standard resolution."
Copyright law does not require the deliberate degradation of signals, whether in the name of copyright protection or not. And practically all TV programming is copyrighted -- including the programming that won't trip the circuit. So the "copyright-protected" wording is just a Mom and apple pie type euphemism, presumably for getting people to accept the "necessity" of this unnecessary and intentional defect.
As much as I might like to have a HDTV or progressive-scan TV for DVD viewing, this makes me glad that I still own an analog TV.

 

[Allan Jayne]

No.
Without high definition shows to watch, HDTV will never catch on. True, some people want just progressive scan and currently most HDTV sets do 480p, but there are many people sitting back and waiting until the HDTV programming standards are crystallized.
Incidentally it is possible to deliver a 1080i formatted signal that really has no more resolution than standard, there is a rumor that some stations may water down the video signal thusly so they could cram cellular phone calls or other stuff in the broadcast channel.
Other video hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm
[Edited last by Allan Jayne on August 31, 2001 at 08:58 PM]