Great news if true!

"...Hollywood studios, along with major consumer electronics makers, such as Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp., have agreed not to implement image quality downgrades on hardware that does not support HDCP copy-protection and HDMI output. "

"Behind the scenes it was agreed that till, at least, 2010, if not even till 2012, signals from Blu-ray or HD DVD players should be transferred to televisions or displays in full resolution, even if certain components do not support HDCP or HDMI, a report on Spiegel Online web-site claims."

Saw it at Xbit here:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multi [...] 35206.html

Its still bullshit that they're going to do it at all. Some people don't upgrade their TVs that often. My parents have a 57" Hitachi Widescreen HDTV that works flawlessy. They'll probably still have it in 2010 or 2012. I love it how manufacturers and greedy movie companies try to force us to upgrade.

DRM is pointless because:
1) It restricts what legit paying customers can do with what they buy and usually causes problems.
2) Its going to be broken anyway since people will get tired of being restricted to what they can do.

I like that you can buy TV shows on iTunes but if I can't play them back through anything but iTunes then they're worthless. Once they crack the DRM on iTunes video I'll probably start buying shows but not until then. I want to be able to store it on a NAS and play it back via my modded Xbox on TV.

Yeah I saw that too and thought F'in great! For a laptop this was a bit of a barrier since you want the single link TMDS for the LCD panel (as long as it's below 19x12), and then the dual TMDS for a DVI out, with hopefully a second VGA connector controlled by the RAMDAC associated (because they are never separate) with the int. panel. Having to have HDMI as an output would require you to force he dual link TMDS to the HDMI connector meaning a freakin' dongle for hooking up to a digital panel for display purposes.

Now just need the X1700 and the Merom to come out and then Samsung to put their dual BR/HD drive in laptops (Pioneer drive is $1000 for just BluRay [no CDR even , let alone DVD-RAM which I'd like to keep]).

I'm already building my HD-DVD collection (Serenity) and while they don't have the ability to play in HD right now, I still get a plain DVD version included, for $24CDN, works for me for now, whereas BluRay is JUST BR so no way to build up a viewable collection before the players are cheap and readily available.

My next two titles are The Unforgiven and Pitch Black (Riddick was 'ok' but not worth more money IMO [although the visuals were nice]), and GoodFellas whenever it finally releases (not in FutureShop.BestBuy or WalMart since launch [speaking of which where's the SpecEdition of Boondock Saints?!?]). I'm still waiting for FifthElement which is great on SuperBit, unfortunately like Underworld it's BluRay! Hate format wars, didn't they learn already from the -/+ era that people like choice!

You know when I first heard the list of titles I thought YEAH F'in right, Terminator! Except for I thought for a moment and poped in my original DVD, Terminator was 70s low-budget fuzzy washed out blue visuals, no point in getting it in HD. T2 and T3 maybe. Terminator it's the story that's great not the visuals, same with movies like Blazing Saddles.

I'll wait till HD-DVD wins the battle and then go out and get a player. Standard DVDs look fine on an HDTV. I'm not paying $30 for an HD-DVD version of movies I already have.

Yeah except that if I'm buying the DVD anyways and there's 2 versions $19.99 normal DVD and $25-30 HD-DVD, I'll just buy the HD-DVD because I don't like re-building my collection.

If the difference were the $15+ that Futureshop wants then maybe I'd buy twice, and for some titles I will wait for the price to come down.

But HDDVD won't 'win' unless you buy. Just like Beta you can have a better solution, but if no one buys it then it doesn't stick around.
Anywhoo, I don't think anyone will 'win' this war. Eventually they'll simply move to supporting both formats, just like Dolby vs DTS.

Then again, what is the gaming industry about?
GPUs, CPUs, RAM, MB-chipsets, etc.

so this means i can use my comp to play HD content after all. great new if it is true. not that i'll be getting a HD-DVD or Blu-ray player any time soon.

Isn't HDCP already broken?

Oh well, somehow someone had to make a plan to cover the false claims of certain gcards being hdcp ready....

Or that's the way my over worked mind sees in right now.