From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HIGH-DEF FORCED TO DOWN-CONVERT In deal reached by eight-company consortium By Paul Sweeting 1/23/2006
Some buyers of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc players might not get everything they bargained for. In a deal reached this week after tense negotiations, the eight-company consortium behind the Advanced Access Content System, created for use by both high-def formats to prevent unauthorized copying, has agreed to require hardware makers to bar some high-def signals from being sent from players to displays over analog connections, sources said. Instead, the affected analog signal must be "down-converted" from the full 1920x1080 lines of resolution the players are capable of outputting to 960x540 lines--a resolution closer to standard DVDs than to high-def. Standard DVDs are typically encoded at 720 horizontal by 480 vertical lines of resolution. The 960x540 standard stipulated in the AACS agreement represents 50% higher resolution than standard-def, but only one-quarter the resolution of full high-def. Whether a particular movie is down-converted will be up to the studio. The players will be required to recognize and respond to a digital flag, called an Image Constraint Token, inserted into the movie data. If the flag is set to "on," the player must down-convert the analog signal. If set to "off," the player can pass the full high-def signal over the analog connections. The studios are divided over whether to require such down-conversion and are likely to follow separate policies. Hardware makers had generally resisted the requirement, but under the new deal, ICT recognition will be included in the AACS license that all device makers and playback software vendors will have to sign. ... http://www.dvdexclusive.com/article.asp?articleID=2657 You are a subscribed member of the infowarrior list. Visit www.infowarrior.org for list information or to unsubscribe. This message may be redistributed freely in its entirety. Any and all copyrights appearing in list messages are maintained by their respective owners.
