The So-Called Next Gen DVD Copy-Protection Debacle

Link - Gear.IGN

Quote: "In perhaps the greatest disservice to the general consumer market yet perpetrated by players in the electronic entertainment industry, it has been revealed that next-generation DVD technologies (HD-DVD and Blu-ray) will only function with monitors and HDTVs with HDMI or DVI connections."

It basically means that the industry wants to enforce HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection). I believe it's a bit difficult to do that, since there are a lot of early adopters of the HDTV format that only have component (an analog format) inputs. In addition, those TVs that have DVI mostly are not HDCP compatible. Is the industry going to alienate millions of users just to enforce HDCP? I think not.

So what does that mean for the next-gen consoles? For Xbox 360, it means nothing. For the upcoming Playstation 3 (now rumored to be delayed until '07), Sony cannot afford to alienate the vast majority of its PS2 userbase. Sony can't implement HDCP on their games. As for DVD content - they can, but they won't since they are trying to push Blu-Ray.