Blu-Ray, HD-DVD discs and digital inputs

Blu-Ray, HD-DVD discs and digital inputs

Whether it is for computers or DVD players, to have a good digital image (HDMI, DVI) with HD media the entire line should be HDCP certified.

For the computer, this concerns the:

- graphic card: Officially, cards based on ATI and Nvidia chips have been capable of supporting HDCP protection for years…if the manufacturer adds the required component. This is something that they started doing very recently. If your card is more than 6 months old, it’s very much likely that it won’t be compatible. Today, this support is more and more widespread, but it’s now imperative you verify each time you buy a graphic card.

- the display : the monitor or LCD TV has to feature a DVI or HDMI input (CRT’s are all analog). We remind you that the presence of a DVI or HDMI input doesn’t automatically guarantee compatibility. Another thing to verify before purchase.

As soon as we made sure we had compatibility, tests quickly showed interesting results. Connection with digital input and a PS3, HD player and a non HDCP monitor whether in HDMI or DVI systematically resulted in a black screen. Only one LG 17” monitor indicated that the frequency wasn’t supported and it was completely lost.

With the computer, starting a movie with a non HDCP monitor in DVI or HDMI result in the following error window:


translation: impossible to activate HDCP. Please use an analog input (VGA, D-sub) and try again[…].
The other possible error is when the graphic card isn’t HDCP compatible. This time, the message is not as easy to understand. Cyberlink’s error analyzer says that the driver version isn’t the right one and we had installed the latest version available from Nvidia (Forceware 93.71). The confusion in our case came from the fact that the software detected the presence of the GeForce 6600, and only some of these cards are HDCP. Therefore, we had this inexplicit error message:


We faced two other interesting and slightly disappointing situations. The Panasonic player and PS3 console are also subject to HDCP protection when the signal is digital regardless of the media inserted. With games and movies (even DVDs) there is no understandable reason to protect these media with HDCP, but they also end up being affected. Protection starts from the beginning with the menus and no HDCP on the display, means no possible adjustment in HDMI/DVI.

Blu-Ray, HD-DVD discs and analog inputs

Blu-Ray, HD-DVD discs and analog inputs

It’s ironic that the activation of the HDCP protection norm makes the life of users equipped with non HD Ready displays much more difficult. However, you just have to connect your monitor in analog to watch your movie in HD and even full HD.


Not only is image displayed but there is no reduction of the format (ICT hasn’t been activated for this configuration), image degradation, change in afterglow, etc. There is a slight difference in image sharpness mostly visible on very big displays (see next page).

So, in principle, you only have to use the VGA or YUV input to watch full HD movies. In practice unfortunately, it is a bit more complicated.

Movies worked perfectly with a computer, Blu-Ray and HD DVD players and the Xbox 360. With the Panasonic player, however, we had a couple of failures. It’s supposedly intelligent and, in theory, automatically knows the maximum definition compatible with the display, upscaling DVD movies in 1080p if the resolution is compatible with the display. In practice, this isn’t the case. 1920 x 1200 monitors were recognized as being only 540p and the 1080p conversion of a DVD is degraded and very problematic (a green image with one of our monitors).

Why prefer digital to analog signals?

Why prefer digital to analog signals, and which quality?

This question really needs to be asked. As digital interfaces complicate the reading of videos and force you to entirely or partly replace your equipment, why connect peripherals with digital interfaces?

There are two reasons for this:

It’s practical: digital inputs are multiplying like rabbits in the back of our TVs. Some models now have three HDMI inputs and are very handy. Besides the problem of accessibility, conversions are not always well processed as we saw with the Panasonic Blu-Ray player, which provides much better results with the HDMI output.

Quality : In our monitor tests, we usually underline that we do not see the difference between the quality of a DVI and VGA interface. This is true, but these remarks are for 22” monitors and below. The bigger the display, the bigger the difference in quality. With a 40” full HD monitor, the sharpness between an image coming from the HDMI input and the same in YUV or RVB is much more obvious. Of course, this remark is also true for S-Video, RCA and composite inputs, which we strongly advise you not to use.

The difference is more obvious for games than movies. We recommend future owners of PS3 consoles to use the digital rather than the analog interface as details are better and more precise.

As for movies, our opinion is less extreme. The conversion is well done and there is no downscaling or color problem, but the encoding quality of movies was so bad that we couldn’t really see the difference with the digital interface. This was very disappointing for us with four recent blockbusters:>Fantastic 4, Zidane, Black Hawk Down and Constantine.

In detail, here is what we saw in movies:

Precision in definition: between DVDs and Blu-Ray / HD-DVD movies there have been some obvious improvements especially for big displays. With a 19” monitor, it isn’t obvious and with a 22” we give it the benefit of the doubt. With a 24” it shows, and it’s obvious for a 32”. You would have to be blind not to see it with the 40” monitor.

Colors : HD movies aren’t better than DVDs. The compression for colors is too strong and kills some shades. Obviously, if movie editors work with (we hope) 16 million colors spaces, images show much less. The end result isn’t as much a solarization effect (which sometimes happens) than a strong twinkling in color scales.

Conclusion

Conclusion

HDCP protection is active – and I personally regret quoting Microsoft’s announcement saying that encoding wouldn’t be active before 2010, maybe even 2012 or never. Nevertheless, I will give you the context. This statement was made by Microsoft France upon the release of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player. The information held by this team wasn’t up to date considering that HDCP protection only affects displays connected to this peripheral via USB and a computer. To see that it isn’t compatible, you “only” have to find a compatible software player (recently released) and launch a HD-DVD movie with a non HDCP monitor. The ensuing message can’t be clearer and it implies the direct absence HDCP compatibility.

The major market players all seem to have rejected the ICT rule of resolution reduction. This is good in a way, because we feared that HD movies could have been downscaled via analog inputs. This wasn’t the case and with all possible configurations we had the right resolution and full size, except in case of the Panasonic player.

There is no resolution reduction for non HDCP digital inputs. Instead of refusing to display full HD images with a lower resolution (we could have made do with 720p) we go directly to a black monitor. We feel really bad for those of you who bought really expensive 23” and 24” monitors more than a year ago and many of those who chose to spend a little bit more for DVI input. If you want to watch HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, switch between DVI and VGA inputs.

Finally, we have to announce the return of discs and players with regional restrictions. However, we were sure to have some problems with a Japanese PS3, several stand alone players, an American software PC player, and another European one.


To finish, this article will certainly have an influence our assessments of future monitors. We will no longer be able to recommend a monitor with a DVI or HDMI input that isn’t HDCP compatible.

We offer special thanks to Gamekult, Kevin, Clément and Boone in particular for the PlayStation 3 !