[ModBreak] The contents of this site are somewhat outdated and it will no longer receive updates, but it was actual when it was written a year ago. The first HD-DVD and Blu-ray devices have now made it into some rich folks living rooms and there is little to be done about the DRM now but hack it. Though this site has not yielded any result, at least I know several thousand people a month have read it and may have become a little bit wiser or at least learned something new :)

I will continue using the DRMadness.com domain as a Dr. Madness blog (planned, anyways), but I will keep these pages on here for future reference. [/ModBreak]

Introduction

This section of the site will dig a little deeper into the technologies that will be used in your TV, monitor and HD-DVD / Blu-ray players. The sections are short but are meant to give you the basic idea behind the technologies.

HD - High Definition

In the context of HD-DVD, Blu-ray and HDTV (High Definition TeleVision) high definition means as much as getting a very high resolution image with high quality digital surround sound. The audio part is nothing new and is much the same as with the normal DVD (though sometimes extended to 8 channels instead of 6). The video part is where we see the huge improvement. Because we get high resolution (several times higher than DVD), the image is still very sharp even on those really big new TV's. The maximum resolution (1920x1080) is actually higher than even most of todays monitors can handle! The video component is mostly transmitted and stored in either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 AVC format while the audio mostly uses AC3, Dolby Digital and DTS. HD-DVD and Blu-ray can also use a Microsoft codec based on WMV. If you've never seen HD in action, I suggest you go to the nearest TV store. Chances are they'll have a really big HDTV on display showing some a very high quality promotional video. Watch and be blown away! - Related articles

DRM - Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management is a term used for any system that implements the protection of digital content. Even if you haven't heard the term before, you've probably heard about what it does. DRM is responsible for not being able to play a region 1 DVD in a region 2 player (assuming it isn't a region-free player), not being able to copy your downloaded (and payed for) music to your portable music player or burn them on CD (depending on the license), not being able to copy your DVD rentals, etc.

Ofcourse, a lot of people are quick to say that DRM is evil. DRM is not evil and can actually be a good thing. It allows publishers to keep control of their work and make sure they get the money they're entitled to, so they can keep creating new content. The problem is, a lot of the publishers are getting real greedy and place insane restrictions on the use of content you pay for. DRM isn't evil, a lot of the publishers are! - Related articles

HDMI - High Definition Multimedia Interface

HDMI cables are yet another type of cable. HDMI succeeds the DVI (Ditigal Visual Interface, successor of the D-SUB or 'vga' cable) which is mostly used on computers and will also replace the TV video connectors we now use like SCART, S-Video and the likes. The video data is carried in high-resolution uncompressed digital format with a pixel rate of up to 165 MHz (or 330 MHz for the next generation). Not only does it carry video, it carries up to 8 channels of up to 192 kHz digital audio as well. It also provides remote control facilities so a device can more or less control another device if they're connected through HDMI. This is the connector of the future. HDMI can also carry the HDCP signal, which is explained below. HDMI is also backwards compatible with DVI, so can you use DVI-to-HDMI (and HDMI-to-DVI) connectors for the video signal (only). - Related articles

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