Do I really need to give a crap about HDMI?

[archcommus]

I use my computer for everything - movies, games, you name it - and don't use any sort of set-top player or regular TV. For my computer I have a 19" LCD that I intend to keep for the next three years at the very least. Considering the resolution for this screen is 1280x1024, wouldn't an HD movie or game look pretty much just the same as a DVD-quality movie or non-HD game? So, given my screen size, do I really have any reason to give a crap about HDMI at all? Even if I buy an HD movie and I can only play it back at DVD quality, I don't think I'd notice or care much.

 

[Golgatha]

HDMI, no. HDCP, yes....maybe.

You'll only care about HDCP if you plan to start buying all your movies in this format because it is higher quality and you want to start/expand your movie collection. The reason you might care about HDCP is because Holywood will someday release the wrath of the ICT, which will either downsample your video or not let it play at all over a non-secured (read: DRMed to hell and back) video pathway.

For me, upsampled DVD will work just fine for some time to come, and the price of entry to the glorious world of 1080i just doesn't give me enough benefit yet over the status quo for my money. Also worth mentioning is that staying away from Beta-Ray or M$-DVD will give you the peace of mind that the format you're investing in won't someday go the way of Beta-Max.

I might buy a next-gen player if video rental stores start carrying the next-gen content for the same rental price as DVD. I'm not investing in any permanent copies for myself until a standard is decided on and the DRM is cracked (or fair use allowed...yeah, I see that one happening :roll: ).

 

[gobucks]

well to me it doesnt seem like it'll matter very much for the next few years, since blu-ray and HD-DVD are both being constantly pushed back, and I think it'll take a while for the consumers to settle on a preferred format. By the time there is an established HD format, any computer stuff you buy now will probably need upgrading, at least the video card anyways, so just buy an HDMI/HDCP capable card within the next few years and you'll be fine. Also, I'm confident that by then, there will be a crack to prevent downscaling on non-HDCP monitors (or else there will be a whole lot of pissed off consumers who all have perfectly fine LCDs that are being unfairly obsoleted). So far I can't think of any type of copy protection or DRM that has been uncrackable, so this doesnt seem like it'll be any different.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
HDMI, no. HDCP, yes....maybe.

You'll only care about HDCP if you plan to start buying all your movies in this format because it is higher quality and you want to start/expand your movie collection. The reason you might care about HDCP is because Holywood will someday release the wrath of the ICT, which will either downsample your video or not let it play at all over a non-secured (read: DRMed to hell and back) video pathway.

For me, upsampled DVD will work just fine for some time to come, and the price of entry to the glorious world of 1080i just doesn't give me enough benefit yet over the status quo for my money. Also worth mentioning is that staying away from Beta-Ray or M$-DVD will give you the peace of mind that the format you're investing in won't someday go the way of Beta-Max.

I might buy a next-gen player if video rental stores start carrying the next-gen content for the same rental price as DVD. I'm not investing in any permanent copies for myself until a standard is decided on and the DRM is cracked (or fair use allowed...yeah, I see that one happening :roll: ).

Actually My dad being one of those Video and Sound techno geeks, along with electrical engineer, skilled mechanic, and partial computer geek. Now after sitting years under buying crap because his kids where going to school, has now decided to treat himself to a quality entertainment setup. He purchased a 62" Mitsubishi DLP, Way overpriced Denon audio reviever, and all the while me being so anti Blu-Ray, suggested instead of spending money on a $600+ DVD player that upconverts, suggested a HD-DVD player.

We tried 3 different Upconverting DVD players before finally came to that choice. Apparently no-one seemed to get HDMI right for standard DVD players, either the Audio didn't work or the Video did not. To get one that had more then 50% chance of working correctly he was looking at Elite players that were priced anywhere from $600-$1500. Sadly for Upconverting, if your using a HDMI-DVI converter it worked fine I guess (no experience here) but strait HDMI with digital Audio never worked. So I digress, Instead of him purchasing an expensive player I talked him into buying a HD-DVD player (the $500 one I think it is the A1) under the theory that It will do what he needs it to (I mean the big thing behind HD-DVD and BR is HDMI) and he gets the bonus of playing HD movies. Of course like many he didn't want it to be an early adopter or have a paper wieght. Till I explained your already spending that money so are you really out of pocket if the tech goes belly up. That was the key for him. That money was going to be used anyways so a more feature rich player was going to be desired.

So cost wise it isn't going to be better, and while he could have gotten a normal DVD player, upconverting with his TV required HDMI and, HDMI wasn't cutting it, and while I can't for the life of me understand why he would buy a reciever that expensive ($1500) it was the only unit without spending more the gave him HDMI compatiblity and the amount of Component video and Optical hookups he needed. So it isn't always a status Quo thing.

But the biggest issue is the upconverting anyways. I purchased a movie (Last Samuri) on HD, they own the DVD. While sadly the source wasn't cleaned for anything as the picture is full of grain. The HD version is so much brighter and the blacks are really darker, but the big thing is the "blocking" or so that happens on comcast or Satalite when the digital picture is uncompressed. Its more apparent during a frenzy on the screen but will happen at any time, It did it on the two DVD plaer upconverting and did so on the HD player. It doesn't do it on the HD movie. If you want an Idea of what I am talking about take a downloaded movie and try to full screen it. This is basically wha it is doing anyways.

For me I would almost rather watch a movie at 480P then Up convert and the glorious picture of an HD movie is a site to behold. That said, their isn't a good reason to go HD if you don't need to and its not cost effective for you but if you have the money to do it then you really should. Of course I am going to through my BR is devil, long live HD-DVD remark, but even if you have to go the evil route in the future, its almost worth giving up our rights as consumers to get this picture quality.

As for the OP, its always bettery on picture quality to convert it down then to convert it up.

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: Topweasel

Originally posted by: Golgatha
HDMI, no. HDCP, yes....maybe.

You'll only care about HDCP if you plan to start buying all your movies in this format because it is higher quality and you want to start/expand your movie collection. The reason you might care about HDCP is because Holywood will someday release the wrath of the ICT, which will either downsample your video or not let it play at all over a non-secured (read: DRMed to hell and back) video pathway.

For me, upsampled DVD will work just fine for some time to come, and the price of entry to the glorious world of 1080i just doesn't give me enough benefit yet over the status quo for my money. Also worth mentioning is that staying away from Beta-Ray or M$-DVD will give you the peace of mind that the format you're investing in won't someday go the way of Beta-Max.

I might buy a next-gen player if video rental stores start carrying the next-gen content for the same rental price as DVD. I'm not investing in any permanent copies for myself until a standard is decided on and the DRM is cracked (or fair use allowed...yeah, I see that one happening :roll: ).

Actually My dad being one of those Video and Sound techno geeks, along with electrical engineer, skilled mechanic, and partial computer geek. Now after sitting years under buying crap because his kids where going to school, has now decided to treat himself to a quality entertainment setup. He purchased a 62" Mitsubishi DLP, Way overpriced Denon audio reviever, and all the while me being so anti Blu-Ray, suggested instead of spending money on a $600+ DVD player that upconverts, suggested a HD-DVD player.

We tried 3 different Upconverting DVD players before finally came to that choice. Apparently no-one seemed to get HDMI right for standard DVD players, either the Audio didn't work or the Video did not. To get one that had more then 50% chance of working correctly he was looking at Elite players that were priced anywhere from $600-$1500. Sadly for Upconverting, if your using a HDMI-DVI converter it worked fine I guess (no experience here) but strait HDMI with digital Audio never worked. So I digress, Instead of him purchasing an expensive player I talked him into buying a HD-DVD player (the $500 one I think it is the A1) under the theory that It will do what he needs it to (I mean the big thing behind HD-DVD and BR is HDMI) and he gets the bonus of playing HD movies. Of course like many he didn't want it to be an early adopter or have a paper wieght. Till I explained your already spending that money so are you really out of pocket if the tech goes belly up. That was the key for him. That money was going to be used anyways so a more feature rich player was going to be desired.

So cost wise it isn't going to be better, and while he could have gotten a normal DVD player, upconverting with his TV required HDMI and, HDMI wasn't cutting it, and while I can't for the life of me understand why he would buy a reciever that expensive ($1500) it was the only unit without spending more the gave him HDMI compatiblity and the amount of Component video and Optical hookups he needed. So it isn't always a status Quo thing.

But the biggest issue is the upconverting anyways. I purchased a movie (Last Samuri) on HD, they own the DVD. While sadly the source wasn't cleaned for anything as the picture is full of grain. The HD version is so much brighter and the blacks are really darker, but the big thing is the "blocking" or so that happens on comcast or Satalite when the digital picture is uncompressed. Its more apparent during a frenzy on the screen but will happen at any time, It did it on the two DVD plaer upconverting and did so on the HD player. It doesn't do it on the HD movie. If you want an Idea of what I am talking about take a downloaded movie and try to full screen it. This is basically wha it is doing anyways.

For me I would almost rather watch a movie at 480P then Up convert and the glorious picture of an HD movie is a site to behold. That said, their isn't a good reason to go HD if you don't need to and its not cost effective for you but if you have the money to do it then you really should. Of course I am going to through my BR is devil, long live HD-DVD remark, but even if you have to go the evil route in the future, its almost worth giving up our rights as consumers to get this picture quality.

As for the OP, its always bettery on picture quality to convert it down then to convert it up.

I don't think my question's really about upconverting, it's just asking if HD quality (say 720p) over DVD quality on my 1280x1024 monitor would really make a difference, and I'm thinking no. HD is really only beneficial to those with large displays.

 

[themisfit610]

Yes it will look a lot better.

Your monitor is running in a 720p native resolution. 720p is 1280x720 and you are running 1280x1024. Therefore, the video can be displayed full screen with no resizer allowed to touch it. This is a very good thing.

Anyway, DVDs are 720x480 here in NTSC land. Either your video card or your CPU is upscaling that to fit in a 1280x1024 window, usually with a relatively blurry bilinear algorithm. This can be helped a lot by using a decoder like ffdshow that supports sharper algorithms like lanczos and bicubic. God forbid you run your monitor at anything other than its native resolution!

You do not really need a large display to fully appreciate HD. I have a gorgeous 21" Trinitron CRT, and run 1080p at 72hz (3x24fps). The difference in picture quality is absolutely astonishing. 720p is nearly as impressive, and certainly light years better than most DVDs. Your display is very close in overall viewable size, so I think you would like it

Of course, I'm kind of a videophile, so I really appreciate any bit of quality. Not everyone is as impressed with it as I am, it's kind of up to you. Some people are totally fine with the quality of (for example) a 500kbps Windows Media 9 video... to me it is utterly unacceptable.

Good luck
~MiSfit

 

[archcommus]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Yes it will look a lot better.

Your monitor is running in a 720p native resolution. 720p is 1280x720 and you are running 1280x1024. Therefore, the video can be displayed full screen with no resizer allowed to touch it. This is a very good thing.

Anyway, DVDs are 720x480 here in NTSC land. Either your video card or your CPU is upscaling that to fit in a 1280x1024 window, usually with a relatively blurry bilinear algorithm. This can be helped a lot by using a decoder like ffdshow that supports sharper algorithms like lanczos and bicubic. God forbid you run your monitor at anything other than its native resolution!

You do not really need a large display to fully appreciate HD. I have a gorgeous 21" Trinitron CRT, and run 1080p at 72hz (3x24fps). The difference in picture quality is absolutely astonishing. 720p is nearly as impressive, and certainly light years better than most DVDs. Your display is very close in overall viewable size, so I think you would like it

Of course, I'm kind of a videophile, so I really appreciate any bit of quality. Not everyone is as impressed with it as I am, it's kind of up to you. Some people are totally fine with the quality of (for example) a 500kbps Windows Media 9 video... to me it is utterly unacceptable.

Good luck
~MiSfit

So 720p would look pretty decent, but I don't think 1080i would look any better, as my display is physically incapable of playing it properly (not enough vertical pixels). Either way, I guess it would be a shame to HAVE to play back HD movies at 480p on my display, but I certainly can't imagine buying a new one just to be able to get that increase in picture quality.

And how does forcing you to use a compliant device help the studios and developers, exactly? I don't see how that prevents piracy or anything else.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: archcommus

Originally posted by: Topweasel

Originally posted by: Golgatha
HDMI, no. HDCP, yes....maybe.

You'll only care about HDCP if you plan to start buying all your movies in this format because it is higher quality and you want to start/expand your movie collection. The reason you might care about HDCP is because Holywood will someday release the wrath of the ICT, which will either downsample your video or not let it play at all over a non-secured (read: DRMed to hell and back) video pathway.

For me, upsampled DVD will work just fine for some time to come, and the price of entry to the glorious world of 1080i just doesn't give me enough benefit yet over the status quo for my money. Also worth mentioning is that staying away from Beta-Ray or M$-DVD will give you the peace of mind that the format you're investing in won't someday go the way of Beta-Max.

I might buy a next-gen player if video rental stores start carrying the next-gen content for the same rental price as DVD. I'm not investing in any permanent copies for myself until a standard is decided on and the DRM is cracked (or fair use allowed...yeah, I see that one happening :roll: ).

Actually My dad being one of those Video and Sound techno geeks, along with electrical engineer, skilled mechanic, and partial computer geek. Now after sitting years under buying crap because his kids where going to school, has now decided to treat himself to a quality entertainment setup. He purchased a 62" Mitsubishi DLP, Way overpriced Denon audio reviever, and all the while me being so anti Blu-Ray, suggested instead of spending money on a $600+ DVD player that upconverts, suggested a HD-DVD player.

We tried 3 different Upconverting DVD players before finally came to that choice. Apparently no-one seemed to get HDMI right for standard DVD players, either the Audio didn't work or the Video did not. To get one that had more then 50% chance of working correctly he was looking at Elite players that were priced anywhere from $600-$1500. Sadly for Upconverting, if your using a HDMI-DVI converter it worked fine I guess (no experience here) but strait HDMI with digital Audio never worked. So I digress, Instead of him purchasing an expensive player I talked him into buying a HD-DVD player (the $500 one I think it is the A1) under the theory that It will do what he needs it to (I mean the big thing behind HD-DVD and BR is HDMI) and he gets the bonus of playing HD movies. Of course like many he didn't want it to be an early adopter or have a paper wieght. Till I explained your already spending that money so are you really out of pocket if the tech goes belly up. That was the key for him. That money was going to be used anyways so a more feature rich player was going to be desired.

So cost wise it isn't going to be better, and while he could have gotten a normal DVD player, upconverting with his TV required HDMI and, HDMI wasn't cutting it, and while I can't for the life of me understand why he would buy a reciever that expensive ($1500) it was the only unit without spending more the gave him HDMI compatiblity and the amount of Component video and Optical hookups he needed. So it isn't always a status Quo thing.

But the biggest issue is the upconverting anyways. I purchased a movie (Last Samuri) on HD, they own the DVD. While sadly the source wasn't cleaned for anything as the picture is full of grain. The HD version is so much brighter and the blacks are really darker, but the big thing is the "blocking" or so that happens on comcast or Satalite when the digital picture is uncompressed. Its more apparent during a frenzy on the screen but will happen at any time, It did it on the two DVD plaer upconverting and did so on the HD player. It doesn't do it on the HD movie. If you want an Idea of what I am talking about take a downloaded movie and try to full screen it. This is basically wha it is doing anyways.

For me I would almost rather watch a movie at 480P then Up convert and the glorious picture of an HD movie is a site to behold. That said, their isn't a good reason to go HD if you don't need to and its not cost effective for you but if you have the money to do it then you really should. Of course I am going to through my BR is devil, long live HD-DVD remark, but even if you have to go the evil route in the future, its almost worth giving up our rights as consumers to get this picture quality.

As for the OP, its always bettery on picture quality to convert it down then to convert it up.

I don't think my question's really about upconverting, it's just asking if HD quality (say 720p) over DVD quality on my 1280x1024 monitor would really make a difference, and I'm thinking no. HD is really only beneficial to those with large displays.

That what I am getting At your monitor is doing a basic upconvert if its not an HD feed. So yes there will be a much better difference running a t 720P 1080I or 1080P because you will be shrinking a picture which will look a lot better then 480P running at over twice the resolution.

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: archcommus
I use my computer for everything - movies, games, you name it - and don't use any sort of set-top player or regular TV. For my computer I have a 19" LCD that I intend to keep for the next three years at the very least. Considering the resolution for this screen is 1280x1024, wouldn't an HD movie or game look pretty much just the same as a DVD-quality movie or non-HD game? So, given my screen size, do I really have any reason to give a crap about HDMI at all? Even if I buy an HD movie and I can only play it back at DVD quality, I don't think I'd notice or care much.

ICT doesn't scale to DVD res, but to 960x540. So while the difference between 720P and DVD would probably be pretty obvious ( depending on how you scale it to fit your monitor and how far away from it you watch things ), I suspect seeing ICT crippled vs non-ICT 720P would be iffier.

720P is really the only one that matters as, unless you are one of those people who don't care about correct aspect ratios and stretch the image to fill the screen, 1080i and 1080p will both end up at 720P on your monitor anyway.

I certainly wouldn't ditch a current monitor in favor of one with HDCP simply because at some point in the future you might buy a HD/BD player and you might buy a movie that has ICT turned on and you might be able to tell the difference. I'd worry about that when you got to it.