jmke

Some owners of HD television sets will not be able to see HD DVD and Blu-ray programming in its full glory, as the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) used by both next-gen formats has been modified to require picture degredation over analog connections. As a result, the signal sent through analog connections will be constrained to 960x540, rather than the 1920x1080 that both Blu-ray and HD DVD are capable of.

According to the consortium backing AACS, the change is necessary because of—you guessed it—piracy. The fear is that hordes of otherwise law-abiding citizens will take advange of analog video connections to record full-resolution copies of movies from HD DVD and Blu-ray discs and subsequently distribute them via peer-to-peer networks and other nefarious means. To keep that from happening, any video signal that doesn't travel over a protected input (such as HDMI) will be degraded.

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