Difference between DVD and Blu-ray?

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by andy

One major difference with Bu-Ray is that is has much more strict copy protection than DVD. Forget about modifying your player to eliminate Macrovision. Even worse than that (for us) is that there is a plan to completely disable all analog video outputs (including composite, S-video, and component) by 2013. This will obviously make it completely impossible to use Blu-Ray with our vintage TVs, or even older HDTVs without breaking the law.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06...ood-drives-us-

Would standard DVD players, which of course are digital by design, connected to ordinary analog TVs via RF modulators be affected as well by this law, or would they be exempt from it?

Seems to me as if the government is trying to stamp out analog television every way they can think of, first by requiring cable operators to move analog cable channels (including broadcast channels) to digital tiers, and now this. I hate to think what may be next; probably outlawing the use of analog TVs by 2013 or some other arbitrarily selected date. This would force everyone in the US to buy a flat-panel if they wanted to continue watching television, and frankly, I don't think many folks would stand for that. There are too many perfectly good analog televisions (millions) still in use in the US; any law banning them probably wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in August of being passed. There is already a ban on the sale within the US of new-in-box analog televisions with NTSC tuners, so any law aimed at banning the use of existing sets would make little or no sense.

I spoke with a Time Warner Cable CSR (customer service representative) over the phone recently and was told that they are already transmitting all their services (including broadcast channels) over the cable digitally. (I believe it; the picture quality is, IMHO, incredible, even clearer than I can ever remember when the cable service was strictly analog, and I've had cable service from TW and its predecessors since 1982.)

Moreover, Time-Warner Cable is prepared to (and does) accomodate their subscribers with analog TVs by converting by whatever means, when necessary, the digital ATSC signals from the headend to NTSC analog. I have basic (what I call "bare-bones basic") cable service from TW, which connects more or less directly to my TV (no converter box is used or required with this level of service; channels may be selected directly at the television, using its own remote) and carries only the local Cleveland/Akron/Canton area TV stations, plus one C-SPAN channel and WGN America. For all other types of alternate programming (except for CNN and Fox News Channel, not to mention ESPN, which obviously are not carried on basic service and which I do not care for anyway), I use my VCR and DVD player. The beauty of watching VHS tapes and DVDs is that the viewer can pick and choose at any time what he or she wishes to watch (by renting or purchasing DVDs), as opposed to broadcast and cable; the programming over the latter is always at the discretion of the networks. If you like what a given cable or broadcast network shows, that's great, but if you don't, you have absolutely no recourse but to change channels or turn off the set.