Theatertek ed il supporto all'HD: ecco come stanno le cose
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Originariamente scritto da Theatertek
I've been reading all the recent post regarding HD support and decided I would put a little more perspective on this. Let's look back to DVD support as a history lesson first:
The copy protection added to DVD's was essentially CSS and restricted use was handled through Region Codes. It was a relatively simple format, MPEG-2, with audio streams that could handle up to DTS-ES. The licensing restrictions that went around this were a requirement to have CSS license, ($expensive), plus the Dolby and MPEG licenses. There were no major further restrictions on decoders other than protecting the CSS key exchange. This allowed a large selection of legal MPEG-2 decoders to appear on the market. When we (TheaterTek) entered the market over 5 years ago now, DVD on a PC was taking off as the CPU power to handle MPEG-2 decoding and the upscaling ability of graphics cards provided an advantage over stand-alone players. The age of the HTPC was born and the rest is history.
Now forward the clock to today with the emergence of originally two new HD standards, now becoming one (thankfully). Studios have learned from their copy protection attempts on DVD (CSS) and now have a much more severe level of protection. This requires a completely secure data path from the disk to the display device. DirectShow (on which TT is based) doesn't cut it, and Windows Media Foundation is the only MS tech with an SDK that supports secure paths... but only on Vista. So how do other players offer XP solutions? Well, they essentially create their own secure path, outside of and specific MS technology and have done so to various success (when you look back to early faux-pas that allowed key exchanges to be decrypted).
We also introduce a whole new level of licensing commitments and financial and legal obligations to be a 'player' in this space. IVI, Cyberlink and now Arcsoft are all companies with significant R&D budgets that can take on the financial and legal burdens. Yet the forums are full of people complaining that each of these solutions has issues. Solutions from multi-million dollar companies...
So where does that leave TT in this space? As I said last year, we would keep monitoring this space, look for opportunities, but under the proviso that we're not a codec developing company (look how difficult it has been for the big guys), we would need licensing opportunities as we have done in the past, (Ravisent/Sonic, nVidia).
The incredibly tight controls on secure data path and the licensing fees/restrictions around this today make such a licensing opportunity very difficult. That is not to say it won't change in the future, but right now, as we are just beginning to standardize on one format, the cpu and graphic power to even decode these formats is just trickling down to the mainstream market, it is not likely.
The offers to help fund this are are appreciated, but in real terms we're not talking about a few hundred customers deciding to chip in $100.
I will keep everyone updated over time, and I still believe TT is the best SD player out there, but a legal commercial offering for BluRay is not just around the corner.
Andrew
