check out this article.... http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6464036.html?tag=blog . Looks like owners of old HDTVs are in the clear for now.

Not entirely in the clear - the article mentions the Warner Brothers "will be an enthusiastic proponent of image constraint", which sounds to me like any Blu-ray discs you get from Warner (like Batman Begins or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) will be limited to 540 (although I forget if it's 540p or 540i). It also mentions that the studios that were in both camps haven't quite committed either way.

Still, that this is in the hands of the movie studios rather than some HDMI comittee is a positive sign. I was under the impression that all bluray players would have this limitation forced upon them.

Both formats are using AACS, and the final decision from AACS was to make the image constraint flag optional, leaving it at the discretion of the studio for each disc produced. I'm not sure how much better off we are with the studios deciding - it's better than a mandatory restriction, but it was the studios that wanted to "plug the analog hole" in the first place. If they start to see disc sales picking up beyond early adopters (and into a market segment that may not even be aware of the flag), they could start flipping that bit to "on" for new releases.

Having the studios "choose" is the same as no choice. They will all choose to downsample. Thinking otherwise is an exercise in self delusion. They are absolutely paranoid about casual copying in high def. These restrictions won't hurt the big pirates in the slightest, but will inconvenience regular consumers who are expected to lap this stuff up.

Actually Ritz, Sony actually announced that their initial offerings from Sony Pictures on BD disks would not do downconverting.

So for at least the near term those with older equipment can get full HD quality from BD with Sony Pictures discs.

Of course they could easily change their minds on that...

I saw the Sony announcement. It was made for only one reason...to sway public opinion in their favour from the competing HD DVD format. The instant they think that is no longer a problem, you can bet your bottom dollar that will change. I'm in the music and video production business and have a LOT of dealings with Sony BMG. This announcement was purely a temporary measure. I suspect it will be a non-event since they'll likely change their minds before any content is actually made available to the public.

cheers,

Remember that Sony is a monster of a company, and they sell gobs of hardware as well. It's entirely likely that their promise of not engaging the downconversion flag on Sony titles could be rescinded at any time to "combat piracy" - in other words, if they think that by doing so they could sell more SXRD TVs. And the result would be the same - those with older TVs would be back to square one.

They might wait a bit to ensure market penetration and be sure that people are locked in to their product, but there's no doubt they'll do it. And with the age of Digital-only TV only 3 years away, they probably wouldn't feel overly obligated to justify the decision.

Remember, Sony is the compay that installed malware into millions of computers which compromised their security, including some computers in sensitive locations. When found out they were never really punished.

I'll try to buy non-Sony whenever possible in the future, which is essentially a reversal of my prior practice.

Yeah, I felt the same way Charlie, but decided to cave. I looked at the available 1080 HDTV big screens and nothing beats the Sony SXRD units right now.

In terms of absolute picture quality, they will have the top spot in the market for 50" and 60" units probably until SED displays come out.

It was either that or DLP and DLP is just a kludgy design in it's current form and is not true 1080.