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Toshiba’s HD-DVD players will do high-def only via HDMI

Just two years ago, DVI was being touted as the next big connector step-up from component as a pure digital pathway, but they found it could be broken far too easily. Size considered, a lot of people did upgrade to what they thought was the next generation of future-proof TV sets, myself included. The shift to HDMI has only really been going within the last eighteen months or so and a relatively small portion of HDTV sets sold in the last six years or so have them. The belief is that this is a pressured move by the Hollywood studios to curb piracy and that the CE manufacturers aren't exactly all for this since they could easily be labeled as anti-consumer for selling what they have for the past couple of years. In essence though, it's my belief that Toshiba by doing this has severely crippled their hardware and probably hope that it will lead to new sales of high definition TV's. I've not been a fan of HD-DVD for some time based on a number of things but this is one more nail in the coffin. What will be interesting to see is whether the Blu-Ray camp follows suit or whether this is something that's Toshiba only and other HD-DVD CE manufacturers will avoid doing. Regardless, if the format takes off on any level, except cheap knock-off Chinese HD-DVD players in a year or two that will bypass this "feature".