HD DVD Format News (May 27, 2006)

Next up, HD DVD format news...

Microsoft's renewed commitment to HD DVD

As reported earlier about Microsoft's renewed commitment to HD DVD format at WinHEC 2006 with native HD DVD support being built into the upcoming Windows Vista operating system, here is an article with a glimpse what that native HD DVD support meant.

Region Codes on HD DVD soon?

DVD Forum's 34th Steering Committee Meeting on May 24, 2006 has a few decisions made that maybe of interest to consumers. With those approvals for the HD DVD-R/RW (DL), it is likely we will be seeing HD DVD recorders available pretty soon... Another thing, "HD DVD RPC Ad hoc group to work with appropriate WGs to develop a specification and enforcement plan for RPC on HD DVD-Video including region map and requirements in consultation with the studios" is also approved. This means that Regional Playback Control (RPC), used in the DVDs, will be applicable to HD DVDs too. But this may be pretty much up to the studios to enforce them although the HD DVD players/drives will support RPC soon.

Full summary of the meeting here.

AACS LA Adopts Macrovision's Analog Content Protection (ACP)

Macrovision Corporation announced that its analog content protection technology (ACP) has been included as a requirement in the specification for the content protection technology for next-generation optical media content such as Blu-ray and HD DVD by the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator (AACS LA).

Image Constraint Token (ICT) flag is still not enabled on HD DVD titles and no image constraint over analog outputs? Could it be due to Macrovision's ACP? Possibly...