One of the biggest selling points for me GONE... HDMI out

[Martin030908]

Thanks Mojo

 

[wuyanks]

This is the same policy that the HTC Evo 4G abides by. not sure if it has been hacked yet.

 

[Mojo]

Just incase some of you have no idea what I am talking about... someone will need to make a app that does this. Only utilizing the HDMI out, rather than using composit video cables

[video=youtube;eJyt463AoOA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJyt463AoOA"]YouTube - TV Output on DROID Incredible by HTC[/video]

 

[Johnly]

interesting....though from the last few posts, seems like no biggy

 

[Jaxidian]

Just incase some of you have no idea what I am talking about... someone will need to make a app that does this. Only utilizing the HDMI out, rather than using composit video cables

That assumes no HDCP is being used. If so, then this may be more difficult on the stock ROM. Perhaps on custom ROMs it would begin to become trivial, but that whole signed bootloader is a big hurdle for that!

 

[Mojo]

Just incase some of you have no idea what I am talking about... someone will need to make a app that does this. Only utilizing the HDMI out, rather than using composit video cables

That assumes no HDCP is being used. If so, then this may be more difficult on the stock ROM. Perhaps on custom ROMs it would begin to become trivial, but that whole signed bootloader is a big hurdle for that!

What would HDCP have to do with it? Not being smart.. wanting to learn. In my thinking if the app is just replacating what is on your screen, to me it would seem that big of a deal to make. But I'm no programer either lol. Now I dont think a method like this is going to yeild the highest quility in video, but I think it can be done. I am not too worried. I think the phone will be rooted in 90 days anyways

 

[Jaxidian]

What would HDCP have to do with it? Not being smart.. wanting to learn. In my thinking if the app is just replacating what is on your screen, to me it would seem that big of a deal to make. But I'm no programer either lol. Now I dont think a method like this is going to yeild the highest quility in video, but I think it can be done. I am not too worried. I think the phone will be rooted in 90 days anyways

I'll make a very lame attempt at bastardizing how HDCP works to at least try and get the general idea quickly explained. Others can come correct me where I'm wrong or missing things, but hopefully this will help you get the jist of things...

First, read a bit of this.

So HDCP-compliant things can be either software or hardware. Either way, it's supposedly unhackable. While NOTHING is unhackable, think of this being about as unhackable as AES256-based encryption (i.e. it realistically ain't gonna happen), UNLESS they screw something up royally (and it has happened, but usually HDCP tends to be fairly trusted as being "secure").

So how this COULD apply to the phone (I have NO idea if there is ANY HDCP compliance in it at all!) is that HDCP-protected content that you download could be read by HDCP-compliant software that works with HDCP-compliant chips in the phone that work with an HDCP-compliant display. If this is the case, then you could download HDCP-protected and display it on screen. However, rooting your phone (or custom ROMs) doesn't give you access to the content because your software couldn't decrypt the downloaded content. Also, because your software breaks the chain of HDCP-compliant things, the other HDCP-compliant things won't work with your software in the context of HDCP (but will for non-protected use).

Now consider your HDMI port. HDMI ports are potentially HDCP-compliant, but only if all of the hardware associated with them are also HDCP-compliant. IF any of that hardware is not HDCP-compliant, then your HDMI port instantly becomes useless for HDCP-protected content. As such, you could never display HDCP-protected content onto a TV from your Droid X, if this were the case.



Now keep in mind, I don't think anybody knows if there's any HDCP compliance to this phone at all. But I'm just saying, if we say "it can be done with anything if we root it", that we are STILL making assumptions, and one such assumption is that HDCP-protected content is not something we're trying to work with.

 

[Mojo]

Okay makes since. Thank you for taking the time to educate me on the subject

 

[Jaxidian]

My pleasure

 

[RolandDeschain]

How big a SD card has this thing got again? Reason I ask is I have two TiVo's at home and a one hour high definition show usually 5-7 gb long. So a movie would run probably at least 15 gb in 720p HD.

If you got the space I guess it won't be a problem, but if anyone is seriously thinking that you can stream one of these movies in from Netflix or Amazon, I think you better think again. You probably will have to download the movie and then play it. That's with a work around.

And if you're going to end up using a computer anyway why not just download the darn thing right into the computer and not bother with the Droid?

Ripping a Standard DVD is between 5GB-7GB, Blu-Ray is between 50GB-70GB.

And when you compress it to H.264 it becomes 600mb - 700mb for a DVD and if you down convert a blu-ray to 720p you can get it to 3.7gb - 4.3gb.

That being said, i would put $5 on the reason for this is because the droid x (probably) won't do hdcp.

You don't get how re-encoding video works...I could make a video 60 minutes long, with the H.264 codec, that is 500GB in size if I wanted to. It's all about the bitrate you use, not the codec. Resolution affects it too, but the main thing is bitrate; and plenty of Blu-ray movies are not even 10GB in size on the full disc, just FYI. (50GB cap on Blu-ray dual-layer discs, to boot)

 

[Jaxidian]

You don't get how re-encoding video works...

dancedroid +1 dancedroid

 

[JhankG]

Where could we get a definitive answer on whether or not this could be worked around in the future? What's the biggest Evo forum right now?

 

[JhankG]

Hmm..take a look at this article that reviews the Evo's HDMI out:

Hands-on with the HTC Evo 4G's HDMI-out | Crave - CNET

 

[Jaxidian]

Hmm..take a look at this article that reviews the Evo's HDMI out:

Hands-on with the HTC Evo 4G's HDMI-out | Crave - CNET

Thanks for the link - I've not seen that one yet.

Overall, I'm guessing that the HDMI experience is going to be pretty disappointing in general for any current-generation phone, and I have a feeling that FroYo is not going to help with that. Hopefully Gingerbread handles this a bit better. It sure would be cool if I could even get a Synergy+ client to run on my Droid X while at work while I plug the HDMI into a monitor next to my other computers/LCDs!! ;-)

 

[thud424]

Will it be possible to feed a PC , netbook, or a projector with output from the "X"??