I don’t understand something. Does Bluray requre HDMI to do high def and if so, why do bluray players ship with Component Video Outputs? Does it scale down the bluray disk? Are all Bluray plays, like the ps3 like this?
My HDTV only has component and I’m a year or so from upgrading or rplacing it but I kind of itching to get on the bluray train sooner than later.
Component output at the full resolution is only disallowed if something called the Image Constraint Token is present on the disc, and nobody’s using it yet, so you can still get a full-def picture over component for now. If the token is present, then the component output gets scaled down to some lower resolution.
Studios have said that they don’t plan to use the token so far, but who knows what might happen in the future. You’re probably safe for a few years at least, though.
with one other caveat, you can’t get 1080p without HDMI (or VGA) with any AACS encoded disc. but if your TV doesn’t have HDMI, it’s definitely not 1080p, so it doesn’t matter anyway.