Vurbano, I wear the BluRay fanboy as proudly as you wear the HD-DVD fanboy. I personally do not care if BluRay is cracked. All of my equipment is capable of passing HDCP digitally. I was thinking of the some 6-8 million HDTV analog sets out there that will be relegated to downconverted signals if the studios start demanding the protection be turned on.
On another note, I am not going to try to explain all every nuance of downconverting because I went thru this with several other early adopters in 2000. We all got upset when we found this out. All HD settop boxes that have analog out for hd also have a chip that when turned on downconverts HD to half resolution on those analog outputs. Now maybe you don't know your settop has that chip in it and I am sure the company that sold it to you did not tell you that but it is there.
At least Charlie @ Dishnetwork was honest about it with Dish's very first HD settop. He admitted that the chip was there and that it would not be turned on unless the studios required it. He also said there was nothing he could do if the studios so required this. If you don't believe me do a search and I am sure you will find those posts if they are still here.
It does not make any differance which settop box you have or from what company. The analog output can be downrezed and that would also affect OTA HD.
Now, any HDTV that has DVI, HDMI or an internal HD tuner would not be affected providing you are using the digital inputs and not the analog. If you do not know this information it is the dirty little secret that most early adopters already know about and most companies do not talk about. This was the deal made between the studios and the content providers so that we could receive HD over cable, satellite and OTA.
