question about digital jack on DVD players

[jimdagys]

I noticed that today's DVD players sold in USA come with a special jack (looks similar to USB jack but is different size) , presumably to connect to today's digital TV's . My question is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of this jack, compared to previous jacks, such component video, S video. Also, I noticed that in China, all DVD players come with USB jack for playing avi movies directly from a USB memory stick, but most DVD players in USA do not have this feature.

[KBeee]

I guess you're talking about an HDMI connection.
The advantage is sound and vision in 1 plug, better than SVideo or Composite picture quality, and of course the big one - the studios and broadcasters get more control over what you can and cannot do with your bought media.

[jman98]

HDMI allows for full path encryption of the audio and video signal, thus theoretically making it impossible to capture and duplicate them. I am unaware of any way at present to defeat this encryption, although I certainly would not bet that there will never be such. It's just not particularly important to break since BluRays can be ripped. HDMI is not any better than DVI or component video (both are video only), but those are not encrypted. All 3 are better than S-video and composite, by a lot. Audio receivers are only now starting to support HDMI connections. Two or three years ago it was impossible to find any that supported it. I have an HDMI connection to my HDTV and I have to send the sound from the TV out to my receiver via optical cable to get it to my receiver which can't accept HDMI inputs. So a disadvantage of HDMI would be finding a way to make audio work for you over it if your receiver doesn't accept it. My HD DVD player is setup to output high def audio formats in degraded mode (DD+ becomes normal AC3 and DTS HD becomes normal DTS, both of which my TV can pass on to the receiver), so that's how it works for me.

The lack of USB jacks is just another way in which DVD players sold in the USA trail the rest of the world.

[samijubal]

It would depend on the TV and source wheather HDMI is better than component. With my upconvert players I haven't seen any improvement over using component with any of the 5 HDTVs I've had but there are people that say they have seen the picture improve using HDMI.