Toshiba SD7108 DVD Player (give me the real scoop)

Since the NTSC 7108 must certianly exist already, aren't they available
for sale in some other country that uses the NTSC standard?  Would it
not be possible to buy on while on travel to such a country?  Surely
someone somewhere must have one.  Tell us where we can go to get
one.

    Z

Yes that is basically true. Some DTV manufacturers built in an 'expansion slot'
for retrofitting 1394, but basically, to get a DTV with digital interconnect you
are looking at 1999 - probably late 1999.

I've been inviting people to visit my page at
http://www.skylarktech.com/dvw atch.html#interconnects
where I've been following these developments. My hope is that by raising
awareness - we will have digital interconnects sooner rather than later.

Barry Chalmers

I recall this question has come up before and was eloquently answered by Greg
Rogers of www.cybertheater.com . The Y, Cb, Cr should refer to digital component
video signals and
Y, Pb, Pr to analog. But in this crazy mixed up wacky world of HDTV confusion
the manufacturers have used both terms to refer to analog component video inputs
and outputs.

The Set Top boxes that will be compatible (based on my discussions with the STBs
manufacturers) are as follows:

Unity Motion -outputs both component and RGB (advantage- also displays Unity
Motion 1080i Programming  24/7 )
Panasonic TU-DST50 -outputs component (advantage-has IEEE 1394 output for
connection to upcoming DVHS VCR)
Sharp DTV100-outputs both component and RGB (advantage-is future upgradeable to
IEEE 1394 inputs and outputs)
------------------------------­----------------------

Here's one that's not  compatible but interesting

Sony DTR-HD1- outputs HD via RGB/ Also downconverts all 18 DTV formats to 480i
via component outputs. That feature is for TVs that have component inputs but
are not HDTV ready , like the new Sony XBR 200 models

Gary Merson-Home Theater Perfection -NY's Premier HDTV Specialists-ISF
Authorized and Trained Calibrations and Optimizations for Standard and
HDTVs-Factory Authorized and Trained by Runco, Zenith and Vidikron for HDTV
Warranty Service and Optimized Projector Set-up (just factory trained by
Dwin)-Long Island NY's  ISF Calibration SDTV/HDTV Optimization and Service
Company. Philips Color Analyzer, Philips Alignment Generator and ISF Optical
Comparator. CEDIA Member- Serving the NY Metro Area-516-933-1128-See our
classified ad in Stereophile's Guide to Home Theater and check out their
Editor's recommending the Optimizing of  all CRT based Projection TV's in
the Nov.98 issue.

In article <3647D220.E57C6 @worldnet.att.net>, Gary Merson

I'm trying to follow your point here. Clearly there are a lot of TV
monitors with serial digital interfaces (I use one every day). Is your
point that consumer TV digital interfaces are going to be compressed MTS
video (as opposed to SMPTE 292M baseband video) and that the TV must have
an MPEG decoder built in? I would agree with that, I can't imagine
consumer TVs with SMPTE 292M interfaces. Today's HDTV ready TV's have not
yet included MPEG decoders, but they will in the next year or so as 8-VSB
receivers are built in.

I believe that over-the-air STBs they will continue to do this. But they
could also output an MPEG transport stream across a 1394 interface. This
could be used to feed a compressed video digital recorder (D-VHS), which
then connects back to a set-top-box for decoding, or directly to a TV's
1394 input interface for decoding in the HD monitor.

I must admit that I have only just recently started to follow "the HD
cable thing". So please correct me if I'm missing something below.

The cable STB is required as a QAM interface to the cable line and also to
provide the "play for pay" gate. But I thought the point of 1394 with a
cable STB is to avoid the cost of MPEG conversion in the STB, hence saving
the cable industry a lot of money on STBs. Otherwise, what is the point of
1394 in the cable STB at all? Therefore, there wouldn't be any analog
output signals from the cable STB, otherwise 1394 is an additional cost to
the STB, not a savings.

If that is true (and correct me if it isn't) then the cable STB output
would only be compatible with a TV or another over-the-air STB that has a
1394 input. This would render all current HDTV ready monitors incompatible
with cable HDTV unless they also have another external (probably
over-the-air) STB with a 1394 input. Hopefully I misunderstand this
scenario because it would cause almost all early adopters a lot of
additional expense.

I personally don't get the point of this plan because I would think that
the cable companies would also want to provide downconversion in their
STBs to drive existing NTSC TVs, but perhaps they feel there is little to
be gained from that during the early years since they are already
delivering a standard definition signal.

It would have to do a lot more than D/A conversion unless digital HD
baseband video were sent across the interconnect. And that is not going to
happen in consumer video, IMO. So a 1394 interface is going to carry
compressed video only and the TV monitor will have to provide full MTS
demuxing and MPEG conversion.

So perhaps you are alluding to the same problem I raised above?
Incompatibility with future HD cable.


No kidding? What cable company has said they will transmit 8-VSB? And if
they are going to do VSB why not 16-VSB as proposed by the ATSC, w

Thanks Gary (again) for all the information.  Could you also answer two
other questions concerning the TW65H80.  1. Which HDTV receivers (which
output analog) will feed into the Toshiba?  2. (from Jim's post): ""
The Panasonic STB is advertised as saying "Outputs Component Video (Y,
Pr, Pb) for DTV-compatible monitors." This is the STB I have ordered.
Truthfully until I got the Toshiba manual, I had assumed the Panasonic
"component" outs would work with the Toshiba DTV inputs (which as you
say are Y, Cb, Cr). If it doesn't work, it doesn't work and I'll have
to return the Panasonic and wait for the Toshiba STB. Can anyone give
a simple explanation of the difference between Y/Cb/Cr and Y/Pr/Pb?""
Thanks!



www.dvdresource.com/newsandvie ws/recent.shtml

By private email :

My response :

Thanks for sharing.
This response is very ominous.  
"Consensus" !!??  --  how long will that take ??  --  It took a year to decide
on IEEE-1394 as the digital connection standard, and copy protection for it
hasn't been decided yet.

And, what is even being discussed as "the" standard for copy protection for
progressive outputs ?  Does a product even exist at this point that can do
copy protection of progressive outputs ?

They "will introduce the product as soon as all parties sign off on copy
protection issues"  --  with no product  that does this ( I am assuming that if
Macrovision could work with progressive outputs they would have included
it from the beginning),  this could be a long wait.

We would all prefer that the movie industry realize that there are no
consumer products that can record analog progressive outputs and that the
SD-7108 is not a threat to them.

Cable HDTV set-top-boxes delivering movies will output pristine 1080i
pictures  --  what will the copy protection for this be ?  --  will it take a
year
to determine what the copy protection scheme for IEEE-1394 will be ?

This copy protection thing will get worse before it gets better.

  First the good news. The URL www.dvdresource.com/newsandvie ws/recent.shtml
listed above gives the news release accurately and verbatim (E-Town and Greg
Tarr I hope you are reading this) It's amazes me the level of inaccurate crap
being thrown around this newsgroup and the Press from time to time.

Which brings me to the observations and conjecture of the above post.

If you buy an HDTV ready sets today or in the future you will  need a set top
box to receive HDTV broadcasts.  All CRT based monitors and HDTV ready sets
are analog devices.

One can shove a digital interface in the back of an a analog device and it will
never ever give you a picture. Nor will taking an antenna and  sticking a
firewire connector on it. The over the air broadcasts are encoded in 8-VSB and
requires an F connector into an antenna  female F connector. This is the
standard, it isn't going to change.

Lets now discuss Set top Boxes. All take the digital 8-vsb signal and convert
it from digital to analog. Then they output the  analog signal into the analog
set.

When and if the cable companies decide to go with HDTV and use 1394 standard
then it will be a digital signal in and again converted to analog for input
into the HDTV ready set.

If  the set had a digital input it would have to do the D to A conversion
internally. The industry has a name for this. It is called a High Definition
Receiver Display.

To date there are none on the market. The ones that will arrive this year will
not have a 1394 input for future cable. Next year in November according to
press reports , they will show up.

Now lets talk about set top boxes coming out this year. They are Sony,
Panasonic, Sharp Mitsubishi, Unity Motion and possibly Zenith.  They all have F
connector inputs for terrestrial broadcasts. The Panasonic has a 1394 output
for hook up to their upcoming DVHS recorder. The Sharp is upgradeable to 1394
(in and out) with an adapter that will become available next year.

If your cable company like mine will be transmitting in 8-VSB this is a non
issue(1394). If it will be transmitting in QUAM then you will need the 1394
interface and if you want to get a STB asap I suggest the Sharp for now. If
you are not going to use HDTV cable , you can use any of the STBs except the
Mits (unless you have a Mits HDTV ready set in which case you can only use the
mits) as long as it has the right ANALOG output (component or RGB) or you
purchase a transcoder to switch RGB to component.

The boxes have the following HDTV  analog outputs

Panasonic component video
Zenith         RGB
Sony             RGB
Mitsubishi    RGB(only hooks up to mits sets I have been told)
Unity Motion Both
Sharp        Both

One last note. The G series Toshiba were designed as line doubled sets not as
HDTV ready sets. S

I don't think Toshiba will put this (bad) news on their website.
This is the closest to "official" that I have seen :
http://www.dvdresource.com/new sandviews/recent.shtml
Browse down to Oct. 31 news.

My fear with the TP61H95, TP71H95, and
TW65H80 relates to IEEE-1394; the delayed
SD7108; and the unannounced specs of
Toshiba's set-top HDTV decoder.

What if :
--all effort at accomplishing copy protection
is now thrown at the IEEE-1394 standard and
copy protection for ColorstreamPro is
abandoned since only Toshiba is trying to use it.
--the unannounced outputs for Toshiba's
set-top HDTV decoder suddenly become
IEEE-1394 and there will be NO decoder from
Toshiba with outputs that will connect to
the newest 3 HDTV-capable models (copy
protection issues again).
--the ONLY connection allowed (with copy
protection) will be IEEE-1394.
--the Toshiba HDTV-decoder will have
IEEE-1394 outputs, a progressive-scan DVD
player with approved copy protection will
only exist with IEEE-1394 outputs, the
Toshiba tv's coming to market in 4Q99 will
have IEEE-1394 inputs and ColorstreamPro and
"DTV-inputs" (on current 3 models) will be
abandoned because of no copy protection.

Lots of worst case speculation above but the
owners of last years "G" models got
progressive scan displays but no way to
connect anything progressive to them.

The buyers of "H" models might get a rptv for
which no progressive DVD or HDTV connection
at 1080i actually appears on the market.

Personally, I won't buy a TP61H95 until I have an SD7108 in my hands.