On January 1, 2011, the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) will be imposing restrictions on analog video playback. Now that is a sentence full of words that may not mean anything to you, but may affect how you are required to watch Blu-ray movies in the near future.
Basically what this means is the AACS licensing agreement will be active and any Blu-ray player manufactured after the set date of December 31, 2010 will not have active high-definition component outputs available, only HDMI. So, if you purchase a Blu-ray player after the beginning of the new year and your television only supports HD component inputs, you will need a new TV that has HDMI inputs. Now for those of you who already own a Blu-ray player, this is not an immediate problem as this is not retro-active. However, a new potential problem is also inserted on Jan.1st with the introduction of the ICT or Image Constraint Token. The ICT will be available to Blu-ray disc manufacturers and MAY be included if the manufacturer chooses to do so. What does that mean? Glad you asked. The Image Constraint Token is embedded into the Blu-ray disc during production. When the disc is placed into your player, the ICT automatically turns the HD component output off, rendering it useless. If your player is wired with a component cable or is distributed throughout your home with a component switcher, the video will no longer work.
Now we know that a lot of you are unaware of how your Blu-ray player is hooked up and this is not intended to frighten or concern you. We are trying to get the word out because most consumers have no idea that this is coming. We have done a lot of research on this and have procedures in place to remedy these problems. If you have any questions about your installation or what you can do to avoid any down time, give us a call.
