Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 18 April 2008 14:27
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
A kerfuffle has emerged over whether Acer’s Gemstone Blue ‘true HD
1920x1080p’ notebook can only output at 1080i – or the claim of true HD
1080p. Despite an email from Acer quoted in another publication
suggesting the Gemstone Blue’s screen is only 1080i, the truth is out
there, and we have it. Read on.
When a company makes a claim, one of the things that the public needs to be able to rely on is that any claims made are actually true.
After all, if they’re not true, that’s very serious and can result in consumers, retailers and government consumer protection agencies being very unhappy indeed.
So, when an article at
Smarthouse.com.au appeared on the Internet yesterday claiming that Acer’s Gemstone Blue wasn’t actually a ‘true HD 1920x1080p’ panel or product after all, questions were naturally raised as to whether Acer was telling the truth, or not.
iTWire was naturally on the case with an
article yesterday called "Acer brings true blue HD to notebooks thru Gemstone Blue", where we explored Acer’s claims and spelled out the detail of the specifications of the two new entertainment notebooks.
The flagship was claimed to offer the “world’s first full HD 1920x1080p” on an 18.4-inch widescreen LCD, while the other offered 720p HD resolution on a 16-inch widescreen panel.
Confusion arose because of two things. The first was that the demonstration at the Westin Hotel was on an older flat screen which did not have an HDCP (high definition content protection) compliant HDMI port. HDCP is a form of DRM or digital rights management. It’s a problem which was raised a couple of years ago by IT publications concerned that non HDCP screens would need to be unnecessarily replaced with new HDCP compliant screens.
The Gemstone Blue’s HDMI port has HDCP – and if your screen doesn’t, you’ll get a message telling you the screen is not compatible. This was an oversight on Acer’s part – they should have ensured any screen they were going to use would work, but it’s a very easy mistake to make.
Journalists – and others - did predict that this kind of confusion would occur, and that the HDMI and HDCP people, along with the Blu-ray organisation, was simply going too far in trying to protect content against piracy – especially ironic now when the music industry is ditching DRM faster than Michael Jackson can put out yet another rehash of his old work in an attempt to sell more records and still maintain some kind of ‘King of Pop’ credibility.
The only way that the Gemstone Blue could then be connected to the screen was via a VGA port. Given that a VGA port has no HDCP, the content was not being output at true 1920x1080p.
So, what was the second point of confusion – and after all this, is the screen 1080p or not? Please read onto page 2.
