But, HDMI and DVI won’t be going anywhere, and while coaxial, S-Video, composite, and component inputs will be adequate in the next few years, the FCC and MPAA want HDMI and DVI to be the input of choice/necessity in the years to come - if not in 2007, maybe by 2010.
Conclusion - The Future of HDMI, DVI, and HDCP
In time, we’ll see how HDMI and DVI play out. Right now, the smart decision is to buy a digital television with DVI/HDCP or HDMI/HDCP, but it goes even beyond televisions. In order to fully comply with a HDMI or DVI world, it's possible that every consumer electronics device you own will have to feature a DVI or HDMI input. Think about what that would mean in terms of what you already own, and how much money its going to cost to replace everything – equipment and cables.
An Acoustic Research 12-foot DVI cable sold for around $70 at a major electronics company. That’s the lowest price for any DVI or HDMI cable currently sold at the store. Most cables sell for over a hundred dollars. It's presumable you'll need one cable for every device connected to the television, which could cost hundreds of dollars. If you purchased consumer electronics devices over the past few years, you might have a DVI or HDMI input, which will lower your burden somewhat.
Some might say, “Well, I’ll just do without the DVI and HDMI interface, and watch my digital television the way I do right now.” On the surface that sounds like a plan, but that’s where HDCP enters the picture. If the FCC and MPAA have their way, any television displaying a program encoded with HDCP not connected through DVI or HDMI might be degraded – meaning a high definition signal of 1080i will be automatically converted to 480i so you won’t get the advantages of HD or you might not even receive the picture at all. That’s a tough issue to project as public perception might play a factor in that development.
