I bought a stand-alone cd/dvd/mp3 player today to be able to listen to cd’s and mp3-cd’s and watch dvd’s without having my computer on. The audio works great, but when I tried to connect the dvd player with my screen via the dvi cable, I got nothing but black screen :(. Turns out the dvi connection of the dvd player has HDCP which means it’s got copy protection, and my lcd screen problably doesn’t understand that. So, now I can’t watch dvd’s with it :(.

I’m going back to the store tomorrow to figure out whether they have a solution or not. I’ve been checking online for about two hours now, but to not much avail. I’ve got to admit, there aren’t many people trying to watch dvd’s on a stand-alone dvd player on a computer based lcd screen with only dvi and vga… I’ll probably have to convert some way from s-video or scart to vga… I don’t know, this isn’t my terrain of expertise… :’(

Anyway, I’m frustrated now since I was quite excited about being able to view movies without having a zooming computer on the background and have the best video and audio possible. Unfortunately I’ve been a little naive and should have done some more research.

But on the other hand… When I asked the salesman whether there was a dvi connection on the dvd player and I asked him whether I could connect the dvd player that way with my computer screen, the answer was ‘Yes’. He didn’t mention anything about the necessity of a HDCP compliant device or whatever… We’ll see tomorrow.

Btw… I studied 4.5 hours today. Scheduled for tomorrow is 7.5 hours.