Black Box HDMI Video to Analog Video Scaler: A Fool’s Purchase?

[jkff]

Last year I purchased this all but perfect BD player https://www.whathifi.com/us/reviews/pioneer-udp-lx500

Though I eventually will use it with an OLED TV, like probably all CRT TV users here I’m so in love with my sadly all too small 32” Toshiba CRT TV (to view 1.33:1 content) that I wanted to use them together for a good while more. Unfortunately, the player has no analog video outputs so I purchased this box over a year ago, but which I only now have time to use.

https://www.blackbox.com/en-us/store...VSC-HDMI-VIDEO

However, though I paid about half the full price of that box, I only now realized that I still made a costly mistake: If I connect this box directly between the BD Player’s HDMI video output and the TV’s S-video or composite inputs won't the player’s built-in copy protection, thanks to the Blu-Ray Assn, prevent the player from outputting any digital video for the scaler to convert to analog?

No way around this, I presume?

[Electronic M]

Look on Amazon for viewHD brand HDMI splitter. They strip copy protection out of HDMI. I use one so that I can use an HDML cloner box (a device that records the video from HDMI to a USB stick) to time shift in HD from my cable box (which only has HDMI output).

Another solution is to go to a thrift store and grab an older Blu-Ray player with composite output....they show up at the local thrifts regularly for ~$15 so I've bought a couple.

[MIPS]

One thing to be warned about when you buy from BlackBox is that their target market is enterprise who don't beancount and a lot of their products are OEM rebrands of other products with a large markup.
Shop around before you commit to BlackBox and often you will find the original manufacturer of the product and a lower price.