HDCP ?

Things change I've changed · 17 Feb 2006 at 12:49

This whole HDCP support is really confusing, am I right in saying,

1. If you,ve brought a Hi-definition Panel/TV and it has HDMI/DVI and has a native res that supports 720p or 1080i if your panel does'nt support HDCP then you will not be able to play Hi-definition movies ?

2. Currunt high end video cards do not support HDCP ?

3. Even if your video card did support HDCP you would still not be able to play hi-definition films on your PC as even tho your monitor can handle hi-definition it has to be HDCP compatible ?

4. So finally if I want to be able to watch future hi-definition movies I have to upgrade my already hi-definetion monitor, my already hi-definition tv and my already hi-definition video card.

?

AWPC · 17 Feb 2006 at 14:05

Yep your correct on all 4 points. I would also add that HDCP will still be available on non HDCP equiped systems but the picture will only be 25% the size of the 1920x1080 default. Even this has still not been set in stone as there are arguments against this from some of the hardware manufacturers.

Almost everyone in the PC community is affected though so they are gonna have to compromise somewhere as a hell of a lot of home cinema LCDTVs & Plasmas have been heavily marketed in the last 18 months as HDTV ready but are not HDCP ready @ all.

No-one apart from the DVD content producers even wants or needs a new DVD standard. Just ditch all the pointless extras and double the bit rate and current DVDs can look a lot better than they currently do.

Forcing a new standard on consumers has traditionally backfired and this will most likely go the same way.

People are not stupid and paying thousands to upgrade perfectly good equipment for minimal gains (the picture is much better but unless you sit a few feet away will never notice much difference when the picture is in motion only on static shots or scenes with a lot of compression artifacts would you see a difference).

Things change I've changed · 17 Feb 2006 at 14:46

But thats just complete utter madness surely, millions of people have already had to upgrade from standerd plasma's and lcd's thinking that they would have been ok, now a large proportion of these people have to upgrade thier HD tvs again b-cos of this stupid HDCP ****, what on earth is going on with the technology industry these days, gfx cards, hi-fi's, TV's, projectors, recently you seem to have to upgrade practicly every thing you own every 6 months just so that you can be compliant

While on a google mission finding information about HDCP I came across this post in a forum, tbh although its meant as a joke the way things are going it seems like a realistic projection of things to come.

- 10 years from now, HDCP will be in every device.
- 10 years from now, producing non-HDCP devices will be illegal (the only people who don't want HDCP are pirates. Right?)
- 10 years from now, your computer won't do what you tell it to, until it contacts Microsoft and gets permission first.
- 10 years from now, your computer will inform Microsoft of any "questionable" activities you've been doing.
- 10 years from now, your activities will also be forwarded to the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, NSA, or other appropriate agency.
- 10 years from now, DRM will be the law.
- 10 years from now, privacy will be a thing of the past.
- 10 years from now, we will all look back and wonder how we could have said we "didn't care."

Edit : I,ve now found a good article explaining about the problems with HDCP, if anyones intrested,

http://www.behardware.com/articles/603-1/hdcp-the-graphic-card-and-monitor-nightmare.html

AWPC · 17 Feb 2006 at 17:33

Yeah I agree this is totally ridiculous. You can blame the guy who first cracked the CSS DVD encryption scheme and all the commercial applications which now allow people to back up DVDs in 20 mins on recent PCs. You can also blame the greedy digital recording device manufacturers for making it so easy to do so.

Hollywood nowadays makes nearly all of its profit from DVD & the other non cinema releases like pay per view, satellite, cable, inflight & terrestial tv rights. The cinema release usually loses millions (unless the film is a mega blockbuster and makes 4 x what it cost to produce). The average cost of a small film for film prints/marketing/distribution is in the 20-30 million range. For big blockbusters it can go into the 150 million plus range. Global film promotion is very expensive.

So when Hollywood invests say $350M in Superman Returns this summer the DVD release will bring a huge profit (if the film is popular). It is not uncommon for a single blockbuster movie to earn $450-650 million from DVD alone.

Because of all this revenue Hollywood decided to lock up the HDCP signal as tight as it could outside of only offering streaming movies via the internet (which will happen @ some time in the future). I hate it as much as everyone else but if the 1080 signal was easy to crack then anyone could make cheap copies which looked perfect.

The thing which bugs me the most is the idea to restrict non HDCP content to 480x270 pixels. This is approx half of current DVDs and will look awful on a big screen!

I would still be amazed if they really go ahead with locking HDCP down so tightly as that will exclude so many people with new hotness home cinema & PC hardware (all laptops to date will not be able to view HDCP either & probably never will as that would defeat the purpose of restricting the content to worldwide regions like DVD regions do now).

Standard DVDs should still be around for @ least another 2-3 years so no need to panic just yet but I would advise anyone thinking of a new TV/TFT/Gfx card to wait until/if the HDCP standard is finalised and the HDCP logo on kit actually means something & your purchase is safe (I recently spent £1.3K on a Dell2405 + 7800GTX512 neither will be able to display HDCP. LOL).

ATI are under fire now as they advertisied the X1900 as HDCP ready but it transpires it is not and cannot be without additional hardware chips on the gfx card!