The Great HDCP Fiasco

**Lemur** · 02-13-2006, 15:26

Firing Squad has a disturbing article today. A short summary:

HDCP stands for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection, and it was designed by Intel as an answer to Hollywood paranoia about you and me stealing their hi-definition films. All next-gen video content is going to require some sort of this technology. So if you want to watch your new blu-ray or HD-DVD film at full resolution, your hardware had better support HDCP, or the resolution will be cut to a quarter of what it should be.

With me so far? Well, the lads at Firing Squad have discovered that none of the video cards being sold currently support HDCP, even though many of them say they do. None of them. As the authors write:

So if you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

Whom to smite?

**drone** · 02-13-2006, 18:21

Originally Posted by Lemur

Whom to smite?

The content providers, of course. HD (in whatever format) is just a tool to get you to buy newer hardware and repurchase DVDs that you already have. Adding the DRM is just their way of locking in their customers. I don't think the quality of the content is going to be noticably better than normal DVD anyway.

There is a great comment on Slashdot about this. The poster said everyone should go and buy the HDCP disks, then promptly return them saying they won't work in their PCs. The cost of the 2 transactions would be more than a straight boycott, and would get the message across.

The companies cannot be so naive as to think that noone will be able to crack their "super-secure" DRM. It will happen within weeks of the widespread release, if not before it. Just one more attempt by media companies to screw over their paying customers.

**Xiahou** · 02-13-2006, 19:16

Originally Posted by Lemur

So if you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

Whom to smite?

My dream would be for none of the hardware vendors to support HDCP- that'd leave the blu-ray, ect people in a fun position wouldnt it?

**drone** · 02-13-2006, 19:40

I think that is their dream as well. Hollywood wants to keep it's content as far away from PCs as possible, because to them PC=piracy.

I might be one of the few, but to me Hollywood should be more concerned with making watchable movies, and less concerned with protecting high-resolution crap.

**Papewaio** · 02-17-2006, 02:56

Don't buy it... the last few attempts at such types of locking down have failed because the lack of take up and alternatives except for regions on DVDs (which is anti-free trade/competitive or price fixing depending on which way the subject matter is approached).

**Mikeus Caesar** · 02-17-2006, 14:17

Originally Posted by drone

The companies cannot be so naive as to think that noone will be able to crack their "super-secure" DRM. It will happen within weeks of the widespread release, if not before it. Just one more attempt by media companies to screw over their paying customers.

Actually, there is a perfectly legal way of beating DRM which i use all the time on stuff i get off Napster (if you're wondering why, the original stuff off napster doesn't work on my MP3).

Download some audio editing software e.g Blaze Media Pro, and then play whatever it is you want in the background on Win Media Player or something. Using BMP, you can record it all as it plays.

Perfectly legal, if time consuming, and there's nothing the companies can do about it.

**Just A Girl** · 02-17-2006, 14:57

I love dvd region free.

But. to address our newly renamed Currywurry

If You go find a movie that has the same sort of encoding Preventing you from viewing it. As the mp3 had to prevent you listening to it.

Then try to view the movie clip...
I think you will find that you cant.

Mp3's arent that well protected but certain Movie file types are.

**drone** · 02-17-2006, 17:43

Originally Posted by currywurry

Actually, there is a perfectly legal way of beating DRM which i use all the time on stuff i get off Napster (if you're wondering why, the original stuff off napster doesn't work on my MP3).

Download some audio editing software e.g Blaze Media Pro, and then play whatever it is you want in the background on Win Media Player or something. Using BMP, you can record it all as it plays.

Perfectly legal, if time consuming, and there's nothing the companies can do about it.

I never said beating DRM was difficult (it isn't). DRM is just one more hoop that a paying customer has to jump through to get to content. When it becomes easier and safer (anyone from Sony listening???) to pirate content, there is a fundamental problem with the business model.

Back to the original topic, looks like ATI is trying to back away from their claims of HDCP support:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=851

**orangat** · 02-22-2006, 01:33

ATI's websites actually took out hdcp from the list of features and then re-inserted it back in. Quite bizzare actually.
Bottom line is that none of the current cards will ever support hdcp.

**drone** · 02-24-2006, 17:55

Along the same lines, looks like all the people who bought HDTVs early are getting screwed:

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/...ules.html#more

Component video outputs from HD DVDs are going to be cut to 1/4th the resolution, since they are "unprotected analog". Seems to me, the problem with piracy is when you send digital, not analog, since it is easier to copy bit-for-bit when (not if) the protection scheme is cracked.