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Boycott HDCP. Demand a television without High Definition Digital Compatibility Prevention. Use DVI instead. Or do what the studios do and use HD-SDI.

Buy a high quality digital mixer/scaler for all your inputs. If you happen to have already bought a player which will not work with your very expensive non-HDCP-encumbered scaler, demand your money back.

for step 1, you can also use a miranda DVI-Ramp
http://miranda.com/product.php?i=235&l=1

you're in for a wallet shock...

what you are looking for is manufactured by pro-video hardware companies.
the 2 items that come to mind right away are :

the Leitch Neo SuiteView

and

the Miranda Kaleido K2

both are over the 30K USD mark...

In Canada I know Future Shop/Best Buy both run on some flavor or *nix. I believe it is actually old Unix, but I could be mistaken.

More interestingly, http://www.miranda.com/product.php?i=123&l=1 Miranda switchers run Linux - from the looks of it Redhat, with that pretty gui you see in the picture based in KDE.

Now, here is a Linux/X11 system doing just that, with a touchscreen.

It's not only possible, it's easy, using off-the-shelf components.

First, convert the DVI signal to HD-SDI, which is the standard that all the professional HDTV editing gear uses.
Miranda DVI-Ramp

Next, capture the HD-SDI signal to your hard drive.
Blackmagic DeckLink HD

You will need a serious disk array to handle the bandwidth, but you will end up with a digital copy of the signal put out over DVI. That Miranda box does sub-sample the RGB (4:4:4) signal to YCbCr (4:2:2), but it is only a matter of time before someone makes a box that keeps it at 4:4:4.

Here are three Canadian tech companies that produce products I use at work everyday: Miranda, International Datacasting, Broadview Software. Nice to have NAFTA and not have to pay tarrifs!

Yup, that's exactly what I was thinking too. Anything that gets sent to the screen has to be totally free of any encryption mechanism. Plus, if you're using a DVI output, everything is completely digital!

Then nothing currently prevents you from using something like this DVI-Ramp to grab the video and have it sent off to disk or something.

So until the DRM mechanisms extends all the way to... Humm... Maybe I should get a patent on a DRM-enabled screen now.

Miranda Technologies, Inc already makes an SDI to/from Firewire converter called the DV-Bridge .

Miranda Technologies, Inc already makes an SDI to/from Firewire converter called the DV-Bridge .