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Will We Need A SmartCard to Watch Digital TV?
An anonymous reader writes "This story on EE Times points out that Hollywood and major electronics manufacturers are in agreement on a SmartCard requirement for digital video interconnectivity. Note that the article talks about them 'closing the analog hole.'"
My 35" TV is probably eight years old and ready to be replaced. Is now a good time to buy a new TV, or are there worthwhile developments in the pipeline (Bluetooth?) that make it worth waiting 12 months?
Here ONdigital collapsed after pirated cards flooded the markets. The Canal+ card/crypto system was broken. There was later a scandal when it was revealed that the team of hackers who broke it appeared to have significant backing from News Corp who operated the rival Sky TV which used its own crypt system.
This article talks about watermarking which is a tad more advanced than what's used here, but it makes little difference. The cards will be cracked, cloned, whatever. They should see what is going on outside their own borders.
After years without seeing anime (I used to watch Robotech as a kid) I was reintroduced by my local club that twice a month runs screenings for shows unreleased in the states. I don't know how/if these clubs will survive all this DRM garbage. It'd be really sad to see these great clubs go away (some are over 20 years old I think) in 5-10 years because the content gets locked down. I just hope these drm tv's and what not bomb as hard as divx (the original where you paid everytime you wanted to watch your dvd).
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This is actually very disturbing to me, looks like hollywood wants to merge its 2 payment models while at the same time removing the consumer decision from the loop. it goes something like this, You pay a monthly subscription for your digital TV signal (probably cable) You pay a subscription fee to use your smart card to wtch the shows you pay for (like satellite tv) Oh and that 'free tv' that gets paid by advertizing,, well that all bonus revenue for the media copmanies because they are just going to *assume* you are a 'criminal' andyou are using your pvr ( that they convienently sell you and chage you a mothly subscription fee to use (because theyhave to off set the prediefined amount of people skipping the adverts, See: the minidisc built in piracy RIAA tax) [and to head you off TiVo provides you with a service for you fee stop shut your whine hole before you open it] So bascially you as the consumer.. you have to buy a big buck digital tv (or a cheaper digital to analog converter foryour old tv, you dont get to control what you watch (really) you dont get to control what you can record and watch later.. and the media copmanies get fatter. and of course the coropratoin friendly FCC doenst seem to mind at all, because even if they get kicked out for conflict of intrst, they get coushy jobs in media. (see: the political/corporate revolving door.) All your money are are belong to us.
Nothing too unexpected or draconian here at least at first sight -- surprisingly reasonable, in fact.
This is very much what the home cinema press (here in the UK, at least) has been predicting for years, and it seems to be an improvement on the current impasse.
Currently, you receive an encrypted data stream through your digital cable or satellite system, and it's decoded by a smartcard, but you're never allowed to get your hands on the datastream at all.
Under this proposal, you'll be able to get your hands on the encrypted datastream, and pipe it around your home network, save it to disk, whatever. You'll still need a valid smartcard to be able to decrypt and view it, but you need one now already. It even sounds like they are thinking about not requireing you to have a smartcard for every TV (or keep moving your smartcard about), but instead allow one card to serve an entire home AV network.
As for 'closing the analog hole' with digital watermarking techniques, this really doesn't sound any different from a souped-up Macrovision. We already have analogue signals tagged with a 'do not record' marker, so there's nothing really new here.
Now, there are still ways they can screw this up; I'd really like them to drop the regional coding idea. And I hope that if I record a datastream for later viewing, that datastream doesn't become inaccessible to me if I subsequently cease to subscribe to the cable or satellite operator it was recorded from.
Overall though this sounds promising, and I feel moderately optimistic that this will end up being a system I can live with...
-roy
More to the point, will we need to pay for the privilege of buying the smartcard so we can watch digital TV? IIRC, digital TV was supposed to be a free, broadcast medium, available to everybody, just like analog broadcasting. Why is it necessary to have some kind of technology to control who is watching? More to the point, if the copying of digital content so bothers the movie studios, why don't they just opt not to release their flicks for digital broadcast? Oh, that's right, Jack Valenti and Co. threatened to take their toys and go home from the digital party unless something was done. This really scared the broadcasters and electronics makers.
Apparently, this was that "something." It could be used to extract payments from folks with digital TVs; I guess they feel they can't get these couch potatoes to go to the cinema or get up and go to Blockbuster and buy DVDs. Once again, it's all about control and DRM (Digital Reach for your Money). If these measures are necessary, why is it that the movie studios don't seem to mind if their product (rubbish, for the most part) is broadcast on analog TV all the time? Even after the Betamax case, they don't seem to mind that one can record movies on a VCR-- that is a copy, right? (no pun intended) I am rather surprised that they allow their flicks to be broadcast, rather than lose all that revenue.
All I conclude is that these industries aren't serving my interests as a potential customer. Once again, Big Media has attempted to put their grubby fingers on emerging technology.
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TV: All viewers must insert their identity cards and authenticate with the Viewing System before playback can commence.
TV: This TV can see 4 potential viewers and a dog in the room. Three viewers are on the TSN subscription plan and have automatic access to the broadcast. These viewers have household authentication and have validated within the last 24 hours. Viewing is authorized. The forth viewer, Bob Neighbour has inserted his viewerID(tm) card but not authenticated and will need to authorize the use of credit to enable the viewing. TSN allows dogs to watch Monday Night Football for free.
TV: Viewing paused. Awaiting authorization or departure. TSN thanks you for your viewing habits.
And what about all of the current analog TV's that are out there ... will it be illegal to own one? Even if you had a digital converter box, that box HAS to output analog signals to a current (non-digital) TV.
Hmmmm ... maybe time to stock up on supplies for the coming revolution.
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