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HighDef Content to Require New Monitors

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the upgrade-fever dept.

QT writes "Ars Technica has an interesting article on how HDCP figures into Microsoft and Apple's future OS plans. Not only will future HD content not play in pure HD on most existing monitors (it will be degraded, or not shown at all), but high-end monitors today don't support HDCP yet. HDCP has been coming for 3+ years, but geek fantasy items such as Apple's $3,000 30" Cinema Display don't even have support for it yet! The end result is that when Windows Vista ships (and Apple's next OS), most people won't be able to watch protected HD content on their computers."

2 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Circumvention by sqlrob · · Score: 5, Informative

    You need the driver that authenticates to the display. I doubt very much that will be (legally) in any OSS drivers.

  2. Re:Microsoft? by OG · · Score: 5, Informative

    The idea is that Vista will determine whether or not your system has an HDCP monitor. If it does not, it will either play the video at non-HD quality (downsampling, I suppose) or not play it at all. Thus, the OS will force you to upgrade your monitor to an HDCP compliant one if you want to watch HD.

    Microsoft could choose not to implement this, thus allowing HD to be viewed on Legacy monitors.