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HighDef Content to Require New Monitors
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."
Yes Microsoft has plans to incorperate full-on video DRM.
But Apple has never said they will - this article just postulates they will have to.
Well, before ITMS would not people have also postulated that it would be impossible for Apple to sell songs without DRM that would restrict CD burning? After all, that was the standard of the time.
Some companies are smart enough to realize that obsoleteing millions of monitors is Not Smart, and will avoid doing so if they can. And Apple has shown they can avoid the more onerous restrictions set forth by giant industries that would rather have it otherwise. And making millions of computer monitors obsolete is right up there in terms of gall.
So the story poster would have been wise to note the speculative nature of the topic instead of proclaiming it as fact from Apple.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That means nobody will watch "protected HD content," thereby killing this idea from the get go.
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 LEGALLY."
about 30 days after the first piece of media is released I'll be able to watch it under linux and BSD in full resolution as someone will have foundand released a crack/hack/mod/whatever.
They are wasting their time trying to "protect" this stuff. all they are doing is finding new ways to piss off the legit consumer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Look up "Trusted Hardware" and you'll have your answer.
The black magic needed to run those components dealing with DRM most likely will NOT be open sourced, or made available to FOSS programmers.
FOSS will be limited to "degraded" output -- until it is hacked. Then the lawyers will be turned loose...
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Seriously. Hollywood has an organized boycott coming for this. Not only are they screwing every HDTV owner who lacks HDMI or DVI/HDCP inputs (a huge number of sets were sold with component only inputs), but now they plan to screw computer owners over too. Just don't buy their shit. Let the new Blu-Ray and/or HD-DVD decks sit unsold on shelves for a year or two and watch the these cartels shit their pants with all that unsold inventory. Maybe they'll even respond to consumer wishes afterward!
But it won't happen spontaneously. An organized boycott is the only solution. --M
1) Ordinary people won't bother watching HD content on their computers - it will be too cumbersome.
2) Pirates won't care, as always, ripping to DivX or whatever and then watching as usual.
3) Ordinary people will discover DivX rips (family, friends of pirates) and watch HD content, not knowing that they're not supposed to. The pirates will mumble something about bad big corporations but they won't really care as long as they can watch the latest episode of Lost.
When Will These Idiots Get It?
If they want us to invest so much money in friggin' DRM'ed players, why don't they just give away their content in lo-res so only those wh ocan afford it, will be able to see the HD?
I ain't spending any money on a HD movie if all i'm getting is lowdef. If I already paid for it, why should spend even more? I just hope someone declares DRM to be inconstitutional or something...
Um ... I thought selling more hardware is the poiint of new "standards" and "enhancements" like DRM etc.
And to the content industry, I will never buy or rent, or watch your content on these terms. You will be replaced by artists who do not insist on such things.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
And thus prompting people to search for ripped/pirated HD content that is free of HDCP. Brilliant!
..until it shows up on Bittorrent an hour later.
C'mon, there has to be someone in Hollywood smart enough to figure out that copy protection this draconian is going to seriously encourage cracking? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to do everything possible to make it easier for their paying customers to get to their content rather than making it more irritating, unreliable, and expensive?
Oh, right. Oh well, not much worth watching anyhow.
What DRM did they put in the iPod? You can copy songs off of and on to the iPod freely. You can output the full quality of all music (such as it is) to any device. You even get unprotected digital outputs from iTunes with the Airport Express or other digital device. Where's the rights management again? We're talking about a system that would NOT SHOW CONTENT on unapproved devices. There are no parallels in iPod/iTunes.
I certainly sympathize, but you do realize that all (legal) DVD players already have this property...
Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Actually, I was just considering not watching TV or movies any more, reading a good book and using my computer to access a few forums and do some writing. The kind of output coming out of the entertainment industry is so bad nowadays that I can't imagine anyone putting any effort into protecting it, or stealing it. It's all crap, and it isn't worth consideration. The whole battle seems like a bunch of silly bastards battling over who gets to eat the most shit from the dungpile.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If it is something that has to be visible to the human eye, your DRM can be broken.
If it is something that has to be audible to the human ear, your DRM can be broken.
Welcome to the age of computers, have a nice day.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well why not make the dongle emulate a monitor and just pass the signal straight through to YOUr monitor?
TFA mentioned revoking the keys that such a device would use, but it seems to me that it would be easy enough for someone to give the passthru a flashable firmware. I don't see it being impossible to read a key off an existing device, either.
And imagine if someone got the key from a Viewsonic (or even better, a Dell) monitor and it got put n everyone's dongle....the only way to stop that would be by cutting off everyone who bought that monitor. And that might open us up a nice little class action lawsuit.
---- Watch out for snakes!
Look. They control the media / entertainment industry and will use TV and Cable News to propagate their message. They have huge war-chests for campaign contributions. They essentially control access to policy and the consensus opinion management. There's no way to change that fact without a sea-change in anti-trust law, as in Teddy Roosevelt's days with the collapse of the Gilded Age.
Boycott is the only effective counter to their power (even given the problems you present) because to do nothing is even less effective as a consumer strategy to corporate abuse of power. Or can you recommend a better alternative? --M
Guess again. The recent CAFTA trade treaty forces the banana republics of Central America (no offense intended) to adopt virtually every Copyright, Patent and Trademark law verbatim as dictated by the USA (I refuse to use the term "intellectual property" because there is no such thing in the eyes of the law. At least no yet.)
Every country will eventually be coerced into doing the same, either with trade/financial incentives and punitive sanctions for the unwilling, or worse. Worse would come later, of course, but it will happen if necessary. Treaties will be enacted that will force every country who wants to play in the international technical markets to comply. The USA produces virtually no hard goods anymore. Steel? Autos? Electronics? Manufactured goods of every kind? These hard goods are not made in the USA anymore.
Wake up and smell the coffee. "Intellectual Property" (OK, so I lied) is the mainstay US export for the rest of this century. The rest of the world is not safe and should be very worried.
HD DVD technologies will probably take years to go anywhere anyway, regardless of DRM or no DRM.
Why was the CD a big success? It offered enormous convenience over the existing forms (records and tapes) and an enormous leap in quality - cracks and pops gone. Wow and flutter gone from tapes. No rewinding necessary.
Why was DVD a big success fairly quickly? It wasn't just the improved quality over VHS. Mostly it was the ease of use. A small disc that doesn't have to be rewound, doesn't snag, doesn't have tracking that goes out of alignment, and the quality was much much better.
But for most people, DVD is good enough. A new format will offer no extra convenience, and will cost a lot to buy - certainly for a fair while (high quality displays have always been expensive). Therefore, high definition disc formats will probably be relegated for years, perhaps decades, to the audio/videophile segment - a very small fraction of the market. Just like LaserDisc really. For everyone else, normal DVDs are cheap and good enough.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Or maybe, I'll just watch all the old unprotected content that I have lying around. Heck, maybe I'll just read a book. They still let us do that right?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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Why bother protecting DVI? Have any prior DRM systems been attacked through DVI?
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About key revocation (part of HDCP afaik): What is the benefit of being able to revoke keys known to be compromised?
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A little revocation scenario: Company X sells 10 million HDCP-enabled devices. Someone devises a crack that theoretically compromises the key on all those devices (e.g. by finding a flaw in X's key generation). Media companies consequently block all 10 million devices. Does X have to replace 10 million devices for free, or are 10 million customers stuck with a useless device?
Bonus question: why would I want this crap? I tend to like movies for their storytelling, and am quite happy with the quality that DVDs offer me. If this stuff ever takes of, I'll just be happily buying used DVDs from suckers who upgrade their collection to HD.No, because cracking CSS was easier. And chances are the next generation will be cracked in a similar manner. I have not yet seen any DRM research suggesting otherwise. But any measure against hacking makes sense only if you make all other possible attacks equally difficult. (Why have a steel door if there is an open window?) Why the inconvenience for your customer, if you know it will have almost no positive effect?
Yes, you can prevent a hacked player from playing back a legally purchased copy on a unprotected device. But apparently most piracy today comes from P2P networks. How will you be able to tell which key was used to decrypt a DRM-free copy that shows up on a P2P-network? Release groups would probably just keep their cracked key secret. (Watermarks? Not robust against removal afaik.) Revocation can neither prevent spreading of content to P2P, nor playback of unprotected files obtained from P2P.
If you sell HDCP-enabled products, make sure that you know your cryptography very, very well. Or you might go out of bussiness soon.
The question is whether it makes sense to them to release a system like this at all. They're basically saying "you can't watch our videos if you don't spend a lot more money on hardware." From the perspective of people who can't or won't "upgrade" their monitors, why spend 20 dollars to buy a video that is intentionally downsampled to exactly the same bitrate as a pirated version? The idea is that you would be paying them for quality, but the reality for a lot of people is that it will just degrade their experience.
Time and time again, DRM systems have been shown to hurt paying customers. Apple's DRM is probably the most widely accepted because it is the least restrictive and doesn't pull stupid requirements on the end-user like this. DVD's DRM is accepted because it is invisible. Divx, however, required players to "phone home," and lasted in the market just a few months before being killed off by lack of interest. I think we'll find that if people have to replace their TV sets to play Blu-ray disks, they're just going to stick with DVD's.
I'm not opposed to DRM... my livelyhood to some degree depends on it. But putting restrictions on the end-user like this will alienate a lot of potential buyers. Why spend 200 dollars for a player that doesn't provide any advantage over the current standard if you don't invest hundreds more in your monitor / television?
DRM should be invisible, or it shouldn't be on the market.
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