The Great HDCP Fiasco

Toasty16 writes "According to an article on Firingsquad, our shiny new Radeon and Geforce cards won't be able to play HDCP-encrypted content, even though they have been advertising HDCP support as a feature for a few generations. Want to watch that new Blu-ray movie on your custom built PC at full resolution? Sorry, retail graphics cards won't be able to do that; only OEM-built computers from Dell, Sony, HP and the like will have that functionality built in."

Comments

Re:The day is here already....

[Ngwenya]

A few years of digital prohibition, where the more skilled among us can make truckloads of money building grey/black-market hardware, workarounds, etc.

A highly sensible and valid point. What the hell are you doing on /.?

There is another method to get round the HDCP trap, which is to buy one of the Spatz boxes http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/15/spatz-techs-dvi magic-killing-on-hdcp/ - there's no way that it could be embargoed - the point of the device is to enable legacy devices to receive HDCP output. That is not illegal, or unethical.

Now, HDCP also allows a revocation method - but it is not at all clear how the revoked keys would be transported. It could be that a new HD-DVD/BD disk carries them and disallows display for that disk, or burns this data into the player's NVRAM. I cannot believe that the latter would be legal ("I put this disk into my player and it broke it entirely". "Oh, yes, sorry, 20th Century Fox has revoked your television rights for using a non-approved display device". "Mother of pearl - call my lawyers!"), so we have a situation where some DVD makers could choose not to allow display on HDCP-stripping devices.

I think the way around this one would be to ensure that they lose as much money as possible on that. Every time someone discovers a non-stripper compliant disk, they post the name of the disk on a central web site (LiveJournal or some such), and we all go out and buy the disk. The next day, we all go back and return the disk and demand our money back - "Hey! This disk doesn't play on my projector. My other ones do!". Doesn't matter if you have a projector, HDTV or a HD-DVD player - we just all go out and do a consumer return. And clearly tell them why the disk is going back. This causes the studios and shops to lose more money than a simple boycott of the goods.

After a while, they're going to notice that the HDCP-stripper friendly disks sell more than the hostile ones (which they've lost a boatload on). Companies, in the end, are amoral creations designed to make profit. They are, in the round, economically rational. They will shift.

And once the device-discrimination stops, we can start the frame grabbing parties to P2P the contents of their disks. Hell, did I just say that out loud?

--Ng

Re:Hmmmm...

[Karem Lore]

We have laws in the UK which stipulate that the product sold must be able to do what the advertising (or box) says that it will. If the box says that it does HDCP then the manufacturer is obliged to provide a card that does so. If the packaging/advertising does not mention HDCP then they have no requirements to provide this functionality. In the case of Nvidia, they can say their chip supports HDCP without problems. However if board manufacturers use this statement in their marketing and don't provide the actual hardware to support this then under UK law you can demand a replacement that does or your money back.

If you don't have laws like this in the US then you're mugs. Tell you what, I'll sell you a ham sandwich which includes two slices of bread. You got a sandwich, what more do you want?

On another note, if US do have this rule, isn't it interesting that ATI and Nvidia board manufacturers haven't started provided full HDCP compliance? It seems to indicate that HDCP requirements won't be necessary for another year yet...Delayed Vista? Maybe...

Karem

Resolution of the eye

[Namarrgon]

Do you have a 30" or smaller TV? Do you sit around 10 feet away from it? There's a good reason why DVDs look perfectly fine to your eyes; you've reached the resolution limits of your retina, and HD would simply be a waste.

<plagiarise victim="self">
The average eye with 20/20 vision is capable of resolving one minute of arc, a sixtieth of a degree. This equates to roughly 300 dpi, when viewed at a distance of one foot. Let's say the average distance from a couch to a TV is 7 to 10 feet. At 7 feet, you can resolve 300/7 = 43 dpi, at 10 feet it's 30 dpi.

So in order to fully resolve a 720p picture (1469 pixels diagonally) at 7 feet, the TV would have to be at least 34 inches diagonally to make out all the detail. At 10 feet you'd need a rather large 50 incher. For true 1080p, even at 7 feet, anything under 50 inches and you're missing out - and at 10 feet you'd have to get a whopping 74 inch TV! At 10 feet, you need a 30" screen even to make out plain old standard-definition DVDs properly.
</plagiarise>

So unless you've got a particularly large TV or a particularly small loungeroom - or a projector - you may find investing in a high-definition TV to be entirely pointless. You simply can't see the extra detail. Of course, watching high-def movies on a computer monitor is different; we sit much closer to them, say around 18 inches away. At that distance, you'd want a 200 dpi screen (at 24", that's an impressive 4183 x 2353). Or you could get one of these - except it doesn't support HDCP...