Slashdot Mirror
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."
Many people saw this coming, but I never expected it to arrive so soon. If people accept this and bow to the content providers, then the DRM world is upon us.
The content providers, hardware and software people, everyone involved would have a lot more to gain if they'd simply make things easier for people. These kinds of roadblocks will only frustrate the average consumer more. For the rest of us, they'll be bittorrent or something else.
The 'fair use' doctrine really needs to be looked at more closely.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Now over here in the UK I we have a phrase for this sorta thing: "false advertising".
And I'm pretty sure we have laws against it too...
Looks like we need you again. Hope you haven't let those hacking skills get rusty.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
What Hollywood appologist crap.
"Hollywood gave you ample they were going to rape you, and yet you didn't bend over."
Sorry, no. I'm extremely glad that companies are in direct opposition to HDCP. We'll find out, once and for all, if the computer industry needs Hollywood, or if Hollywood needs the computer industry...
It's a ridiculous restriction anyhow. It's not like DVI-capture cards are a dime a dozen (or even possible with current hardware for that matter). It's not like anyone would WANT to capture the uncompressed digital stream and waste their time recompressing that back to it's original size. It's just another insane move by Hollywood.
Stick to bittorrent, and/or standard DVDs, if they don't change their tune.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Everything is hackable. I don't know WTF the manufacturers are thinking, this shit will be cracked as soon as somebody actually makes a board that supports it (and HD-DVD/BluRay arrive). I'm assuming they will attempt to use the DMCA against any cracks, but our friendly overseas comrades will no doubt help us out.
As a result, pirated content (with the protection removed and recoded in h.264) will run at a higher resolution on your PC than content you bought.
Anybody want to guess the effect of that on sales?
Close, s/card/GPU/ throughout your comment. From TFA, the graphic chips may support it, but the graphic cards don't, so if you bought a graphic card because the GPU claimed HDCP support, you're SOL even if (the rest of) the host hardware does support it.
-- Alastair
This gives me the impression that not one custom built computer on the market can even RUN windows vista. This is not only disorenting but confusing. Perhaps Microsoft and DRM Gods believe the majority of 'hackers' that break their encryption are on custom machines and this is a quick method to lock some of them out. Furthermore, its much easier to track someone who buys a prebuilt computer than someone who buys parts and assembles them.
Either way, I agree with previous quotes that a class action lawsuit might be in place.
Is this really true? Game manufacturers cannot realistically expect much market penetration of Vista before 2007 at the earliest, and they'll probably want to satisfy the XP crowd for another couple of years and make sure their games work with the older OS too. After all, a guy with a $2000 blazing gaming PC will probably hesitate to buy a $250 Vista license just to play an MS game. Might as well buy a used XBox360 at that price.
Overall, unless MS makes some co-marketing deals with game publishers and pays them to make Vista-only games, I don't see game publishers abandoning XP that easily.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
The requirement of HDCP via DVI/HDMI is also a major issue for those who bought the first few generations of HDTVs equiped with component inputs, or in some cases, DVI without HDCP support.
Cases in point, I know of several major HDTV purchases made about 2 years ago, late 2003 / early 2004. All of these were CRT or CRT projection based and have the ability to do full 1080i resolution, in fact most are currently being used with DVHS D-Theater, Dish Network HD, and XBOX360 at full 1080i, 720p or similar HD resolutions. Mostly via 3x RCA component input, but plain computer style DVI in a few cases. But since none of these TVs support HDCP, they will most likely be unable to display full HD resolution material from BluRay or HDDVD.
Many Dell 20" LCD monitor users are in the same boat. They love their sweet pivoting DVI monitors. But without HDCP support, they will never be useful as, say, a bedroom TV connected to a BluRay player or a future Comcast HD cable receiver.
HDCP is to protect the world from the pirates... who will work around this limitation somehow anyway.
It used to be that one had to buy an illegal converter/filter in order to make copies of Macrovision protected DVDs and VHS tapes. Now we're going to need to buy illegal converters/filters just to *use* our older HDTVs to their full resolution potential.
How many other people are having trouble typing HDCP? ;)
My fingers automatically type DHCP instead
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
HanDiCaP
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
First of all, it's not stealing, it's copyright infringment. Calling it stealing plays right into their hands. Don't do it.
Second, they don't need actual copyright infringment to occur; they just need the appearance of it, along with charts showing "lost sales" and cash for the lobbyists.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The more I hear, the more I think both of these formats are toast.
The move from tape to optical had a lot of obvious advantages for end users. By comparison, the only real advantages to either Blu-ray or HD-DVD are 1) resolution, and 2) disc capacity. That's really not much to start with.
Capacity is only particularly relevant as A) the means to provide said higher res, and B) for people using these discs for their own personal data, which won't likely be effected by all these 'protection' racketsschemes. For raw data storage, BD or HD-DVD will take off when the drives are comodity items with decent burn times, and the discs have a comparable $/GB to DVDs.
As for resolution, here's the thing: didn't I read a while back on slashdot that some study found that only 50% of US households with "Hi-def" capable TVs had their systems set up properly to view anything in hi-def, and from the sound of it most of them were oblivious?
Now tell me... if the only really notable advantage of Blu-ray or HD-DVD over normal DVDs, when it comes to renting or buying videos, is resolution... and half the population can't even tell if their systems are set up to display hi-def content... and the DRM is such that nobody who's bought 'hi-def' hardware yet is going to actually get hi-def (my understanding is that if you don't have a fully HDCP compliant system, you get a degraded image, ie, lower res)... is it just me, or is most of the population going to buy a new optical drive, rent one BD or HD-DVD, not notice anything impressive cause their system isn't set up right, and go back to DVDs cause they're cheaper rentals?
$40 will get you a DVD drive you can stick in any vaguely recent desktop computer. A stand-alone DVD player that can hook up to pretty much any TV is probably cheaper than that. A new format that offers basically nothing but higher res, and requires thousands (in the next year) or several hundreds (any time remotely soon) of dollars of upfront expense on hardware upgrades to get that one advantage, which you also have to re-purchace all your media to get... I'm just not seeing it.
Fortunately, all the companies involved have put way too much into this to let it drop that easy, so hopefully they'll stick it out long enough to produce comodity priced products for those of us who are really just interested in the higher capacity optical media.
Also, Sony's AC3 format comes to mind. Say hello to HDDVD
Sigh.
AC3 is the technical name for Dolby Digital. You are probably thinking of ATRAC.
HD-DVD is using the exact same protection standard as Blu-Ray, being the AACS system. HD-DVD will also require the same display encryption system to operate as Blu-Ray, so if you don't have HDCP, you won't be able to use an unhacked system. Both formats pretty much support the same sets of audio and video CODECs too.
As much as I can gather, BluRay and HD-DVD are similar in so many ways that the the most significant difference between them are in the optics and the physical media. In fact, they both use the same laser wavelength. There are relatively minor things such as the control language, and HD-DVD is requiring managed copy when Blu-Ray isn't, but my main point is that they aren't anywhere nearly as different as people think.
Blu-Ray isn't under Sony's exclusive control either. All but two of Japan's electronics makers collaborated on the hardware format, it is a consortium that included names like Pioneer and Matsushita (JVC & Panasonic) as well. I don't understand why people fixate on BluRay as if it is Sony's format, they should be given credit for industry collaboration here, but I suppose this is one of those "bash anything touched by Sony" things. In this case, it is actually NEC and Toshiba that thought they should make their own alternative format, well after the BluRay consortium announced a functioning optical standard. Indications I've heard have it that NEC/Toshiba's format was accepted only because of shady politiking of the DVD consortium.
HDCP is to protect the world from the pirates... who will work around this limitation somehow anyway.
Pirates don't need to break things like HDCP or DECSS.
If you want to large scale pritate a disc, you just get the equipment to make a bit for bit copy.
HDCP, just like DECSS is all about controlling consumers.
Life is too short to proofread.
So, they want me to "upgrade" my monitor which doesn't support HDCP, my video card which doesn't support HDCP, and my TV which doesn't support HDCP.. just so I can watch video in higher resolution?
Sorry, to my eyes DVDs look just fine.. and none of my hardware needs replacing for any other reason. If it ain't broke..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
At first I thought the studios were incredibly stupid. The only thing they'll accomplish with their asinine HDCP requirement is eliminate the market for HD content on PCs.
Then I realized it was probably intentional.
Hollywood wants their content as far from your computer as possible.
Obviously, it would be slightly more complicated than that, but I don't see any problem in principle. Of course, now MS are going to make Vista refuse to hibernate if Treacherous Computing applications are running... *rolls eyes*
Pirate Party UK
The entire point of DRM is to forbid copying, saving, manipulating the content ... which is what a PC is for. The whole reason to jump from paper to PC was that it made it easy to save, copy, repeatedly print, and manipulate information.
If all you can do is watch on your PC, what have you got? A $2000 19" TV! Big deal; most people will be doing their watching on the new 42" in the living room with the cable-company-supplied HD DVR.
HDCP, in short, will kill any sales of PC equipment and content, save to enthusiasts like slashdotters, and to content makers - including everybody with home cameras. But nin Blu-Ray disks out of ten will be put into consumer boxes rather than PCs because the PC won't do anything special with it.
This outcome is fine, for Hollywood; they don't see "available on PC" as a big selling point for their product. They're happy to just keep their content off the platform altogether.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What I dont get is how is this possible from the cryptographic point of view. The contents of the disk is encrypted with a key, which has to be only done once, otherwise you would need to duplicate the contents on the disk as many times as you have keys. So, the way I understand it, there is a master key somewhere here, which is then doubly encrypted via a set of device/vendor unique keys. Once you crack one of those, you get the master key for all the HD disks produced so far. All the goons can do is to change the master key for all future releases and then invalidate the particular device/vendor key. But that does not get them all their previous contents back, only locks the new products, until another device key gets cracked and the new master is out. Rinse, repeat.
The only way I can see this working for the goons is to demand that each device continuously downloads new keys from their center, and have a unique per-device keys + unique per disk keys. I.e. each disk having its own key, so that a break of one will not affect any other. But this means that no consumer device can ever work off-line.
I am sure that this is the long term plan, but I do see a number of opportunities to at least run interference and foul things up for them in the short term. That is of course not a solution, but something to keep in mind as a part of a strategy, as driving their costs into stratosphere can only help.
There's no way I can go out and pay for a HD drive, a new monitor and then watch retail purchases HD content.
It's going to be downloading rips for me it would seem.
*shrugs*
I remember stumping up for a DVD decoder card back in the day - seemed a fair wad of cash, but I did like the picture. Basically it would seem the cost of entry to the new HD DRM future is going to be astronomical - nobody is going to bother...
For the average joe who watches movies on say a player in the lounge, a desktop and a laptop when out and about - exactly how much is it going to cost to upgrade from DVD to HD? How much do they possibly think I'm going to pay extra to replace my equipment that currently meets most of the specs with NEW - JUST TO GET ROUND THEIR F'IN DRM *slams head into desk* That's it - I'm sitting the next gen out.
Turn and face Canada, to your right is lots of water, on the other side of the water is a little island where Harry Potter lives.
They'll probably connect it using a $20 "digital" S-Video cable too.
That's why I bought the $189.95 digital enhanced S-Video broadband cable with gold connectors and OO-gauge double-shielded oxygen free wire for my 50" hi-def set. (According to the package, unlike normal cables, this one prevents the common waveguide harmonic interference that shears the digital encoding algorithm of the cable's colorspace.)
I got mine for a pretty big discount -- for this kind of performance you would probably end up paying more like $240, but for some reason the salesman was in a really good mood the day that I came in. He even threw in an extended warranty on the cable for half price -- a $69.95 value!
There's no point in dropping $6K on a tv if you don't have a good digital cable between it and the VCR.
The Rebels have infringed upon our Death Star plans, Lord Vader!
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
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
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
No thanks, I'll just wait for the pirated version.
Vista won't be out until the end of the year. So I don't see the problem. This new standard is not going to be supported by anything else than vista. Aside from a bunch of tweakers, the only way people will get Vista is by buying a new PC. That's why nvidia and ati are not bothering to put useless hardware on their current boards. I'm sure that if there is any market demand for this standard, there will be some compatible hardware by the time Vista launches.
Of course the big question is weather this standard will work at all. If you take a step back and look at what the industry is doing, you see a lot of vertical stacks of technology with none of them well positioned for long term success. IMHO neither blue ray or hddvd is going to have any long term relevance. The HDCP standard will add to this problem since it will complicate and slow adoption of the new technology. That in turn means lower demand for HD content.
If you look at the long term, the only relevant distribution channel for any digital content is online distribution. Once the industry decides that online distribution is the way forward, the whole mess of vertical technology will more or less automatically ensure that any technology which restricts market share will be extemely unpopular with consumers and, ironically, content distributers. Why sell onlince content to only 1% of the market with compliant hardware when you can sell to 100% of the market with good enough hardware?
The first company who gets this right will make lots of money real fast.
Jilles
<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...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Exactly. These companies pushing all of these DRM schemes have got the technical people in a fuss because of libertarian platitudes, when they know just as well as anyone else that it won't prevent piracy. It's the hardware stupid. They keep pushing this stuff in order to SELL MORE HARDWARE. And if they manage to push a PARTICULAR brand of DRM, then they've LOCKED YOU INTO the whole line of THEIR products, or their PARTNERS' PRODUCTS. Once you decide you just have to have the Matrix Trilogy on Blu-Ray to play on your 100" plasma HDTV, then you've just lined the pockets of a particular group of people within the hardware world. And even if another manufacturer wants to jump onto that bandwagon, and sell compatible hardware, they're going to have to pay the first group a HEFTY fee to do so. Ultimately, it's about VENDOR LOCK-IN. I don't think these people care a whit about your STUPID "PIRACY." Vote with your dollars accordingly.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
The current scheme is a little more complex, and the planned methods are a LOT more complex.
A pool of device keys were rolled up randomly to start with. I don't know how many. Probably a few thousand.
For each DVD, a random key is rolled up. (it's possible for them to roll up a new key for each production run) This master key is used to encrypt the content. The master key is then separately encrypted many times, once with each device key, and the result stored on the disk in a key dictionary. Note that each disk has a different master key.
Each device manufacturer that wants to make a DVD player has to sign a contract with the MPAA/RIAA or whoever it was that runs this madness. They agree that in exchange for one of the device keys, they agree to protect and keep the key secret.
Two of the manufacturers did not follow the terms of the contract, and stored their device keys in their players' firmware in easily retrievable format. Once these keys had been discovered, any disk that had been pressed up to that time contained the master key for that disk encrypted using that device key, so all disks up to that date had their security defeated.
Due to the nature of the encryption, once you know the master key, it is possible and practical to reverse engineer the remaining device keys. As a result of this, all device keys are now known to a number of people. If this had not happened, the MPAA/RIAA would have just deleted the compromised device keys from the dictionary for future releases. But since all device keys to date are now known, the only thing they could do is make a new device key dictionary, which would render all DVD players made to date unable to play new DVDs.
Among other improvements, the new system, it's designed in such a way that the compromise of one device key does not reveal all the other device keys. Also, I know little about the remaining technology, but one of them allows a "kill list" to be placed on a disk. They have added a way to obtain a "serial number" of sorts from the DVD player based on a ripped movie. They then would place that DVD player in the kill list for their new DVDs, and when placed in the targetted player, would deactivate it. Hard to say if this is rumor or true, it'd be a trick but certainly not out the realm of possibility. This way, if a sing;e player was compromised, they could deactivate it eventually. I doubt this would be very effective, but they are apparently going to try it anyway.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
A work is the property of the author.
/ a1_8_8s12.html
The guy that wrote the Constitution of the US (Thomas Jefferson) asserted several times that people did not and could not "own" ideas. Period. I have read his reasoning and I have to say, I agree with him. Maybe this is easy for me to say because I am not a media or software company, but I do write short stories, and I still agree with him.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents
Furthermore, I think people who support the DMCA view of things should consider where we will be as a culture in a few decades. I understand the incentive argument, but the restrictions on reuse have become way more burdensome than is necessary for the promotion of creation. We will lose our creative/technical/cultural lead for this very reason. We currently hold a position very similar to France in the 1700's. Pretty soon we may hold a position very similar to France in the 1900's.
Call me a luddite, but I cant believe the amount of money people spend on all of this 'high end immersive home entertainment' crap.
... the rest is up to you.
... and kiss her for the first time as the tide laps against the beach.
.. feel good and learn more about the people you thought you knew.
really - thousands of dollars for what can only ever pass as a semblance of reality.
Want a real immersive FPS experience ? - drop $100 and spend a weekend out in the bush shooting paintball.
Want a real immersive flightsim ? drop $100 and spend a weekend learning to hang-glide, and get a feel for what flying is all about.
Want an immersive and memorable porn experience ? - drop $100, go out clubbing, meet dozens of attractive real people, have real conversions, get real phone numbers, and
Here are some recent $0 experiences which no amount of 7800GTX SLI cards can come close to :
- Hours wasted building sandcastles on the beach with a hot nursing student from china who doesnt speak the local language that well. Teach her a bit of english, learn a bit of mandarin, and engage your brain in the most complex real-time strategy game as you attempt to interpret her alien body language. Still on the beach as the hour approaches midnight, having built a full scale replica of a great white shark in the sand. Accidentally trip over the shark, catch her in your arms
- Hang out at a mate's house with a dozen or so others and play an 8-ball tournament, music, fridge full of drinks, play with the pet lizards
- Go to a birthday party, get smashed, end up at a bizarre karaoke bar, get up on stage with complete strangers and yell your lungs out. Pile into a taxi with your new found friends and end up at a 5-star hotel for breakfast as the sun rises. Obnoxiously pile up your plates with everything on offer, and charge it all to room 315 before slipping out the back door.
- Hand write an ultra-soppy card that you make yourself to an imaginary woman that you might have known for ages. Make sure you put your name and phone number on it. Go out, walk into a club or restaraunt and approach the most stunningly unbelievable waitress you can find. Hand her the card, and say 'Hi again - just wanted to say that im real sorry about the other night, I hope this card makes up for it'. Turn around and walk out, and dont look back.
Dont know - I just dont even have time to turn the TV on these days.
Of course you are correct in your point that they didnt take off, or they have not yet. Although I doubt they will take off soon (SACD), I believe they *will* in the near future as they have better sound quality than CDs and consequently than any kind of MP3. If you believe you can not distinguish between a normal CD sound and a SACD sound you just have to wait until you listen to one of those.
That's just the thing, though--moving from audio tape to CD was a no brainer... sure, the quality was better, but the CD also brought more to the table than that: random access. It was far more convenient to use a CD which let you skip to the next song, or easily replay a track, instead of having to rewind and fast forward. People later took a step BACK from CD quality audio, to listen to lower quality MP3s because they're "good enough" and far more convenient than CDs are, in the sense that you can bring ALOT more music with you in ALOT less space.
Aside from audiophiles, few people really care about the technical quality of the playback medium--hell, most people don't even seem to care about the quality of the music! Listening to $BOYBAND at a thousand times the resolution is like putting lipstick on a pig.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
You should read this:
p /hdcp111901.htm
/. not too long ago, but I'm too lazy to go find it. Here's there conclusion:
http://apache.dataloss.nl/~fred/www.nunce.org/hdc
I'm certain it was a story in itself on
HDCP's linear key exchange is a fundamental weaknesses. We can:
* Eavesdrop on any data
* Clone any device with only their public key
* Avoid any blacklist on devices
* Create new device keyvectors.
* In aggregate, we can usurp the authority completely.
The weaknesses are not easy to repair. Two proposed modifications are broken and still susceptible in O(n^2) work and n sets of keys to:
* Eavesdrop on any data
* Clone any device with only their public key
* Avoid any blacklist on devices
So even if they use copious amounts of keys (a unique one per device), HDCP will fail all the same and their blacklists won't matter.
But this is the video stream, not the data encrypted on the disk (analogous to CSS) so the "per disk" comment you made isn't applicable. HDCP & AACS are two separate issues/battles.
:wq