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ATI Claims HDCP Then Covers Its Tracks
BigControversy writes "It looks like a big can of worms is being opened. The DailyTech.com is reporting that ATI sold millions of video cards knowing that HDCP support was not enabled. Despite that, the cards were sold and advertised to its customers as having HDCP capabilities. A day or two after this information was revealed, HDMI.org went completely password protected and ATI is now modifying key areas of its website, removing any mention of 'HDCP-ready'."
"Some products boast HDMI connectivity, when they do not even have a physical HDMI connector nor do the products ship with an adapter. Even if they do, having a HDMI connector does not mean the board is able to output a HDCP-DVI signal."
How in the world can they ship this? It's not even a firmware bug.. It's missing in its entirety! Been disliking ATI recently.. this dropped them down to the "I'd rather buy a S3 Virge" video card level..
-B
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Its already fairly common in the marketplace. My DVD player uses it, for example.
There's no chaos there. Vista will require HDCP-encrypted channels to display restricted content, which will include purchased online content, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content, as well as CableCard and DBS content.
People's computers will either work with it, or they'll have to buy new ones.
The support of HDCP is not an optional thing -- the content will not be available without it regardless of what chaos ATI may or may not create through questionable marketing of their products. Since most, if not all, computer monitors do not support HDCP right now, that'll be the place there will be issues. But none of them will cause HDCP to fail.
Had to use tinyurl as slahdot cannot parse the wayback URL properly.
ConsultingFair.com
but if there is NO hardware HDCP support, a new driver cannot magically make it appear.
[move
You can't fix this with a driver. If you could this would be a non-issue. The video card needs a Trusted Computing Module chip installed that contains secret keys that the user cannot access. No chip = No HDCP. And it's not like there's a socket on most video cards waiting to be populated.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
HDMI does not inherently include HDCP. The specific is a bit loose in the way people interpret it. HDMI is the physical standard, HDCP is essentially a data layer standard. It's the same as wondering why you only get two channel audio if you use an SPDIF interface (AC-3/Dolby Digital). Sure, SPDIF can carry full 5.1 audio, but that doesn't mean it has to. This is the same with HDMI and HDCP. What I think most people are confused or frustrated with is some displays say HDMI support, and don't tell you that they require HDPC as well. You gotta figure that one out by visiting forums.
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
Yep. Just ask netgear. http://www.netgearsettlement.com/index.aspx
Of course all those video cards are "HDCPI Ready". They *can* generate the encrypted content. No sweat.
But (and here's the rub), the content providers (strike that, the "copyright industry", or CI) have decided to not trust any "home-brew" system. Which means that the keys won't go to the cards (because the *system* isn't trusted) and the feature is now useless.
Of course, a new system can have exactly the same chip, and it will then work.
Its the CI backlash against the DVD crack (which, of course, a vendor of playback equipment was responsible for -- which is NOT being forgotten). Coupled with some bad crypto choices, and DVDs are now wide open. The CIs would want to prevent this, and are now qualifying everything (my opinion).
External boxes can only produce SD (DVD) quality output on analog, which is what Vista will generate as well.
ATI make chips, boards and drivers. They (in my opinion) couldn't care less -- they just implement the spec. They put it the feature, and now can't use it because of key control concerns; they have been caught with their pants down.
Is is possible for ATI to sue the CIs? Because if I were in ATI, I would be as mad as a wet hen right now.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
HD Ready = Has a DVI slot capable of carrying a HD signal.
HDTV = Has a DVI or HDMI slot capable of carrying a HD signal with HDCP compliancy.
Therefore, HDTV is also mentioned on some sites and would STILL be non-compatible.
BTW, This is UK at least, but I think it is correct for everyone.
karem
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Perhaps ATI marketing don't really understand it even though ATI techies and customers do.
That ATI are now trying to hide things from their google-cache-aware techie customers confirms this.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Do a google search for x1300 hdcp, then look at the google cache for the ati result.
It has this in it:"
# Flexible display support
* Dual integrated DVI transmitters (one dual-link + one single-link)
o DVI 1.0 compliant / HDMI interoperable and HDCP ready
The 3rd technology has already emerged.
l l the other outlets versus RIAA is a joke.
H.264 on standard DVD, with the upgrade path being ANY sort of higher capacity device.
H.264 means you can do 1080p (not 1080i, but 1080 progressive) with 5.1 audio in 1 MB/sec. That's about 3.5 GB per hour. That gives you 2.5 hours of 1080p on a standard DVD disk. You can squeeze the main title in 2, and then use the remainder for all the other stuff in SD. Or, make it a two disk set. Both of these will cost FAR, FAR less than blu-ray or HD-DVD.
H.264 enables SD TV over standard broadband, NOW. Take a look at this: http://www.apple.com/macosx/cnbc/ . Thats technically 480p content. Its playing at 675 kbit/sec, or 84.73 KB/sec. 720p content is similarly small; you'll have no problems whatsoever fitting everything you'd want on a single title blu-ray disk onto a standard dvd if your encoding with H.264 on 720p.
I suspect with a really smart encoder, using intelligent VBR type stuff, you can get 1080p down to an average of 800-900 KB/sec. Perhaps even less. If someone can get the standard DVD above the 3 hour of footage barrier, blu-ray/HD-DVD immediately become a niche market, at least until HDTV 2.0 comes out. Oh; and new displays, as well. But even with _today's_ setup, you can fire up Final Cut Studio, and produce a 2.5 hour feature length movie, slap in on a standard DVD in 1080p, and then put all your extras on the second disk.
H.264 enables 1080i HDTV on a standard dual layer DVD. You need a beefy processor to play it back, but various manufacturers have already produced embedded decoders. H.264 is the future of IPTV, of satellite transmission, even cable transmission. Most likely, the "upgrade" path is H.264 on standard disks, and then the elimination of disks altogether.
Why would I _EVER_ carry a pile of blu-ray disks around when I could simply walk with an iPod, or a mobile phone, or a flash disk, or some other portable media library, and wirelessly (bluetooth 4.5, or 802.11n, or whatever) "rent" a video from the blockbuster kiosk? Heck; strip out the middleman; just buy the movie from iMovie store, or Amazon's movies, or Walmart Video Online. Whatever; it doesn't matter.
The thing is, the entertainment industry is trying to drag us kicking and screaming towards a "secure" disk format, and they are about to be absolutely blindsided by the U.S. retail/rental entertainment industry. Walmart alone dwarfes the RIAA; Walmart+Apple+Blockbuster+Target+Amazon+NetFlix+A
Especially when Walmart can distribute videos at a cost of 5-10 cents via electronic (or rental, or flash) distribution, and blu-ray disks cost $23 wholesale! Ever met a Walmart purchasing agent? Those guys give new meaning to "hard barginer", and make your look like a fool and his money.
A properly devised mobile media library will end physical media. You'll carry 30% of your media around with you, with the other 70% being stored securely over the internet, either streamed from or from your media center system at home. Microsoft and Apple are both going this direction; the lack of HD-DVD on Xbox 360 has locked them into this path, and Apple's been dreaming of running the TV/Video market with H.264 Quicktime. Much of the consumer electronics industry is interested in Blu-ray/HD-DVD, but retailers are going to squeal when they see how much it costs, and are going to squeal again when one of their competitors ships standard DVD products with the same features at 1/10 the price; with the only disadvantage being 2 disk sets versus 1 disk.
HDCP, HDMI, Blu-ray, HD-DVD; whatever. Not that this is the end of DRM, that'll certainly be in both Apple's and Microsoft's schemes. But the content distribution of tomorrow won't be run by the RIAA/MPAAs of the world; it'll be run by the computer side of the tech industry.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
HDCP is destined to fail anyway. It is fundamentally a cryptographic protocol which does a handshake between video card and monitor that sets up a cryptographic key, then encrypts the data. This handshake portion was created without public crypto review, and as is often the case, is done very badly. As Niels Ferguson said when he examined the HDCP spec, "I was just reading it and it broke"!
See this posting to Perry Metzger's cryptography mailing list for a summary of known cryptographic attacks on HDCP. It is only a matter of time until the HDCP master key is reverse-engineered, and at that point it will become easy to create devices that mimic HDCP functionality, making HDCP essentially useless.
1) Buy a neato Blu-Ray drive for your PC for $400
2) Plug video card's DVI-out to your 1080p plasma TV's DVI-in
3) Buy $40 copy of King Kong on Blu-Ray
4) Get really pissed off that you're forced to watch the movie in 480p because your video card didn't support HDCP.
Blu-Ray and HD-DVD apparently will only output high-def signals with HDCP enabled hardware.
This makes the article look suspect, maybe it does have support after all and the web site monkeys just pulled it down until they knew for sure, the web page they use an an example http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1900/specs.html
still has HDCP ready on it...not just the google cache as they claim
# Flexible display support
* Dual integrated dual-link DVI transmitters
o DVI 1.0 compliant / HDMI interoperable and HDCP ready
Now that's just not true.