Slashdot Mirror
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'."
Which is what I can't figure out. If the company messed up, why not issue an apology and offer to replace /refund any defective products? Why put a bad light forward that you won't stand behind your products that you sold incomplete and then force your legal team to charge you more money to which they will just settle the class action suit to just do the same (replace the products) in the end anyway?
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
See that's what I don't understand - why do you (likes of ATI) think your customers, especially the techie types are idiots. Average Joe doesn't understand what HDCP (or for that matter any thing on the spec sheet) means and probably doesn't even know what a video card is. Its only the slashdot type gaming crowd that is more or less interested in the bleeding edge graphics card and probably they are the ones who even know what things like HDCP means. For argument sake lets consider that not every gamer knows their hardware but would probably know about it eventually somewhere - like slashdot or at their LAN parties. Now these folks buy something only after looking at specs and shell out a lot of hard earned money. So by changing the specs I don't understand who they are fooling. Instead if they come out clean and say "hey we fucked up, our cute marketing rep thought she could get away with it", I think is much better way to deal with issues like this. For one, admitting your mistake is much better than hoping your customers are idiots. Take a clue from the Sony fiasco.
Stop treating your customers like they are ignorant fools.
Actually, rather than remove each reference to it, they should REPLACE it with references on how to get a refund.
Like taking down a web page that has false information on it and making sure that nobody else is being misled? Has ATI denied any wrong doing, or are they more likely just in the process of fixing a mistake?
I hardly think I'm the only one, but I'll be one of the first to purchase the first consumer level graphics card that puts out an HD signal to a "legacy" DVI monitor. The concept of "illegal technology" just brushes me the wrong way, and I'm confident there's some entrepreneural South Korean or Singaporian manufacturer who just isn't able to, however hard he tries, give a rat's ass about what some *AA halfway round the world thinks of their customers.
yes, we have no bananas
If you purchased the card for its qualities, then found out that you were LIED to, how are you going to justify purchasing again from that vendor?
Let's say that in a fit of egalitarianism, Apple allowed the iPod to play Ogg Vorbis. You bought one, then found out they lied and covered it up. You have a huge library of media, some of it in Ogg format.
Would that affect your decision to buy something from Apple again, especially an iPod? You'd want to check to make sure that it indeed does play that format. Extending this analogy, let's say that you want to make sure that Vista works on your machine with an ATI card, and ATI says, sure, it works fine. But it doesn't. Are you going to make damn sure that it does? How will you check if the drivers are unvavailable to you because the product, as yet, is unreleased?
Has ATI shown that they're both trustworthy and willing to admit mistakes and deal with the issue? No. Instead, they covered it up. I can't predict whether they'll suffer enough to go into Ch11, but it's not out of the realm of possibilities. What other product promises have they made that are now suspect? No, this is an ethics problem, not to mention fraud. ATI doesn't get away so easily with this.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
free Mac mini [freeminimacs.com] Now thats
Then why are you trying to suck people into a pyramid to get a free Mac mini... which uses an ATI video chipset? I guess you'll take ATI for "free" then?
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
As you can understand all those sites reporting this hdcp issue will get no more ati cards to evaluate. Only yes-knodders wil get them.
Personally I'm hoping for as many of these screw ups on the manufacturer's part as possible. I'm also hoping that HD-DVD comes to market soon enough before Blu-Ray that the outrage over incompatibility issues causes the Blu-Ray group to ratchet down their DRM stuff a bit. DRM is now a major obstacle to coming out with new consumer gear, and mark my words even the approved compatible products will break in industry unexpected ways. The buying public will not tolerate equipment that is as crash prone and glitchy as PCs are.
Ironically all these attempts to lock down HD-DVD and Blu-Ray to thwart piracy will probably accelerate piracy as people who have been buying EXPENSIVE HIGH END gear will feel little remorse in resorting to pirated material to display on their setups. The industry is fooling itself if it thinks it can keep real pirates from cracking their content by whatever method, when there will be such a huge demand from the installed based of early adopters.
It won't happen, but I would love to see legislation that forbids intentionally crippling products or creating some artificial market segmentation to insure some business model. Maybe when the HD-DVD Blu-Ray debacle really begins will we some come modification to the really bad legislation that is the DMCA. At least they are considering really spanking people the put Root-Kits in products. Maybe we need the CRMA (consumers rights millennium act) to balance some of this madness.
Letter To Iran
You are using HDMI in place of HDCP. HDMI is simply a physical inteface. It carries the same signaling as does DVI-D with the adition of Audio over some extra wires. DVI and HDMI can very easily be converted to one annother and BOTH support HDCP signaling.
Ya guys really. Forget about HDCP. I want to know why they claim H264 acceleration but then after you buy you find out here that you actually need to buy the special codec for it. IMHO, when you put H.264 acceleration on the box it should come with it!
Easier said than done. HDCP is not as easy to crack as CSS was, and unlike CSS there's different keys for different devices and media. You'll have to crack the key again for every new device or Blu-Ray disc you buy.
HDCP is already cracekd. There are devices on the market which remove HDCP from a DVI/HDMI signal. There are also (very expensive) devices that are capable of capturing this video data where it can be re-encoded. All this really means is that these next two protection mechanisms are all but useless from the standpoint of trying to prevent a video from being copied and distrubited, but FWIW:
AACS as used on Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is not (yet) cracked.
The DRM that enforces the requirement of HDCP encryption on HD-resolution video output from the video card is also not (yet) cracked.