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'."

Comments

Big deal

[the bluebrain]

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.

The issue of trust has been broken

[postbigbang]

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.

Re:This is not the first time

[b1t r0t]

ATI has promised a card does something, and then it turns out it never did. Which is why I don't buy ATI.

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?

Just the tip of more to come

[DumbSwede]

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.

HDMI != HDCP

[the melon]

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.

Re:they won't

[radixvir]

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!