HighDef Content to Require New Monitors 607
QT writes "Ars Technica has an interesting article on how HDCP figures into Microsoft and Apple's future OS plans.
Not only will future HD content not play in pure HD on most existing monitors (it will be degraded, or not shown at all), but high-end monitors today don't support HDCP yet. HDCP
has been coming for 3+ years, but geek fantasy items such as Apple's $3,000 30" Cinema Display don't even have support for it yet! The end result is that when Windows Vista ships
(and Apple's next OS), most people won't be able to watch protected HD content on their computers."
No, only what he THINKS Apple will do (Score:5, Insightful)
But Apple has never said they will - this article just postulates they will have to.
Well, before ITMS would not people have also postulated that it would be impossible for Apple to sell songs without DRM that would restrict CD burning? After all, that was the standard of the time.
Some companies are smart enough to realize that obsoleteing millions of monitors is Not Smart, and will avoid doing so if they can. And Apple has shown they can avoid the more onerous restrictions set forth by giant industries that would rather have it otherwise. And making millions of computer monitors obsolete is right up there in terms of gall.
So the story poster would have been wise to note the speculative nature of the topic instead of proclaiming it as fact from Apple.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
correction (Score:5, Insightful)
about 30 days after the first piece of media is released I'll be able to watch it under linux and BSD in full resolution as someone will have foundand released a crack/hack/mod/whatever.
They are wasting their time trying to "protect" this stuff. all they are doing is finding new ways to piss off the legit consumer.
Re:Circumvention (Score:5, Insightful)
The black magic needed to run those components dealing with DRM most likely will NOT be open sourced, or made available to FOSS programmers.
FOSS will be limited to "degraded" output -- until it is hacked. Then the lawyers will be turned loose...
So don't buy their crap (Score:5, Insightful)
But it won't happen spontaneously. An organized boycott is the only solution. --M
What this will cause (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Pirates won't care, as always, ripping to DivX or whatever and then watching as usual.
3) Ordinary people will discover DivX rips (family, friends of pirates) and watch HD content, not knowing that they're not supposed to. The pirates will mumble something about bad big corporations but they won't really care as long as they can watch the latest episode of Lost.
When Will These Idiots Get It?
Content should be free then! (Score:5, Insightful)
I ain't spending any money on a HD movie if all i'm getting is lowdef. If I already paid for it, why should spend even more? I just hope someone declares DRM to be inconstitutional or something...
Re:My god: it's struck already! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Circumvention (Score:5, Insightful)
And to the content industry, I will never buy or rent, or watch your content on these terms. You will be replaced by artists who do not insist on such things.
-- Bob
Brilliant! (Score:5, Insightful)
And thus prompting people to search for ripped/pirated HD content that is free of HDCP. Brilliant!
"..won't be able to watch protected HD content.." (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon, there has to be someone in Hollywood smart enough to figure out that copy protection this draconian is going to seriously encourage cracking? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to do everything possible to make it easier for their paying customers to get to their content rather than making it more irritating, unreliable, and expensive?
Oh, right. Oh well, not much worth watching anyhow.
Market forces (Score:3, Insightful)
Market forces won't let this one stick. People need lee-way, something that DRM systems don't do, so they are forced to go around them. Once that's done, they keep going around them.
--Mike--
Capitalism sees Capitolism as damage, and routes around it
Re:Dongle anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea of HDCP in the first place is to make it nearly impossible to put a recorder anywhere behind the actual screen.
Re:They didn't have to put DRM in iPod. (Score:3, Insightful)
more of the same (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly sympathize, but you do realize that all (legal) DVD players already have this property...
Mike
Re:It's getting to be time (Score:3, Insightful)
If they throw a HD party, everyone will.
Remember, it's the pr0n industry that drives computer video tech.
Re:That's OK, I wasn't going to pay for it anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)
Protected? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, we'll just have to settle for unprotected HD content, then?
Isn't this just another instance of the entertainment industry not getting it? They're sabotaging their own business. How many people do they expect to be interested in downloading HD content? Probably not that many. Now, how many of those people do they expect to go and shell out an obscene amount of money for a new HDCP-compliant monitor that offers no additional benefit to the end user?
Essentially, what they're doing here is presenting consumers with a rather lopsided decision: spend more money on a monitor just to have the privelage of spending more money to view paid-for HD content that may or may not actually materialize, or don't spend any extra money and continue to download what you want off of BitTorrent/eMule/usenet.
Tough call, eh?
Dear MPAA/RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is something that has to be audible to the human ear, your DRM can be broken.
Welcome to the age of computers, have a nice day.
Re:They didn't have to put DRM in iPod. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hollywood is dreaming! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:no (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA mentioned revoking the keys that such a device would use, but it seems to me that it would be easy enough for someone to give the passthru a flashable firmware. I don't see it being impossible to read a key off an existing device, either.
And imagine if someone got the key from a Viewsonic (or even better, a Dell) monitor and it got put n everyone's dongle....the only way to stop that would be by cutting off everyone who bought that monitor. And that might open us up a nice little class action lawsuit.
Re:"..won't be able to watch protected HD content. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No, only what he THINKS Apple will do (Score:3, Insightful)
Because if they DON'T, they will not be able to play the content at all.
(more technically, if Apple doesn't implement signal decimation filtering on un-encrypted outputs, they won't be given the keys to display the content AT ALL).
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
When you are getting less quality with DRM than with current systems, the end consumer will notice. Maybe not everybody, but I know enough AV geeks who are not "tech/computer/slashdot" geeks who would go nuts if they had to upgrade their perfectly capable equipment just because producers want to treat them like thieves.
If this does really happen end users (a la joe sixpack, etc) *will* give a damn.
Re:So don't buy their crap (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be more willing (note, more willing does not mean willing) to believe the line of mp3's hurting music sales, because mp3's sound (to most people) to be pretty good. Screeners, etc, of movies, not so good quality, and why would I watch it on my monitor in my office when I have my TV in the living room?
I agree that the largest part, by far, of Hollywood's slide is Hollywood itself, and they have no one to blame but themselves. They don't see it that way, so the lawmakers don't see it that way (Money talks, after all). They will paint an organized boycott as an organized piracy ring, with the lawless hackers trading music and movies amongst themselves.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
In a nutshell:
- The quality of the FILTERED output will be DVD level. Which is at or beyond consumer expectation.
- New gear will have HD option, and as people upgrade, they will get 10x better than DVD quality.
- You can STILL record at DVD quality, just not HD (and HD does take 10x)
- As monitors are upgraded, the content will be ready.
- Anyone can WATCH "protected HD content" -- at DVD quality. Which happens to be good enough for 40"+ screens.
- We are talking about 1080 line resolution; very few people run monitors at these resolutions (1920x1080). The DVD quality will be perfectly acceptable (1280x480 - with a bit of twigging)
So its likely going through.
We can't control their spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Boycott is the only effective counter to their power (even given the problems you present) because to do nothing is even less effective as a consumer strategy to corporate abuse of power. Or can you recommend a better alternative? --M
Re:Circumvention (Score:5, Insightful)
Every country will eventually be coerced into doing the same, either with trade/financial incentives and punitive sanctions for the unwilling, or worse. Worse would come later, of course, but it will happen if necessary. Treaties will be enacted that will force every country who wants to play in the international technical markets to comply. The USA produces virtually no hard goods anymore. Steel? Autos? Electronics? Manufactured goods of every kind? These hard goods are not made in the USA anymore.
Wake up and smell the coffee. "Intellectual Property" (OK, so I lied) is the mainstay US export for the rest of this century. The rest of the world is not safe and should be very worried.
DRM is not the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was the CD a big success? It offered enormous convenience over the existing forms (records and tapes) and an enormous leap in quality - cracks and pops gone. Wow and flutter gone from tapes. No rewinding necessary.
Why was DVD a big success fairly quickly? It wasn't just the improved quality over VHS. Mostly it was the ease of use. A small disc that doesn't have to be rewound, doesn't snag, doesn't have tracking that goes out of alignment, and the quality was much much better.
But for most people, DVD is good enough. A new format will offer no extra convenience, and will cost a lot to buy - certainly for a fair while (high quality displays have always been expensive). Therefore, high definition disc formats will probably be relegated for years, perhaps decades, to the audio/videophile segment - a very small fraction of the market. Just like LaserDisc really. For everyone else, normal DVDs are cheap and good enough.
Re:more of the same (Score:3, Insightful)
For a short time this year I signed up for netflix and watched things on my laptop (because I was laid up due to surgery). I put a few films in, played them for 5 minutes then they quit due to this region coding bullshit. Then my girlfriend got to watch me fiddle with the fucking computer for an hour, all the while looking like a moron because I can't play a DVD. This only cemented my previous decision to forgo DVD's altogether. I did install the RPC-1 patch though. More recently I bought a DVD burner. So I can burn DVD's (only for data storage so far), but the RPC patch for this burner didn't work at all, so I won't be playing DVD's on that computer anytime soon...
I've been using free-software only for about 10 years now...the freedom and power that gives me is far more valuable than an hour and a half of the latest car crash scenes.
As time goes on more and more film makers will release things on unencrypted DVD's, using bittorrent, etc. I already go out of my way to buy indie music. I will go out of my way to pay for their films too. The real power of the consumer is in his use of his wallet.
-- Bob
Re:I bought this awesome VCR a while back... (Score:3, Insightful)
I heard of this upcoming thing called DVD... supposed to be a lot better than VHS, but it will require an entirely new player! I can't even play my existing tapes on this new hardware!
Funny thing is DVD recording is relativly new. That old VHS VCR to this day is still useful for recording video. It remained a viable standard for 20+ years and this is a very good run.
In this 20 years, we had a ton of options including super vhs, 8mm/high 8, and digital tape, but for home use the VHS VCR was never really replaced.
The problem is people who plopped down $2000+ for a new fancy HD-monitor/tv, perfectly good units that meet the parameters of displaying content in higher resolutions than before, being locked out not because their monitor isn't able to display the content but because their player tells the monitor not to display it.
VHS copy protection i.e. macrovision didn't really require you to buy new equipment with some exceptions, and even so that equipment didn't cost a few grand. More advanced DVD protection for the most part doesn't require you to get a new player, and even so a new player won't cost you a few grand.
We've become habituated to the fact that while content devices may change, display and output devices change less frequently and represent a more stable investment. This isn't about needing a new player to play new media but about new players refusing to play on your output device not due to a technical limitation but because the player is told not to play on older stuff.
Or maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, for this to enter the popular conciousness, you'd need the popular news media to report on it fairly. I expect Rupert Murdoch's TV stations and newspapers will do a bang-up job of reporting on how Rupert Murdoch's movie studios are fucking over the average citizen.
Re:My god: it's struck already! (Score:2, Insightful)
And thats your choice, much as I can buy a copy of doom3 even though it wont run on my gf2mx400 pci. You don't have the hardware for it, don't buy the software.
Three questions about HDCP (Score:5, Insightful)
-
Why bother protecting DVI? Have any prior DRM systems been attacked through DVI?
-
About key revocation (part of HDCP afaik): What is the benefit of being able to revoke keys known to be compromised?
-
A little revocation scenario: Company X sells 10 million HDCP-enabled devices. Someone devises a crack that theoretically compromises the key on all those devices (e.g. by finding a flaw in X's key generation). Media companies consequently block all 10 million devices. Does X have to replace 10 million devices for free, or are 10 million customers stuck with a useless device?
Bonus question: why would I want this crap? I tend to like movies for their storytelling, and am quite happy with the quality that DVDs offer me. If this stuff ever takes of, I'll just be happily buying used DVDs from suckers who upgrade their collection to HD.No, because cracking CSS was easier. And chances are the next generation will be cracked in a similar manner. I have not yet seen any DRM research suggesting otherwise. But any measure against hacking makes sense only if you make all other possible attacks equally difficult. (Why have a steel door if there is an open window?) Why the inconvenience for your customer, if you know it will have almost no positive effect?
Yes, you can prevent a hacked player from playing back a legally purchased copy on a unprotected device. But apparently most piracy today comes from P2P networks. How will you be able to tell which key was used to decrypt a DRM-free copy that shows up on a P2P-network? Release groups would probably just keep their cracked key secret. (Watermarks? Not robust against removal afaik.) Revocation can neither prevent spreading of content to P2P, nor playback of unprotected files obtained from P2P.
If you sell HDCP-enabled products, make sure that you know your cryptography very, very well. Or you might go out of bussiness soon.
Re:more of the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, did you just mean all the ones in *your* country? Aren't you allowed to remove region coding on the basis of interoperability, BTW?
Re:No, only what he THINKS Apple will do (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No, only what he THINKS Apple will do (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:more of the same (Score:4, Insightful)
If he has given up a form of entertainment because he feels that they violate his rights and instead of just complaining, he has actually given them up (and then complained)... Then he is stronger than you or I. Frankly, I would admire him for that and wish that the world was inhabited with more people like him.
Let's see you go without some form of entertainment to make a point to a world that doesn't act like it cares about whether if you live or die. I know I couldn't.
Re:Component output will be down-rexed to 480p (Score:3, Insightful)
If these bozos think they're going to force me to shell out another grand or two for a new set, they've got another thing coming.
I will personally break the protection if I have to (I'm a pretty smart cookie), but I will not participate in a scam of these proportions. If you have to buy a new TV to view the content, it's not just copy-protected, it's view-protected.
I have a 1080i capable TV. If I have a player that can play 1080i, why should I be required to buy a new TV just to be able to connect?
What happened to letting the market decide?
It seems corporations have no problem with protectionism and market regulations when it's designed by them in order to pad their pockets. Then they get all riled up when regulations are made that protect consumers, whining about how it's costing them money. Well, this is going to cost US money. And I say we fight this tooth and nail.
These money grubbing bastards been bitching for years about the slow growth of the number of HDTV households. Then, when that number is finally up to a level where they feel it's profitable to start offering content for sale, they expect us to buy new sets in order to use it, thereby setting the number of households back dramatically. I'd be willing to bet that at least half the HDTV sets in the US don't have HDCP.
Just goes to show that executives have no clue what the hell they're talking about... let alone what they're doing.
Memo to Hollywood executives: Remember DVDs? We sidestepped your stupid protection then, and we'll do it again. Stop wasting your time. While you sit around wondering how to protect your stuff, terabytes of HD content is being freely shared online, captured off cable/satellite boxes.
You'll never stop sharing - you'll only annoy legit customers with this kind of paranoid BS.
Re:No, only what he THINKS Apple will do (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Mounts as drive (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:more of the same (Score:1, Insightful)
If the DRM is 100% transparent, as are the DVD-CSS and Macrovision then people will be more accepting of a DRM system. Unfortunately most of the DRM systems being concocted these days are somewhat less than transparent. Many of them are outright opaque. Whether people will stand for them or not is not really in question: witness the dismal crash-and-burn of DIVX. People don't want to jump through hoops to watch a DVD. They buy a DVD, take it home, and want to just watch it. If the process has even one additional step it becomes a hassle, and they won't go for it.
I doubt Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will gain much acceptance if they require authentication and a phone home before allowing access to content.
Re:DRM is not the issue (Score:3, Insightful)
So? The cost of HD capable displays is dropping at a dramatic rate, and the available sizes have been increasing too. Now one can get a flat-panel ~30" 720p display for about what it cost to get a 30" 480i screen five years ago, a little less than $1000. That's quite a leap, IMO. LCD panels of many kinds and sizes have been dropping in price too, two years ago a 17" LCD monitor was $500, a better one can be had for $250. I remember a time when it was over $1000.
When DVDs first came out, the cost of players was about $1000, look where they are now, eight years later. The first HD-DVD player has already been announced at $1000. I would expect that HD-DVD and/or Blu-Ray players to cost $500 the year after that, and $250 the following year and on down to where DVD players are now.
Re:Circumvention (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM is not the issue (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only good enough until you actually see HDTV in action. I don't have HDTV and have never seen HDTV outside of Best Buy. Most of my friends don't have HDTV. Except for one. I was at his house this weekend and watched a movie in full HDTV glory. As he readily admitted to me, he can barely stand to watch DVDs or SD broadcasts now because the quality is so much lower than HDTV.
Re:No, only what he THINKS Apple will do (Score:3, Insightful)
Who is more foolish? The fool, or the one who follows the fool.
Re:Mounts as drive (Score:3, Insightful)
The song names that you see aren't taken from the file names, they're taken from the ID3 tags, and from a database which cross references song names to file names.
Thus, the iPod's embedded system never has to deal with long file names, which are pretty common if you name your music according to the "[Artist] - [Song].mp3" form, especially if you don't abbreviate anything.
This might be completely wrong, but it's the best explanation I've ever heard of that particular oddity. The iPod can carry files with long names just fine, but the internal software doesn't ever work with them.
Re:Or maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:HDCP on DVI/HDMI is stuipd (Score:3, Insightful)
Uncompressed video is unheard of and irrelevant. Even losslessly compressed video is very rare; I'm sure professional processing uses it, but the consumer gets lossy compressed video from every form of digital input, be it DVD or BlueRay or satalitte.
Re:My god: it's struck already! (Score:4, Insightful)
Time and time again, DRM systems have been shown to hurt paying customers. Apple's DRM is probably the most widely accepted because it is the least restrictive and doesn't pull stupid requirements on the end-user like this. DVD's DRM is accepted because it is invisible. Divx, however, required players to "phone home," and lasted in the market just a few months before being killed off by lack of interest. I think we'll find that if people have to replace their TV sets to play Blu-ray disks, they're just going to stick with DVD's.
I'm not opposed to DRM... my livelyhood to some degree depends on it. But putting restrictions on the end-user like this will alienate a lot of potential buyers. Why spend 200 dollars for a player that doesn't provide any advantage over the current standard if you don't invest hundreds more in your monitor / television?
DRM should be invisible, or it shouldn't be on the market.
Not if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not if you buy your Harry Potter too early.