ATI Claims HDCP Then Covers Its Tracks 328
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'."
i smell (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:i smell (Score:3, Funny)
When I learned of this I wrote to ATI costumer relations (Tuesday) and they had already covered thier tracks by sending me the "specs" showing no HDCP listed.
Re:i smell (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Perhaps ATI Marketing are idiots (Score:3, Informative)
That ATI are now trying to hide things from their google-cache-aware techie customers confirms this.
Sam
Re:Perhaps ATI Marketing are idiots (Score:3, Informative)
Their site as of April 1, 2005
http://web.archive.org/web/20050401031619/http://w ww.hdmi.org/ [archive.org]
Although, that may not be the best date. Here's their front page where
you can enter (HDMI.org) and select how far back you wish to go back.
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php [archive.org]
Re:i smell (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i smell (Score:4, Funny)
You're kidding right? Don't you know how these types of class-actions work?
Pay attention this time. On, say, a $200 million settlement, it would go more like this:
Hello Eliot Spitzer (Score:2)
Re:i smell (Score:2, Informative)
ATI Code of Ethics (Score:5, Funny)
At ATI, we are committed to conducting our business with the highest level of integrity, honesty and professionalism. Maintaining high standards are also critical for maintaining investor confidence and shareholder value as a publicly traded and world-leading high-tech company.
The Code of Ethics outlines the key principles and policies that define our business practices and formalizes these standards. The rules set out in the Code serve as a complement to the corporate by-laws, policies and other corporate requirements and directives governing the conduct of ATI and its employees. In its application, the Code applies to all ATI directors, officers, and employees, whether full-time or part-time, and to all other service providers including, contractors and consultants.
ATI's Code of Ethics extends to wherever business is carried out on ATI's behalf including ATI offices, business travel and any other work-related functions such as meetings with third parties, seminars, conferences and training programs. As everyone lives up to the expectations in all places of business, in this regard ATI's reputation as an excellent company with high ethical standards will be upheld.
Re:i smell (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, I can see all the lawyers drooling already...
What is also means is a drop in sales for the next while. Just like the speculation that Apple's Intel announcement would mean people would hold off buying a new Apple until the switch was made; I can see a lot of people holding off on purchasing a new video card until this is settled.
I know I had been thinking of building a new computer this summer, including some fancy new PCI-X video card (which probably would have be
Whoa... How did they get away with this? (Score:5, Informative)
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
they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, this doesn't make nvidia the smarter purchase choice at this point, because none of their boards support it either. Maybe when the 7900 comes along in about a month or so though. Hopefully the board makers (evga, bfg, xfx, etc.) realize that they'd better get it out there after this fiasco.
Re:they won't (Score:5, Funny)
Oh the irony. A class-action suit brought by customers who feel defrauded because they did not get digital rights management.
Re:they won't (Score:5, Interesting)
Ya guys really. Forget about HDCP. I want to know why they claim H264 acceleration but then after you buy you find out here [ati.com] 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!
Re:they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
I own 3 30+ LCDs. I've got a 42" plasma, and a 60" plasma. None of which support HDMI or HDCP. Guess what, I don't give a flying fuck (pardon my french).
My cable boxes output beautiful HDTV through DVI. So do my various (Mac and/or Linux) computers. So does my xbox. And I'm expected to replace _everything_ for absolutely no extra technical capabilities?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Hardware solutions like this: http://www.engadget.com/2005/07/15/spatz-techs-dv
HDCP is dead on arrival, as far as I'm concerned. All it will mean is that the good, more functional equipment that supports standard DVI will be cheaper. I can get that 30" LCD for my bathroom, and maybe an outdoor one for my hot tub. No offense to the rest of slashdot, but its people (like me) that spend a substantial amount of their income on home "tech" that drive the industry, and most people I know are NOT going to replace their setups unless they see substantially improved features.
HDMI + 4 times HDTV resolution + Real 3D versus Standard HDTV on DVI? Yeah, maybe we'll upgrade.
HDMI + Standard HDTV versus DVI + Standard HDTV? Bwahahaha. Tell me another.
Re:they won't (Score:4, Insightful)
HDMI != HDCP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:they won't (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:they won't (Score:2)
That's just one more reason for consumers NOT to even think about going to BLU-RAY or HDDVD in their current incarnations.
Just tell the vendors that enough is enough - cut the bullshit, remove the encryption (or at least make it cut-off by a legal copyright date), and give us our pure, unfettered digital content.
Re:they won't (Score:2)
Re:they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
5. Rip disc to hard drive
6. Take disc back to the store and demand a refund
7. Either run a program to remove protection from the ripped data, or play with a special open-source player that knows how to circumvent it on the fly
8. Enjoy.
If they're going to treat us like criminals then we may as well live up to their expectations.
Re:they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... that's not the way it works, generally. The drive might not decrypt content without trusted drivers, but at a low enough level, it's still an ATAPI block device, and an ATAPI block read still reads a block. The only way they could even make this difficult would be to make the drive reject read requests to a particular "special" region of the disc containing decryption key data, much like DVD-R drives reject writes to those regions. However, since the hardware must, by definition, be able to read those blocks, even if they put limits on what blocks can be read, it would still be a mere firmware limitation, and we've seen just how well firmware limitations have worked with region codes....
At some point, it comes down to this: an ATA bus isn't encrypted. The bus is easily snoopable. Ditto for USB, ditto for FireWIre, SCSI, etc. Any key data that leaves the drive can be snooped, so if the drive hands the key and the data to your video card to do the decoding, you can snoop it on the ATA bus. If the reverse happens---if key data is sent from the video card to the drive---it can be snooped on the ATA bus. Either way, there must be a key exchange. That means that it is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. Any technology not vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, by definition, is a shared secret algorithm, which is inherently vulnerable to the revelation of the shared secret by unscrupulous people (social engineering), which is how CSS was broken, I believe.
Fundamentally speaking, HDCP will be a joke, just like CSS, because all content protection is, my its very nature, a joke. It relies on an inherently flawed premise, specifically the assumption that you can give someone a piece of data and a decryption key and then somehow dictate how and when they can use that key to decrypt the data. It doesn't work that way. The only way to prevent decryption is by withholding the key, which would prevent it from ever being decrypted in any way. The best HDCP can do is add more initial shared secrets to steal.
Besides, unless they have improved it in recent years, HDCP has already been broken [dataloss.nl].
Re:they won't (Score:3, Interesting)
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 usele
Re:Whoa... How did they get away with this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whoa... How did they get away with this? (Score:2)
In this case, however, it sounds like the decoder functions are disabled at the chip level somehow. If a ROM flash fixes it, no harm done, on
Re:Whoa... How did they get away with this? (Score:2)
Didn't we all JUST go through a migration to a new video signal hardware standard, when we gave up VGA, et al in favor of DVI? Like within the past five years?
What benefit does HDMI offer to anyone? Besides giving content manufacturers an opportunity to get HDCP in?
Re:Whoa... How did they get away with this? (Score:3, Funny)
Ahhh, the good old S3 Virge. Still got one of them lying around. Whenever I'm faced with a machine that refuses to post(or at least refuses to display a screen) I plop in that card to rule out the possibility of the graphics card being the problem. Always works, no matter the OS.
Re:Whoa... How did they get away with this? (Score:2)
In otherwords, the ATI cards are putting out analog and digital via their DVI ports, so all you need is a DVI to HDMI cable (which isn't a converter, simply a different connector) to hook up to an HDMI TV.
I'm doing it with my ATI card, and it works well.
Video card
I smell class action lawsuit (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Heaven? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google Heaven? (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically do what I do. If I buy something that says "AC'97" or "PCI-Express" compatible and doesn't have linux drivers [or compatible drivers] I just return it saying it's defective. So far I've been 100% successful with only having to be marginally rude
So if you bought the card assuming HDCP support worked out of the box and it doesn't return it. If everyone did the same you'd see retailers scrambling to avoid selling them like the plague.
Tom
Re:Google Heaven? (Score:2)
Basically do what I do. If I buy something that says "AC'97" or "PCI-Express" compatible and doesn't have linux drivers [or compatible drivers] I just return it saying it's defective. So far I've been 100% successful with only having to be marginally rude
So if you bought the card assuming HDCP support worked out of the box and it doesn't return it. If everyone did the same y
Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Come clean, apologise publicly, recall products, do whatever you can to ensure that you have supported and looked after your customers. But to do this sort of thing smacks of burying your head in the sand.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:2)
Are you sure doing stupid things is stupid? Or is it just stupid to do stupid things?
Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
As Richard Nixon found out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As Richard Nixon found out... (Score:2)
Really, ATI should have either:
1. Offered a free swap to every customer with a broken card for one that matches (or exceeds) the features listed on the original product. However, for various reasons I think this is likely impossible. 2. Offer a 100% buyback offer or a check that covers the difference between having a HDCP enabled card vs. not. Basically pay the customers back for the feature they paid for but didn
Re:As Richard Nixon found out... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ridiculous (Score:2)
Not so fast. (Score:5, Insightful)
While what you describe might be occurring, I refer you to a basic lifesaving mantra:
ATI may just be stopping the bleeding, that is, first taking steps not to deceive any other potential customers. In fact, if they were to do anything else there would be a situation where they'd be saying "Sorry, we were wrong" while continuing to allow customers to get the wrong idea.
Watch their public statements and what they do next before rushing to judgement.
My Hero Champion (Score:2)
Joe User: Can this card output HDCP? I wouldn't want to accidentally expose my system to any high-bandwidth video signals unless they're nice and locked-down.
ATI: Surrrre it can. We completely support content restrictions in the name of protecting copyright... *WINK*
Joe User: Oh. Thanks. Um, I can still watch Terminator on it, right?
ATI: Of course, in glor
Re:Ridiculous (Score:2)
Uh... what about the RIAA?
well, I guess they're not really trying to hide anything, but rather sticking it in everybody's faces and claiming its legal...
A silver lining? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully this little 'mishap' will be the thing that makes it such that all our new LCD monitors aren't obsolete after all.
Hmm. (Score:2)
Too bad ATi's Linux support isn't hot.
Re:Hmm. (Score:2)
I doubt anyone is going to ask for any more proof than that. Fill out the warranty card too, just so you have the product's serial number etc.
I'm not encouraging anyone to try and scam ATI, but if you're going to do it, do it right.
Re:A silver lining? (Score:2)
As if anyone here needs reminding, planned obsolescence isn't part of Linux and free software. So, Penguin away and be happy.
Fail in the marketplace? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Fail in the marketplace? External Decoders! (Score:2)
I believe there are already external HDCP decoders available in the market. A previous topic listed them for sale in Europe.
So how do we make it fail? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I put forth the question: can it be made to fail?
Re:So how do we make it fail? (Score:4, Informative)
See this posting to Perry Metzger's cryptography mailing list [mail-archive.com] 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.
Re:Fail in the marketplace? (Score:2)
You think that without the requested protections, the content industry would pack up and go home? Nope. They'd keep doing their thing, and just bitch a lot.
If the HDCP protected formats fail, the content will become available on the non protected formats.
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.
If there
Re:Fail in the marketplace? (Score:3, Insightful)
HDCP has already been broken. You can buy hardware descramblers (spatz's DVIMAGIC), and I suspect there'll be a libhdcp for linux and OSX that vlc/mplayer/xine will use to descrambled the disks.
All it really means is that my linux/os x installs will be more functional than your Vista install. On all hardware that is technically capable, I'll get hidef blu-ray/hd-dvd playback, complete with the ability to rip/backup/whatever, while you'll be stuck with the
Re:Fail in the marketplace? (Score:2)
Yeah, because it's not like there's a VLC version for Windows or anything...
Re:Fail in the marketplace? (Score:4, Insightful)
On all hardware that is technically capable, I'll get hidef blu-ray/hd-dvd playback, complete with the ability to rip/backup/whatever,
Not unless you have a HDMI loopback cable and very specific hardware to process it. Being able to remove HDCP means nothing for intercepting it before it exits your gfx card's HDMI output. What you're asking for is a breach in "Trusted Computing".
Also, you'll want DeACCS not DeHDCP to be able to rip/backup discs. Without HDCP you can capture the decompressed signal in real time (yay) and reencode it (double yay) which currently takes far longer than real time. It'll eat a ton of disk space then consume your CPU for many hours.
Besides even if all that was the case, you do realize once freed of the DRM it is freed? As long as Windows is able to download and play whatever comes of P2P, Windows will be just as "free" to most people. So despite the DRM, I don't think it'll lead to any mass exodus to Linux/OS X...
They should issue a recall (Score:2)
Very damning (but only if you care) (Score:4, Insightful)
And therein lies the rub. We, the "geek community" are making progress in educating the general populous about the importance of understanding technology, but there is a long way to go. Until more people learn to read advertisements critically and learn that knowing exactly what you're buying is important, companies will continue to perpetuate these deceiving business practices. In this case, ignorance truly is bliss, but it's the average consumer's ignorance that leads to ATI's bliss.
Re:Very damning (but only if you care) (Score:2)
devil's advocate... (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, of course ATi should roll out a driver that has hardware HDCP enabled, or offer some form of compensation to previous buyers whom were mislead.
Re:devil's advocate... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:devil's advocate...NOT A DRIVER ISSUE (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:devil's advocate... (Score:2)
There is no driver upgrade that will "turn on" HDCP functions. They will need to do a complete recall.
Let's hope the "best" for HD (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm normally not a person to hop onto FUD and vent it 'til it stinks, but can't we hype that a little 'til no moron buys that crap anymore, and see the whole DRMism bomb like a tacnuke? It would certainly help prevent stripping us of any of the few rights left on our scale in the "balance between producer and consumer" when it comes to content.
So far the consumer drones would buy it for the simple "booooooyehy, look at the stunnin' crystal clear display!" without realizing what comes behind it. They don't care that the content industry dictates what they may see and what not, after all, what they want to see is that latest blockbuster movie and not some small movie maker's gems.
But hearing that their $500 piece of hardware ain't gonna do it should surely be an argument.
Time for the.... (Score:3, Informative)
Had to use tinyurl as slahdot cannot parse the wayback URL properly.
Re:Time for the.... (Score:2)
People who don't want the intermediate site can disable it [makeashorterlink.com]. Note that it is not the creator of the link who disables the page, but the user of the link.
BTW, you would also have had t
Lawyers will smell blood in the water (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have ATI stock, dump it, now, before the Chapter 11 filing; you might get a few cents out of it. Otherwise, make plans to obtain another adapter. If ATI can make good on the adapter, it'll be a miracle for them.
But if the info in the article is true, it's the harbinger of the end of ATI as we knew them. Pity.
The issue of trust has been broken (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
acronyms (Score:5, Funny)
CRAP
Re:acronyms (Score:2)
Re:acronyms (Score:2)
You should consider this as a new sig line.
The only one I don't understand is CRAP.
Re:acronyms (Score:2)
Re:acronyms (Score:4, Funny)
I'm getting a feeling that DRM will self-implode. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm getting a feeling that DRM will self-implod (Score:2)
The only people that will get royaly screwed by this are technically advanced users. "Normal" consumers will just pony up like they always do. Its just same shit different day.
Re:I'm getting a feeling that DRM will self-implod (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [apple.com] . 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.
Re:I'm getting a feeling that DRM will self-implod (Score:2)
The Harry Potter franchise alone is worth billions to Time-Warner. You think the asian OEMs don't look at these numbers when they place their bets?
I Predict... (Score:2)
I predict a lot of hits on the Wayback Machine this week.
HDCP (Score:3, Informative)
Big deal (Score:4, Interesting)
ARS Covered it three days ago (Score:5, Insightful)
It's everyone, not just ATI. Plenty of nVidia cards advertise it and don't have it. In fact, no video card in public release truely supports HDCP. So anyone who advertises it is lying.
This WAS going to happen (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:This WAS going to happen (Score:2)
Not nice but... (Score:2)
Hmmm, I thought we don't want HDCP? (Score:3, Funny)
Some people say ATI is being really stupid.
But are they really stupid, or is someone really really cunning and ATI got paid off to "screw up".
This way with all the fuss etc, Joe Public will go: "Wow my next video card MUST HAVE HDCP".
So who's being stupid here?
Which cards ARE HDCP enabled? (Score:2)
http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1600/specs.htm
DVI 1.0 compliant / HDMI interoperable and HDCP ready
Re:Which cards ARE HDCP enabled? (Score:2)
http://www.ati.com/products/radeon9800/radeon9800
Integrated 165 MHz TMDS transmitter (DVI 1.0 compliant and HDCP ready)
software hack? (Score:2)
So could somebody come up with a little app to run in the background to just get around this MS check? Sorry I don't know the details of how it works but it sounds
Just the tip of more to come (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Are they still "HDCP Ready" Then? (Score:2, Informative)
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
ATI : you bring shame upon the Canadian people (Score:2)
HDCP is just wrong (Score:2)
Don't buy any content protected this way. Remember good old DIVX (the Circuit City crypled DVD format, not the video compression standard). It died. This should too. I doubt
Thats funny its still there (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Awww (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Awww (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Awww (Score:5, Insightful)
*IF* the driver is trusted, the chip is not needed. But, such a driver *may* be trusted by Microsoft, but won't be trusted by the "copyright industry".
So, no content for you. The CI has spoken.
If Microsoft said "HDCP" will be supported in Vista, why wouldn't the video board manufacturers believe it? Microsoft cowed to the CIs, and ATi and nVidia can't put the feature in the driver, and customers are left holding the bag of shit.
Go ahead -- sue suE SUE!!! It will be fun to watch. Class action against ATi (and nVidia). Who, in turn sue Microsoft, who, in turn, sues (?) in the CI business.
Ratboy
Re:Can you blame them? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:To save face... (Score:2)
But I just can't help getting the feeling that someting is missing from this story... it seems crazy that they would just sell the cards claiming them to have these features, and they wouldn't... at all. Would ATI really risk lawsuits and a bad image for that?
Sure they would, if they didn't think they'd get caught! Being nice, it might be a disconnect between the engineering/manufacturing and the Marketing division. IOW, "Our next boards will have to have HD on them." from engineering and marketing g
Re:This is not the first time (Score:5, Interesting)
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?