HDCP confusion

C

Cereal Killer

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 14, 2006
Messages
272
I'm really confused about this, I have a Radeon X1800XT and I run my games at 1680x1050 through a DVI connection, and reading about HDCP I'm really confused, I thought I was playing games at HD resolutions but my card doesn't meet HDCP standards according to that list, and will my video card and monitor be obselete once Vista is released?
 
HDCP is only something that you need to worry about if you are going to be using your computer to play Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. To do this, you need a video card and monitor that support HDCP.
 
Yeah man, it is just digital rights management. ATI caught flak for saying the x1900 series was HDCP ready. Yeah, it might be, but you can't add HDCP functionality - it has to be in the pcb already. You aren't doing any real HD gaming either.

Anway, Vista will be very into Digital Rights Management. The monitor and vid card, and possibly mobo will all have to be HDCP compliant to properly display the HD signal in your system. If you want to watch HD movies and such, then you will eventually need it. You need an HD or Bluray drive to like dude said.

Right now, formats are being sorted out so it is a bad time to buy unless you are a savvy consumer. Newer monitors are HDCP ready, but then we may be switching to HDMI cables on vid cards and monitors over the current DVI. It all gets crazy but we do cycles like this every few years. For example, think back to agp --> pci-e.

You should be more worried about DX10. When you go Vista and games are developed under the dx10 api, you'll need a DX10 card like the r600 or 8800.

Just keep abreast of stuff man as I see so many consumers get owned by the opaque consumer electronic landscape. Technology changes so quickly. The trick is to avoid a major transition stage where you will be left in the dust. The impetus to get informed and to be able to purcahse wisely gets greater and greater.

I am so going to be hating it when I have to buy a new TV because the TV world is getting nuts!
 
FlimFlam said:
Newer monitors are HDCP ready, but then we may be switching to HDMI cables on vid cards and monitors over the current DVI. It all gets crazy but we do cycles like this every few years. For example, think back to agp --> pci-e.
Click to expand...

Nice post except this part. We are not changing to HDMI in computers. As it is right now DVI and HDMI are the exact same thing the only difference is HDMI carries sound and DVI does not. There is no quality difference between the 2 so it would make no sense to change unless video cards are going to start rendering sound.
 
pfunkman said:
Nice post except this part. We are not changing to HDMI in computers. As it is right now DVI and HDMI are the exact same thing the only difference is HDMI carries sound and DVI does not. There is no quality difference between the 2 so it would make no sense to change unless video cards are going to start rendering sound.
Click to expand...

Yet there are more and more mobos and video cards coming out with HDMI connections...

And (if my mind is thinking right), nVidia had been talking about throwing this into their next-gen cards? They had all the tech and experience todo it, but they just haven't tried lately :p
 
Then you've got DisplayPort and UDI... who knows what we'll be using next.
 
before this gets too off-topic.
@OP you don't have to worry about your hardware being obsolete with vista. It won't.
Like previously said, HDCP only applies to HD movies, (blue-ray and HD-DVD). It doesn't affect anything else.

Also HDCP is not enabled in any HD moves so far and it won't be for quite a while longer(there are a lot of non-HDCP compliant tvs out there...), so even if you don't have an HDCP compliant monitor/card you can still watch HD movies in your computer.(that is of course... if you like watching movies on a 20" monitor which i personally think it's an abomination...but that's just me).
 
Technically you never *need* hardware capability to decode anything, it just helps.

During the early days of DVD, you needed a seperate DVD decoder card and VGA passthough in order to watch DVD's on computers. About a year later, the software decoder was licensed and made available, and anyone with a higher end class Pentium II or so could watch DVD's (albiet at lower quality due to the nature of most generic software decoders that do no pre or post processing)

That the pipes on ATi and Nvidia are programmable mean that they may eventually support HDCP (and any revisional/quality upgrades), much like a firmware flash upgrade. So they really do mean that it can support HDCP *eventually*.

Heck, you can now calculate genomes to find a cure for cancer with a programmable videocard nowadays :)

BTW: I'm really glad that Nvidia *finally* released its Purevideo to the general public, which means I can actually watch ancient Mpeg-2 DVD's without having to go the software route (PowerDVD, etc...)
 
trapilales said:
Also HDCP is not enabled in any HD moves so far and it won't be for quite a while longer(there are a lot of non-HDCP compliant tvs out there...), so even if you don't have an HDCP compliant monitor/card you can still watch HD movies in your computer.(that is of course... if you like watching movies on a 20" monitor which i personally think it's an abomination...but that's just me).
Click to expand...
Sorry, but this is wrong. You're thinking of ICT, which would prevent resolutions above 960x540 from the analog outputs. If you're using DVI, and you don't have HDCP in the video card, and the monitor you get nothing! Aka: No image.
 
ZenOps said:
That the pipes on ATi and Nvidia are programmable mean that they may eventually support HDCP (and any revisional/quality upgrades), much like a firmware flash upgrade. So they really do mean that it can support HDCP *eventually*.
Click to expand...
Also incorrect! A card that lacks a discrete HDCP crypto ROM, or an internal one (built into the GPU) will never support HDCP no matter what they do the programable pixel and vertex shaders.
 
You can program the GPU to do whatever you want (as long as its FPU related)

You can even do simple ALU calculations by translating it to FPU, although its a complete waste of a good GPU. You will also eventually be able to decode HDCP with the CPU *when* they open the licensing to do so (unlikely with Sony).

HDCP will be cracked within a year IMO, and I'm sure you will see many DVI to HDCP decoder boxes around a year after that, and probably a HDCP version of decdss or DVD-shrink which basically removes the encryption. Sort of like how we see DVD recorders now, the encryption is gonna be pretty moot very quickly.

As is right now though, yes you do need a HDCP videocard (with either an active or disabled hardware decrypter) and a monitor that supports it as well.

BTW: A programmable GPU would make a excellent WEP (802.11b/g) encryption key cracker, as you can use a fractal keycracker instead of a brute force integer. If anyone actually bothered to make it.

The CP in HDCP is just copyright protection (IE: 40 keys, each 56 bits encryption if wikipidia is correct) that prevents decoding of the higher resolution datastream if the proper keys are not used. And we all know how quickly the "uncrackable" DVD keys were broken... 3DES (three 56-bit) is old hack now, and done in about 90 minutes by a conventional CPU after which once you have a few keys, you can determine the whole layout of the hardware chip by reverse engineering it, in which case its just like having the real chip, and the decoding is done instantly.
 
Stereodude said:
Sorry, but this is wrong. You're thinking of ICT, which would prevent resolutions above 960x540 from the analog outputs. If you're using DVI, and you don't have HDCP in the video card, and the monitor you get nothing! Aka: No image.
Click to expand...

Correct the only work around so far is to hook up your monitor via analog vga cable and then you can watch Blu-ray and HD-dvd movies without an HDCP compliant piece of hardware. You will not get the benefit of HD video as you would with HDCP gear etc but at least you can watch your movie.
 
pfunkman said:
Correct the only work around so far is to hook up your monitor via analog vga cable and then you can watch Blu-ray and HD-dvd movies without an HDCP compliant piece of hardware. You will not get the benefit of HD video as you would with HDCP gear etc but at least you can watch your movie.
Click to expand...
Maybe. That's assuming the software makers aren't overly paranoid and don't crippple the analog output. The current "Version 8" of WinDVD won't play back HD-DVDs above 960x540 even if you have a HDCP compliant system.
 
VulturEMaN said:
Yet there are more and more mobos and video cards coming out with HDMI connections...

And (if my mind is thinking right), nVidia had been talking about throwing this into their next-gen cards? They had all the tech and experience todo it, but they just haven't tried lately :p
Click to expand...
More to connect to HDTVs. Changing from DVI to HDMI would be entirely redundant; HDMI = DVI + Sound
 
djBon2112 said:
More to connect to HDTVs. Changing from DVI to HDMI would be entirely redundant; HDMI = DVI + Sound
Click to expand...

tell me exactly how it would be redundant if nVidia put out a video card with hi-def audio processing capabilities. Exactly WHERE do you think monitors are slowly leaning towards?

Everywhere I look, more and more are looking like TVs, with TV-like functions and remotes and everything. Why would making the data travel across 1 cable make it redundant? It would make it prettier for cable routing :D
 
djBon2112 said:
More to connect to HDTVs. Changing from DVI to HDMI would be entirely redundant; HDMI = DVI + Sound
Click to expand...
Not if they include HD audio in the HDMI connection. Aka 7.1 of 24bit/96kHz audio. The current HDMI cards with their weenie SPDIF passthough isn't what it's all about.
 
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