HDCP/DRM question...

[Azarado]

I'm looking into buying my first home PC. While researching hardware, I've stumbled across this HDCP/DRM junk. One of my main reasons for a home PC is to give Comcast cable-TV the kiss-off, by replacing it with (free) Internet-TV. I'm looking to use computer to 'pipe' in TV shows, movies, viral videos, ect., into my TV/DVD recorder set-up. Anyway, I need to know how to avoid (if possible) or strip (if necessary) this HDCP/DRM crapola. I have a vague notion avoiding it centers around s-video inputs/outputs. Not sure of much else, like just how far it reaches. Would welcome advice from anyone knowledgeable on this!

 

[lawless2142]

HDCP only involves a "trusted connection" between hardware. It's very similar to how Microsoft chip locks their accessories to the console; unauthorized devices without a security chip won't authenticate. In the case of HDCP, your TV needs to be compatible in order for your Blue Ray player (or eventually set top boxes) to establish a "trusted" connection and thereby allow the highest resolution signal to pass unabated. Otherwise the BR player will just downgrade the video signal to a composite 480i output with standard stereo sound.

Your choice of a display won't affect PC usage unless you need to hook up a PS3/BR standalone player as well. It's not related to PC DRM methods (like Windows Media encryption DRM or games).

 

[evilsofa]

To put it simply, HDCP prevents you from making high-quality (higher than 480i) copies of video from the video ports in your video card. Yeah, that is as pointless and absurd as it sounds, because nobody wants to do that.

 

[Azarado]

HDCP only involves a "trusted connection" between hardware. It's very similar to how Microsoft chip locks their accessories to the console; unauthorized devices without a security chip won't authenticate. In the case of HDCP, your TV needs to be compatible in order for your Blue Ray player (or eventually set top boxes) to establish a "trusted" connection and thereby allow the highest resolution signal to pass unabated. Otherwise the BR player will just downgrade the video signal to a composite 480i output with standard stereo sound.

Your choice of a display won't affect PC usage unless you need to hook up a PS3/BR standalone player as well. It's not related to PC DRM methods (like Windows Media encryption DRM or games).

Further google research indicates the way to avoid HDCP & DRM is to avoid HDMI, DVI (except maybe DVI-A and/or DVI-I), Bluray, HD DVD, "DirectShow", and Windows Media Player SDK. Further, s-video, component, composite, & coaxial inputs/outputs defeat it. Vista contains 'Protected Media Path' & 'Protected Video Path' (DRM). It appears Windows 7 has some sort of HDCP compliant crap in it too. While finding this stuff out, I've come across various complaints about HDCP or DRM blocking display on either computer monitors or transfer to TVs, & recording to TV/DVD recorder setup (like what I plan on), even though people were using s-video connects. As my home PC is only in the planning stage right now, I need advice on what is needed to avoid HDCP/DRM non-compliancy problems (I've no intention of surrender to this junk), or else how to strip it (as last resort)!

 

[monitorrat]

I'm looking into buying my first home PC. While researching hardware, I've stumbled across this HDCP/DRM junk. One of my main reasons for a home PC is to give Comcast cable-TV the kiss-off, by replacing it with (free) Internet-TV. I'm looking to use computer to 'pipe' in TV shows, movies, viral videos, ect., into my TV/DVD recorder set-up. Anyway, I need to know how to avoid (if possible) or strip (if necessary) this HDCP/DRM crapola. I have a vague notion avoiding it centers around s-video inputs/outputs. Not sure of much else, like just how far it reaches. Would welcome advice from anyone knowledgeable on this!

i'm not sure how well that free internet tv stuff works hah but anyway it surely won't use HDCP (of course regular channels OTA with a tuner card works great), i tried a bit during the olympics when nbc refused to show the events and got some eurosport channels in at times but ti's not great quality and it was a bit patchy as to connection.

if you hook up a PS3 or blu-ray player to it and it doesn't have HDCP you are stuck (although maybe some box will fix it)

but you can always just play blu-rays using PowerDVD on your PC instead and use AnyDVDHD to remove the dumb HDCP (just run the program and it sits there and automatically lets any blu-ray play as if it had no HDCP enabled)

What is really absurd is the stupid industry decided that PC audio can only be 16bit/48kHz max. They disable 24bit and 96Hz on disc playback. What a joke people can copy the whole disc but they are afraid someone will try to bus snoop and record the soundtrack??? And like traders really give a crap about 24bits vs 16bits, hell they'd probably compress it to 128 MP3 anyway . But the utter morons at the studios have deemed 24bit audio the one thing that must be protected at all costs! So a freaking trader can easily copy the entire disc but nobody, no legal owners can play back discs without forced down sampling on PCs! Total idiocy! Hell they probably drive people into looking into ways to get around it (of which sadly none yet exist since they also somehow forced all the PC blu-ray player software to downsample ALL audio even on non-protected discs, even discs you author your freaking self!) and straight to copy programs. So stupid.