HDCP?

L

lt_wentoncha

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 20, 2005
Messages
285
Hi all,

I can't make heads or tails of the HDCP wiki...can someone explain in layman's terms what that is?

Much obliged for reading/replying.
 
You probably saw what HDCP stands for on the wiki.

It means that your monitor/tv/etc has programming in it to communicate with your hd-dvd/blu-ray or video card to make sure that you don't have any thing between them, and therefore able to copy the unencrypted feed.
 
high definition content protection, the guy before seems to knwo his shit. funny thing about xbox 360 is it has its protection coming from the processore....so u cold probably copy shit...somthing i heard. lets spic this convo up.
 
Actually it stands for 'High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection'. This is relevant because of the 'D' for DIGITAL. It's only supported over digital cables, thus the Xbox360 cannot support it. The 360 maybe subject to the 'Image Constraint Token' which will downscale some HD media from 2012... possibly.

lt_wentoncha: Why do you want to knwo about HDCP. what do you want to know specifically? as there are a wide range of issues surrounding it.
 
artmonkey said:
Actually it stands for 'High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection'. This is relevant because of the 'D' for DIGITAL. It's only supported over digital cables, thus the Xbox360 cannot support it. The 360 maybe subject to the 'Image Constraint Token' which will downscale some HD media from 2012... possibly.

lt_wentoncha: Why do you want to knwo about HDCP. what do you want to know specifically? as there are a wide range of issues surrounding it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info artmonkey. I wanted to know a bit more about HDCP because I wasn't sure if it was OS dependent or if it's the sign of the times and I won't have any say in the matter with my purchasing power.

It seems I should be unhappy with it, in that only specific hardware will play high-def movies, but at present I don't watch movies in high-def, and the more I read about this and Vista the less and less I want to upgrade either my display or OS. And although it seems sudden to me, the implementation of the HDCP scheme in displays/gfx cards/sound cards seems to have been going on silently for that last 5 years.

But, insofar as quality is concerned, HDCP does nothing for non high-def media? Or should I stick to future proofing and look for LCDs that support this?

Thanks.
 
lt_wentoncha said:
I wanted to know a bit more about HDCP because I wasn't sure if it was OS dependent or if it's the sign of the times and I won't have any say in the matter with my purchasing power.

It seems I should be unhappy with it, in that only specific hardware will play high-def movies, but at present I don't watch movies in high-def, and the more I read about this and Vista the less and less I want to upgrade either my display or OS. And although it seems sudden to me, the implementation of the HDCP scheme in displays/gfx cards/sound cards seems to have been going on silently for that last 5 years.

But, insofar as quality is concerned, HDCP does nothing for non high-def media? Or should I stick to future proofing and look for LCDs that support this?
Click to expand...

Weather you upgrade any hardware for this is of course up to you. If I was buying a new monitor or graphics card today I would make sure it could support HDCP becaus I would be interested in playing BD/HD movies when the players/recorders become cheap enough. As for Vista and HDCP I don't know how different it will be from XP or any other OS as far as playing back either BD or HD-DVD movies goes. I wrote something about HDCP back along that might help you, this has been modified by SeetheSeer after I poted this previously.

HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection) is, as it sounds, only for digital signals. No analogue signal (VGA or Component) can or will ever support HDCP. Fortunately they're also not, nor will they ever be subject to its restrictions (there is no copy protection on content sent throungh these connections).

If you are using a digital cable (HDMI or DVI) with HD content that has HDCP (not all of it does) then you will need a HDCP compliant monitor and graphics. For HDTV's the 'HD Ready' comliancy takes care of you so HDCP is not an issue when buying hardware for home cinema equipment today.

Although HDCP was active from day 1 it's sometimes confused with the 'Image Constraint Token' (ICT). With playing HD content through analogue cables the only thing you'll have to worry about is ICT. This, if the content requires it (none will for several years and the Xbox 360 never will for games), will downscale all content to half the resolution of 'Full HD' (960x540). This could cause problems with supported resolutions on display hardware.
 
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