The Dark Side of HDCP - Why is My PS3 Blinking?

FloatsomNJetsom writes "High Definition Content Protection is supposed to make sure you're not playing pirated content, but sometimes your devices screw up the HDCP 'handshake' (over an HDMI cable) and nothing works. This happens with some regularity with the PS3, and Popular Mechanics investigated and found a quick and dirty workaround. From the article: 'We then checked with Leslie Chard, president of HDMI Licensing, which owns the rights to the standard, who told us that HDCP is one component of HDMI that has been plagued with interoperability issues. HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection) is designed to prevent the interception of data — specifically copyrighted Hollywood movies — between an output component and a display. As Steve Balough, the president of Digital Content Protection, the licensing company for HDCP explains, the two pieces of hardware must exchange a key, a sort of certificate of authenticity unique to each individual device, to verify a secure connection.' The problem isn't limited to the PS3 — many HDTV cable boxes and have the same problem. The fix there? Unplugging the power cable."

why so onerous, technology?

[yagu]

It's a pity -- the articles roll in every day about yet another speedbump in the DRM saga and how DRM and "protection" in general makes consumers' lives miserable. Of course it's no surprise (to me), just a disappointment. Imagine if the energy spent trying to hogtie the general (and 99%+ totally honest and willing to purchase) consumer were instead applied to making the technology even better?

Making the technology even better rather than harder would only improve the landscape for everyone. TV would look better, content would be easier to deliver and use. Bang for the buck would be better. Access to everyone for things like "high-def" (pick your favorite pseudo-standard) would not be limited to just those with $5-10,000 to toss (with no guarantee your picture will be better, or even viewable).

Instead it's just one more betrayal.

Consider the very first CD player I purchased in 1983. I paid, well, I won't say how much I played for player that could only play one CD at at time. But it was heady stuff even back then. The player had a "pitch" slider to change the pitch of the music (though it also correspondingly sped up and slowed down the track to accommodate). It had the ability to program the songs in any order, and even program the starting time offset into a track, and stopping offset into a track.

And!, on the back, a 9-pin DIN out (I think that was the configuration), with the only mention in the user's manual for that output as "reserved for future use"! I couldn't have been more excited. I brought friends over and showed them the exciting new technology... they just drooled at the sight.

And I always saved the "for future use" output as the hook... I described digital output where liner notes, lyrics, all kinds cool things (of course including the de rigeur track information) would be output in some form that could be put up on a display, TV or otherwise. I 'splained how the digital format worked and how much storage there was available for all kinds of "future use" enhancements.

And, it never happened. The promise of excellent technology, never delivered. And (I've posted on this before), the notion of track info associated with CD technology didn't emerge until we, the people, did it ourselves! with CDDB!

Instead, newer generations of technology included increasingly large percentages of "slice" dedicated to controlling our use of the media, not improving the quality of our experience.

I say fork 'em.

Maybe one good thing will come of all of this -- people may get so fed up and annoyed with trying to get their newfangled entertainment setups to work right (or at all), they give up, buy a bicycle, or some hiking shoes, and get outdoors and see a different world... maybe even one with more return on investment.

WTF?!

[linvir]

Would you like some coffin with your nails?

The Dark Side?

[draevil]

The Dark Side of HDCP? I wasn't aware there was a bright one...

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

people may get so fed up and annoyed with trying to get their newfangled entertainment setups to work right (or at all), they give up, buy a bicycle, or some hiking shoes, and get outdoors and see a different world... maybe even one with more return on investment.

Well, people want to be more immersed in their games, and that's as good an idea as any. The way people drive these days, being outdoors is like being on the sidelines of a Burnout game. And the resolution is much better than 1080p.

Re:It is worse than that...

[DeadChobi]

Boy, that sucks. When I turn my regular old television on, I don't have to worry about handshakes, DRM, blinking pictures, or any of that buggy crap. What's great about analog cable is that it works. Yessir, after reading all these horror stories about HDCP and HD televisions, I don't think I'm ever going to upgrade from good old regular televisions until they pry the thing from my cold dead fingers. When they stop selling DVDs I'll probably just pirate shows in low-def and pipe them to my TV.

The SD television standard has a total of one resolution, and only three real standards which vary by country. Not only that, my television has a cable box built in so that all I have to do is plug cable into my TV and I can watch television. Sure beats having to screw around with a box and play with it for an hour until I figure out how to get it handshaking.

In short, I'm saying that everyone who bought into the DRM-laden technologies got bit because they didn't understand the real purpose of DRM. DRM is really just designed to make your content harder to access. Reading your anecdote, it appears to be working. Anyone who bought DRM tacitly accepted the technology.

If you don't like it, vote with your wallet.

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[jdcope]

Or maybe he's just one of those people who doesnt like to use profanity in a public forum.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[RedWizzard]

Or maybe he's just one of those people who doesnt like to use profanity in a public forum.

Then don't use it. If you mean "fuck" writing "fork" or "f**k" or whatever doesn't change anything - you meant to swear and everyone who reads it knows you meant to swear. So either spell it properly or don't use it at all.

News Flash: This SHOULDN'T BE.

[Svartalf]

Not the cheap product problems. The damn DRM. If you didn't worry about protecting mostly excrement and produced quality results and improved tech, things would probably work out better. But they want you to pay and pay and pay and pay.

Heh... Good thing I have little desire for most TV and most movies these days, eh?

Re:news flash: cheap product has problems

[gallondr00nk]

I always wondered who arbitrarily decided that cheap stuff deserves not to work. The way I see it, if I paid my money for something I would expect functionality out of it regardless.

Case in point; I bought a Linksys WRK-54G 8 months ago (VERY cheap), and later discovered that despite paying good money for it the product was totally worthless as a router. Wireless connections dropped every hour or so, the box needed a hard reset every day and it wouldn't cope with any more then about 250 pipes without crashing. Needless to say it got returned a week later.

As consumers why should we accept that cheap automatically means defective? Have our standards dropped so far that we don't even expect our money to go supply functional products without paying a premium?

The hilarious part...

[sterno]

All of this wonderful copy protection stuff doesn't actually stop piracy. Wasn't it just a day or two ago that there was a rip of an HD-DVD on BitTorrent? So why incorporate all these complex and onerous technologies when, in the end, all they do is make it so your paying customers have buggy hardware?

 

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[neomunk]

It's cheap and easy to do right now, and the content providers are still raking in record profits. And speaking of VCRs, did they kill the entertainment industry? Lower their profits any? Of course not, just like MP3s and broadband haven't done anything but made even more money for the RIAA's members.

BTW, why are we being forced to spend OUR money and OUR resources protecting someone else's rights, even at the expense of our own (fair use). You do know that you pay for the DRM hardware along with the rest of the machine... And that every transistor switch in the box uses the electricity you're paying for. Not much mind you, but more than none. I'm not paying so that my rights can be abridged, or so some stuffed suit can feel better about dirty little consumer me having access to his precious boy band song.

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[MBGMorden]

Or, he could opt to speak in whatever way he pleases rather than bend to the will of some profanity-obsessed grammar Nazi. If you have a problem with the way he writes, fork off and don't read it.

Re:news flash: cheap product has problems

[norton_I]

The problem is, those cheap products shouldn't exist at all. It something is selling for less than it costs to make and test a reilable product, it isn't likely to be one. Consumers understandably look at two boxes and see that one costs half the price of the other for the "same" functionality, and buy the cheaper one. If manufacturers were penalized for shipping defective products, there wouldn't be any overly cheap products, and all would be well in the world. Except that the guy who is broke but wants are wireless router for 1 or 2 computers and doesn't mind reseting it won't be able to buy one. I can't really say whether that is a good or a bad thing.

Part of me dreams that in a world with a minimum standard of full functionality, the prices would not be much higher, but I begin to doubt that.

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[nschubach]

So buy implying the word and using an alternative, your actually (intentionally) bypassing the protection mechanism and corrupting the minds of young children. Wouldn't that be "contributing to the delinquency of a minor"?

Re:why so onerous, technology?

[creysoft]

It seems to me that the minds who work on DRM probably aren't all that brilliant. Most of the truly gifted people realize that there's no good way to implement it, and shy away from it. Judging from the amount of obvious holes, catastrophic bugs, and general suckiness of most DRM solutions to date, I'd guess that most of the people working on them are not brilliant programmers, but rather people we'd rather not have writing our device drivers in the first place.