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HDCP is an anti-piracy protocol built into the HDMI cable standard, but it actually does not work well and ruins the viewing experience. Read on to explain how HDCP works, why it can damage the TV and how to repair it.
HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) is a form of digital rights management (DRM). The DRM protocol is designed to protect content creators and distributors from piracy. Different companies and industries use different agreements, but the basic premise is the same: DRM locks in the purchases you make to yourself and your equipment. When you buy a movie on iTunes and can only play the movie on the device that uses your account, you encounter DRM.
Content creators and publishers
Because of the high cost of creating and distributing content, you can get some protection. The problem is that DRM usually makes the lives of honest paying users more difficult-in many cases, it completely destroys the user experience-and does not actually serve as a deterrent. This is the trouble we have encountered in games that require an authorized server to run. If the company goes bankrupt, the authorization server will go bankrupt, and the game will suddenly fail.
In the case of the HDMI standard and digital video, the HDCP DRM standard has brought many unfortunate headaches to ordinary old users, who just want to enjoy their TV and engage in other legal activities.
HDCP is developed by Intel and is used not only with HDMI, but also with various digital video standards such as DisplayPort and Digital Visual Interface (DVI). It provides an encrypted connection between a content output device (such as a Blu-ray player, cable box or streaming device) on one end and a receiving device (such as an HDTV or audio video receiver) on the other end.
HDCP is ubiquitous and built into devices such as Blu-ray players, cable boxes and satellite TV receivers, and built into streaming video devices such as Roku, Chromecast, and Amazon Fire TV. It is also built into laptops and computer hardware, DVRs and other modern HDMI devices.
Although the basic encryption and protocol of HDCP are very complicated and are beyond the scope of this article, the basic premise of its working principle is very simple. There is a licensing agency that issues licenses for HDCP devices. Every HDCP-compatible device (such as a Blu-ray player or Xbox) has a license and can communicate with the receiving device at the other end of the HDMI cable.
The output device displays "Hey, display! Are you HDCP compliant? This is my license, please tell me your license!" The display (or other HDCP compliant device) returns "Why, I am legal! This is my license" !" When the process takes effect, it will happen within a thousandth of a second, and you (the consumer) will not even notice. When you turn on the power of your Blu-ray player or DVR, you can work perfectly with HDTV and live a happy life without even knowing what HDCP is.
Unfortunately, in many cases, HDCP prevents consumers from using their devices and content for completely legal things. If any device in the chain does not comply with the HDCP standard, the video stream will fail.
For example, if you have an older HDTV TV that is not HDCP compatible, you will not be able to watch
Comply with HDCP content. If you plug an HDCP compatible device into an incompatible device, you will see a black screen or error message, such as "Error: Non-HDCP output", "Unauthorized HDCP" or "HDCP error".
Want to turn an old monitor with integrated speakers into a cheap little video box with Chromecast? Sorry, old monitors (despite having HDMI ports) are most likely not HDCP compliant. Unless you want to dedicate a complete computer to the project, you won't be doing any streaming on it.
Want to record your video game sessions or live stream them in real time? Hit or miss. Host manufacturers have done a better job recognizing that players want to record and transmit their content, but HDCP still has problems. The Sony Playstation lineup is a perfect example of solving this problem. Although Sony did release an update for PlayStation 4 in 2014, the update unlocked HDCP when actually playing games, but because the HDCP output is locked at the PS3 chip level, they cannot provide the same update for PlayStation 3. Their only suggestion is to buy capture devices that support component cables and use them instead of HDMI.
Even if we are not actively watching TV or games, we
The HDCP was found to be annoying and disturbing. We have written various tutorials and reviews on How-To Geek, involving HDMI-based products such as Amazon Fire TV. Do you know what cannot be captured due to HDCP? On-screen menu when loading video content. There is a content protection system that prevents you from viewing and promoting streaming devices that can legally provide content to millions of paying customers, which is very unpleasant.
Connecting a Blu-ray player to an old TV, trying to recycle old computer monitors to a small streaming station powered by Chromecast, recording and playing video game streams, or trying to capture menus and screenshots, there is nothing illegal or unethical Provisions. Writing tutorials and guides, but because of the flaws in the DRM protocol, anyone who wants any or all of these things is kept in the dark.
No one needs to buy a new TV, upgrade its perfect audio and video receiver, or spend a lot of money to solve problems that shouldn't exist in the first place. Unfortunately, the only official way to comply with HDCP is to purchase HDCP-compatible equipment.
The most absurd thing about HDCP protection schemes is that there is no HDCP-compliant method that can circumvent it in legitimate use cases. Have
The method recognized or supported by the HDCP authority, if consumers have older devices or legal non-piracy needs to interact with HDCP-compatible devices, they can help consumers in any way.
In order to further aggravate the insult to people, the HDCP standard has been compromised for many years. Manufacturers continue to pay for licenses and include HDCP in their products, not because it actually helps prevent piracy, but because they don't want to obtain licensing agencies and anti-piracy lobbying. So, how do you deal with the obsolescence of HDCP and the now destroyed chaos?
The only way to buy a new TV or abandon a video game project is to solve the HDCP compliance problem, and that is to buy a low-cost HDMI splitter that will ignore HDCP requests.
We really hope we are joking, but this is a secret media center element that can help thousands of consumers, and when we need to take a screenshot of a screen menu to show a menu, we are in How-To Geek The same goes for the secret elements used. The product we are reviewing.
Specifically, we use
($20), because even in cheap HDMI splitters, there is no consistency as to whether they comply with the HDMI standard (even sometimes in products from the same company). Reading carefully and using the Amazon review search function can be of great help in finding cheap separators that other consumers have successfully used.
To use the splitter, simply place it between the output and display device. For example, suppose you have a simple setup and just want to plug the Chromecast into an old monitor. Instead, you can plug the Chromecast into the input on the HDMI splitter, and then use the HDMI cable to connect the output on the splitter to the display. If you have a new audio and video receiver that cannot be used with the old HDTV, please plug all HDMI devices into the receiver, and then place the HDMI splitter between the receiver and the display.
In the photo above, you can see a simple setting on our table, which is used to capture menus and screenshots when viewing HDMI devices. In this example, we feed an Amazon Fire TV Stick into the ViewHD splitter, and then pass the signal to Roxio GameCapHD Pro so that we can capture screenshots on the computer. The place where we put GameCapHD Pro in the chain is where the vast majority of users looking for this solution can plug in the TV.
This is our attempt to capture good screenshots for the tutorial before dealing with HDCP issues.
You can see that screenshots like this will be useless for our purposes. No one wants to see the menu of the device they are considering buying looks like a big ugly error message on the back. In this example, even if we are using a capture tool, you can see exactly what a home user with an HDTV that does not comply with the HDCP specification sees: the part of the video that is not protected by HDCP (menu bar and pause button) ) Delivered, but the actual content has been deleted.
This is the exact same screenshot, but the signal is passed through the splitter, thus eliminating the nonsense of HDCP.
As you can imagine, given that we are keen to provide clever and thoughtful solutions to problems that plague people, how absurd we found that the solution to problems that shouldn’t even exist is to “buy substandard equipment and ignore faulty equipment . Agreement.” Nevertheless, this is exactly what consumers have discovered, and fortunately, whether through bad design or intentional design, there are products that can attract new media players to dialogue with old HDTVs.
Are there pressing technical issues? Send us an email to ask @howtogeek and we will do our best to help you.
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