When the supposedly uncrackable copy protection used on DVD was indeed cracked back in 1999, two very different messages were received. Hackers and most tech enthusiasts took the crack as yet another sign that these encryption schemes will all, ultimately, fall to the efforts of hackers. The titans of the entertainment industry received another messagea challenge, as it were, to build an even more "robust" content protection system.
To do this, the powers that be knew that their content protection systems were going to have to get increasingly complex and increasingly pervasive. Attention has increasingly shifted to end-to-end protection schemes which reach all the way to output devices such as monitors and even speakers. One technology stepped to the forefront of the output protection scheme, but its existence and myriad problems would remain largely unknown for years. Meet HDCP, the so-called High Definition (Digital) Content Protection technology developed by Intel and licensed to electronics manufacturers by Digital Content Protection, LLC, an Intel subsidiary.
Going ahead with bad tech
In 2004, the FCC accepted the HDCP specification as a "Digital Output Protection Technology," much to the disappointment of opponents of the technology. While many opponents stood against HDCP on principle, others derided the technology as failed, flawed, and weak. A 2001 paper by Scott Crosby et alia described a "fundamental flaw" with the system which seemed to render it nothing more than an inconvenience to end users. And in an increasingly common phenomenon, Crosby noted in a later preface to the paper that while his discovery was an accident, he would not look into HDCP any further, for fear of retaliation via the DMCA.
This is but a small sampling of the trail of problems and frustrations associated with HDCP. Another sad tale relates to the revelation that PCs without end-to-end support for HDCP might not be able to playback protected high-definition content. We've talked about that in depth and won't repeat it here, except to say that it is ridiculous that the content industry would even consider blocking HD displays from displaying HD content when they lack HDCP interfacesinterfaces that are just now becoming standard in high-end monitors. Of the four LCD displays scattered throughout my house, all are less than 3 years old, all are higher-than-HD resolution capable, and none of them came with HDCP.
Joe Consumer, the beta tester
Fast forward to today. On occasion we hear reports of HDCP snafus, primarily from readers who are upset with HDCP/HDMI implementation on their cable boxes. As it turns out, this stuff doesn't work reliably for even the basic stuff like showing video flawlessly, let alone securing outputs. I even have a HDCP/HDMI issue with my TiVo, which decides that my TV is no longer secure about once a month, requiring a reboot.
Stranger reports have arisen from PlayStation 3 owners who are experiencing blinking displays when connected to some HDTV sets. When playing games, occasionally the sound cuts out and the entire display would blink on and off. As it turns out, the HDCP technology in the PS3 would freak out and sputter if a connected TV could not consistently and quickly indicate it was copy-protection ready. No one knew that this was the case until the guys at Popular Mechanics pinned the tail on the donkey.
When Popular Mechanics ran into this problem with their own test units, they put in calls to Sony, Westinghouse, and organizations involved with HDMI licensing. It was soon determined that the problem lay with the television set's "interpretation" of the HDCP standards that are built into the PS3's HDMI output. "The PS3 expects a response that the TV is copy-protection ready in a certain amount of time," Westinghouse monitor product manager Klaus Liborr explained to Popular Mechanics. "And the response wasn't coming quickly enough."
The fix? Upgrade the television set's firmware, a process that requires an in-house visit by a Westinghouse technician. Sets sold in 2007 will apparently come with a feature that will allow the user to upgrade the set's firmware themselves via a USB thumb drive, but one worries about the possibility of bricking a very expensive television set by botching the firmware upgrade. The problem isn't isolated to Westinghouse and the PS3, either. Other people have reported that Sony's first-gen stand-alone Blu-ray players and Sharp televisions suffer from similar problems.
The new status quo?
Of course, the overwhelming majority of HDCP users out there seem to be getting by just fine, including everyone partaking of HD goodness here at the Ars HQ except for me. Still, the idea that the general public is now enrolled unwittingly in DRM beta testing is unsettling, especially when the technology in question has been known to be flawed for quite some time.
I dare say that the general public may in fact start to care about this DRM madness once the joys of needing to do firmware updates on consumer electronics becomes more pervasive. "Honey, I need to reboot the TV so I can re-authenticate with the sound system so I can patch the audio protection scheme so we can hear music again." Sound ridiculous? Tell me, if someone told in you 2000 that you might need to upgrade your TV's firmware to be able to play video games, would you have believed them?
At the very least, if the consumer electronics industry is going to go down the DRM path, they need to find a way to do it that doesn't turn consumers in poor saps buying DRM-age Edsels and signing up for abuse from an industry whose primary purpose in implementing DRM is wringing every last dime out of you, crappy experience or not.
Jeremy Reimer contributed to this report.
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