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HDCP Mac Graphic Cards...

P

Patch^

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 11, 2005
240
0
Great Britain
I wanted to know if any of the Mac graphic cards are HDCP? More in particular if you know that the ATi 9650 or any AGP card for the PowerMac G5 is.

I am getting a monitor with HDCP so if I wanted to I could view HD Content (I think).

Any informaion would be greatly appreciated
 
none are today. There's also been some backtracking by hollywood on this issue due to takeup concerns. It's possible that when a Mac Pro gets a blue-ray drive you'll be able to send protected HD content out over DVI. No-one knows for sure right now except to say that none or the current cards support HDCP and all current cards are DVI.
 
devman said:
none are today. There's also been some backtracking by hollywood on this issue due to takeup concerns. It's possible that when a Mac Pro gets a blue-ray drive you'll be able to send protected HD content out over DVI. No-one knows for sure right now except to say that none or the current cards support HDCP and all current cards are DVI.
Click to expand...

Well, Apple could choose to ignore HDCP and not implement it in the OS....which would allow the content to play at full resolution on any device we damn well please. :D

Not sure if that'll happen though...
 
There is no way to watch HDCP-protected content on a Mac right now... You are stuck with non-HDCP HDTV. So you could watch over-the-air HDTV and unencrypted HDTV over QAM cable, but none of the premium channels, and no HD-DVD or Blu-ray through your Mac.
 
mmmcheese said:
Well, Apple could choose to ignore HDCP and not implement it in the OS....which would allow the content to play at full resolution on any device we damn well please. :D

Not sure if that'll happen though...
Click to expand...
There's no way to ignore HDCP, it's an encryption protocol. Its purpose is to protect content from beginning to end - from the time it leaves the editing/production process to the time it appears on your display. Some hacker could build a software decoder, but they would go to jail if they ever set foot in the U.S. Apple can't build a decoder, they can only build the necessary infrastructure to allow the encrypted streams to pass through the OS and out the graphics card (HDCP content enters and leaves the computer encrypted).
 
I've seen DVI->HDMI cables for HDTV and I think i've also seen DVI->HDCP cables but they only work in one way to avoid being able to copy HDCP content.

I can't imagine Apple getting involved for a while until legal issues are clear.
 
Super Macho Man said:
Some hacker could build a software decoder...
Click to expand...
Even the success of a home brew decoder is sketchy, IMO, since the HDCP encryption can be modified by code embedded in software updates, HDTV transmissions, and Hi Def DVDs.


Lethal
 
Super Macho Man said:
There's no way to ignore HDCP, it's an encryption protocol. Its purpose is to protect content from beginning to end - from the time it leaves the editing/production process to the time it appears on your display. Some hacker could build a software decoder, but they would go to jail if they ever set foot in the U.S. Apple can't build a decoder, they can only build the necessary infrastructure to allow the encrypted streams to pass through the OS and out the graphics card (HDCP content enters and leaves the computer encrypted).
Click to expand...

The OS still has to handle the encryption and enforce the downscaling of the content, etc. (ex. a low res copy is not on the disk, the content is simply down-sampled)...so OSX could just NOT down-sample the content and pass the full res picture onto the output device without even checking. The only thing stopping someone from doing this is "the law," but there's no technical reason why it can't be done. As far as the laws are concerned...that's for a different discussion...
 
If you recall the Core Duo iMacs and MBPs were originally touted as supporting HDCP passthrough, but this was soon removed as a feature from their respective pages. It was also clarified shortly tehreafter that although the ATI chipsets used were planned to be HDCP compatible, the software implementation wasn't ready for prime time....

Since HDMI and HDCP are closely related, my guess is that we won't see HDCP supported until we see a Mac with an HDMI port.... (Or at least a mini-DVI+optical to HDMI cable).

B
 
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