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BlackBook88

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2008
40
0
I bought my imac for the soler reason to have a beautiful desktop computer and since it was an apple product i was going to take full advantage of itunes. Well i went out and bought a minidisplay to hdmi cable today and tried to playback my hd episode of entourage on my 42" plasma tv and got an error saying that it was copyrighted and some hcim ******** that I couldn't use this file on an external display. Someone tell me PLEASE that there is some way around this. Do I honestly have to go purchase a stupid apple TV?
 
You purchased DRM encoded content, and a crappy cable witch doesn't support HDCP. This is no one's fault but your own.

Buy a lead/adaptor which does support HDCP.
 
This is no one's fault but your own.

yes admittedly.

but it is also that of people pirating music/films causing us paying customers to have to play monkey to some form of piracy protection that does not apply to us, or the responsibility of majors that have yet to get there act together, or hardware makers that continuously mess with things such as cable connectors...

i share the intrinsic anger stated, and i do think the response was correct but a little blunt
 
but it is also that of people pirating music/films causing us paying customers to have to play monkey to some form of piracy protection

Only because content providers chose to enforce it, DRM has been cracked on ever major content distribution platform already (BD, HD-DUD, iTunes etc). As usual, DRM prevails in causing a headache for legitimate customers, pirates wouldn't even know that it exists.
 
so i do not need to get an apple tv? What cable do i need? Mini display to vga will not work?
 
I made a mistake in the original post, i originally used minidisplay in the thunderbolt port to vga. I must got mini display to hdmi?
 
so i do not need to get an apple tv? What cable do i need? Mini display to vga will not work?
VGA nor DVI will not work, since they do not support an HDCP handshake.

Mini-DisplayPort-to-HDMI will work, assuming your TV has an HDMI input (which most TVs produced in the past few years will have at least 3).
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

You might benefit from Xanax
 
To be fair to the OP, it is annoying. Yes, there are far worse problems in the world, but put yourself in the OP's shoes for a moment, as I was there a year ago.

Last year I replaced a 2008 C2D Mini with a 2010 Mini. My display was a 23" Apple HD Cinema Display with a DVI port that I bought back in 2005 (ho ho! look up what those cost back then!), so I used the miniDisplayPort-to-DVI adapter (and also had an HDMI-to-DVI adapter for some reason). I was a bit surprised that I couldn't watch any of the HDCP-protected video content from iTunes on the computer display.

Now, granted, I immediately knew why I was getting HDCP errors, but it was a bit of a "you have to be ****ing kidding me" moment. I had to buy an HDCP compatible display to watch iTunes video on my Mini. For the average Mac Mini buyer (excluding enthusiasts here), that's a no go. Your average person doesn't own a mini-DisplayPort or DisplayPort display, and they're probably using one with a DVI-I or VGA HD15 connector. To the average person -- who has never heard of the acronym HDCP before -- this would be frustrating and confusing.

During Xmas I bought myself a new 27" LED Cinema Display, and obviously, the problem is now gone. The average person who bought a Mini isn't going to go buy a 27" LED CD though, nor will they find DisplayPort displays to be common in stores. They'll just think it's broken and left with a sour taste in their mouth. If anything, they're going to be pissed at Apple since their iTunes video won't work unless they spend more money on a new display (or an Apple TV), which they weren't planning on, and defeats the purpose of a cheap switcher/hobbyist Mac.

So think about that. Imagine if the OP was your parents. How would you explain it to them? How would you think they'd feel that they can't watch their iTunes content on the Mini they just bought without buying an AppleTV or getting a new computer display? I know my parents, so I'd say "frustrated as all get out". It's a very crappy experience for the end-user.

We can thank the MPAA for this.
 
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So how can this be Apple's fault? Blame it on your stupid DMCA/MPAA-driven laws. Not every jurisdiction embraces this draconian system, ya know...
Easy. The average end-user doesn't go, "Oh, this is the MPAA's fault". They're unaware of those lobby-related shenanigans.

They bought a device from manufacturer. Device does not seem to work. It is device manufacturer's fault, because from the end-user's perspective, that's all they know. Just like the public is annoyed that they need to buy a TV with HDMI ports to use a Blu-Ray player. Etc. They don't get mad at the MPAA (to them, the MPAA doesn't exist since they aren't aware they exist), they get mad at the manufacturer of the Blu-Ray player and/or the manufacturer or the TV.

And for the record, I doubt anyone here on the forums will ever stand up for the MPAA's lobbying ******** -- myself included. Just those of us here on the forums are a small minority of the userbase that is aware of these things. The average member of the public just runs into these sorts of issues and gets frustrated at the device they bought. And without question, it's a crappy experience for end-users.
 
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I think your best bet is to buy an Apple TV. It's a very simple and elegant solution.
 
I bought my imac for the soler reason to have a beautiful desktop computer and since it was an apple product i was going to take full advantage of itunes. Well i went out and bought a minidisplay to hdmi cable today and tried to playback my hd episode of entourage on my 42" plasma tv and got an error saying that it was copyrighted and some hcim ******** that I couldn't use this file on an external display. Someone tell me PLEASE that there is some way around this. Do I honestly have to go purchase a stupid apple TV?

"I bought my imac for the soler reason to have a beautiful desktop computer" - you achieved your goal ...... Big deal if it plays a movie etc... It's SEXY!!!
 
So how can this be Apple's fault? Blame it on your stupid DMCA/MPAA-driven laws. Not every jurisdiction embraces this draconian system, ya know...

Macs.....they just work! Its not the users fault either, though I do think they are overacting a little here.... Hence a few smartarse replies.
 
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