![]() ![]() DRM protocols are designed to protect content creators and distributors against piracy. When you buy a movie on iTunes and can only play it on devices with your account, you're experiencing DRM.Ĭontent creators and distributors should be afforded some protection, since it's expensive to create and distribute content. The trouble is that DRM typically makes life more difficult for honest paying consumers-and in many cases outright breaks the experience-while not really doing much to deter piracy.ĭifferent companies and industries use different protocols, but the basic premise is the same: DRM locks purchases you make to you and your devices. This is the kind of trouble we run into with games that require authorization servers to run if the company goes under so does the authorization server and suddenly the game won't run. In the case of the HDMI standard and digital video, the HDCP DRM standard causes an unfortunate number of headaches for regular old consumers just trying to enjoy their televisions and engage in other legitimate activities. The outputting device says "Hey display! Are you HDCP compliant? Here is my license, show me your license!" The display (or other HDCP compliant device) returns with "Why yes, I am legit! Here is my license!" When that process works, it happens within a thousandth of a second and you, the consumer, never even notice. You power on your Blu-ray player or DVR, it makes nice with your HDTV, and you live a happy life never knowing what HDCP even is. Unfortunately, however, there are a host of situations where HDCP gets in the way of consumers doing perfectly legal things with their devices and content. If any device in the chain is not HDCP compliant, the video stream will fail.įor example, if you have an older HDTV set that is not HDCP compliant then you cannot watch any HDCP compliant content on it. ![]() If you plug in your HDCP-compliant device to a non-compliant device, you'll either see a blank screen or an error message like "ERROR: NON-HDCP OUTPUT," "HDCP unauthorised," or simply "HDCP ERROR." ![]() Jason Fitzpatrick is the Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. ![]()
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