HDCP a huge fiasco on the computer market

HDCP is a technology that was developed for stopping people from breaking the copy protection and stop the spread of future movies and music. At the same time it is a technology that can cause big problems for a regular honest Joe that despite good intentions can’t use his computer the way he wants to. The problem is that the support is anything but spread, and that in a time where both Windows Vista and the coming next generation DVD format will require support for the technology. Many have been living in denial before the fact that there is practically no support for HDCP with any computer monitors and no video cards today (on the consumer market) that can handle HDCP signals. The circuits has had support for it for years, but not even ATI’s nor NVIDIA’s high end cards makes use of the support.

The situation is anything but funny and as usual it’s the consumer that gets hurt. At Firingsquad they’ve published a very interesting article about the HDCP technology, what it does and why it soon will become a huge concern for computer users.

“Anyone with a GeForce 6/7 or Radeon X1K card who was planning on buying a BD-ROM or HD-DVD drive later this year for their PC may want to hold off on that purchase. Quite frankly, this article should affect the purchasing decisions of potentially anyone in the market for a new PC or graphics card right now that’s even remotely interested in watching hi-def movies on their PC sometime in the future.”

:: Read on at Firingsquad