Posts Tagged HDCP
MacBook Pro: Black screen or ‘snow’ over DVI into switchers
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems, Presentation IT on February 21, 2010
Recently, it seems, an update to Apple computers with a DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort interface (that’s MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Imac, and Mac Pro machines) has caused HDCP to activate whenever the devices are connected to an HDCP compatible device.
What this means, for example, is that if you connect a MacBook Pro to a D/A (splitter) that supports HDCP, the copy protection standard will activate. Which is fine – as long as everything else in the chain also supports HDCP. In many cases, devices after the D/A will include things like Barco Encore or ScreenPRO II devices – which do not support HDCP – and will therefore see sync, but a black screen, or sometimes a ‘snow’ effect (a result of the raw encrypted signal).
I you connect a Mac using a DisplayPort to DVI adaptor to a device that does not support HDCP – for instance, directly into the background input of a ScreenPRO II, or into an ImagePRO HD, HDCP will not activate from the Mac, and the signal will flow through correctly.
HDCP is designed to prevent piracy – if you wish to play back a Blu-ray disc or copy-protected movie, the player (or computer) that it is connected to must support HDCP, and each display device connected to the player (or computer) must either also support HDCP, or be disabled. This is inherent to the HDCP (and DisplayPort) specification, and cannot be circumvented under license. HOWEVER, as Apple has done – they can prevent Blu-ray or copy-protected movies from playing back when non-compliant hardware is connected, but still allow that hardware to display other content (for example, a Keynote presentation).
At this stage, the Apple hardware is a little too smart for its own good – choosing to activate or disable HDCP depending on the first device connected to the Mac being either HDCP compliant or not. What we really need is a work-around to disable HDCP support on demand, which will mean we can connect it to an HDCP compliant D/A (or a unit like the Barco DCS-200), and still support other equipment further down-stream which is not HDCP compliant – in exchange for disabling playback of Blu-ray discs or copy-protected movies (which is typically fine for AV applications).
Work-around: For the time being, a slightly expensive work-around is to connect the Mac to an ImagePRO HD, and then take either/or both the DVI out, and DVI loop-out ports to connect to other equipment (HDCP compliant or not).
If anyone comes across a ‘hack’ for OS X or new Apple hardware that will disable HDCP support for the sake of connecting to AV equipment (and also maintains legitimacy by disabling Blu-ray and copy-protected movie playback), we’d all be grateful if you could leave a comment here or let us know so we can spread the word!
Blu-ray with Encore or other scaling mixers and switchers
Posted by Steve Wylie in Live vision systems, Video and motion graphics on November 19, 2008
Blu-ray is fast becoming widely adopted in the home environment, and before long people will have Blu-ray burners on their desktop computers. This inevitably means that producers of presentation content will start using Blu-ray to supply HD content just as we saw when DVD came about.
The difficulty is that Blu-ray uses HDCP copy protection for any commercially manufactured discs. It’s very important that you instruct your content producers to create Blu-ray discs which are free of HDCP and region encoding.
However, when you do come across a need to play a disc which has been authored with HDCP, there are a couple of options available:
Analog
Most Blu-ray players are capable of outputting 1920x1080i over analog component (YUV) signal. While undersirable as the signal is being converted from its native digital state, analog HD is still HD, and it still looks great.
The down side to this method, is that it’s possible for some discs which use HDCP to be authored in such a way that any analog output from the Blu-ray player will be at ¼ resolution, rather than the full 1080i – this is a copy protection method, as it’s otherwise difficult to restrict the use of analog signal.
HD-SDI output
It is possible to buy modifications for Blu-ray players, or buy pre-modified players from companies like JVB Digital (http://www.jvbdigital.nl/). These players will output a true HD-SDI signal, and will not carry HDCP copy protection signal.
HDCP Stripper
There have been some devices around that are capable of ‘stripping’ HDCP from a signal – however the HDCP standard is designed to update a blacklist of such devices on players whenever the player connects to the Internet, or whenever you insert a new commercial Blu-ray disc – the black list is carried on commercially made Blu-ray discs and uploaded to your Blu-ray player when you insert the disc.
So while HDCP stripper devices may work now, they won’t last forever. You can find such devices through Google.