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ATI responds about its lack of true support for HDCP but questions are still up in the air

Last week we reported that ATI had made false claims about various products shipping with HDCP-readiness when in fact this was not the case. ATI claims that its products were "ready" because at the GPU level, HDCP support was built in. The issue however, was that full production cards did not ship with the appropriate decryption keys set at the board level at the time of manufacturing.

There has also been some confusion between HDMI and HDCP. The two standards are different and do not represent the same thing. HDMI is the digital interface to which devices connect for video output and HDCP is the content protection mechanism put in place to deter copying. It is possible to have HDMI without having HDCP.

The problems were compounded because advertisements were widespread with claims of either HDCP compliancy, HDMI compliancy, or in some cases both. Some products even claimed full HDMI compliancy when in fact the boards themselves did not ship with a mechanism to take advantage of the interface. On the other hand, boasting about HDCP readiness when in fact a product is only half way complete in terms of being able to output a DVI-HDCP signal or HDMI-HDCP signal is simply incorrect.

The issue was brought to ATI because whereas NVIDIA does not manufacture its own boards, ATI does. The number of NVIDIA partners that claimed HDCP support but failed to deliver on the board level are in fact, in the same coup as ATI or any one of its partners who made such claims. ATI boards that do claim this however, are extremely widespread and according to many users, purchases were made based on the fact that customers believed that the boards would be able to output an HDCP-DVI signal when the time came that such a signal would be required for playing back HD video.

In light of publishing our findings, ATI's Senior Public Relations Manager, John Swinimer responded with an official statement:
Recently published articles about HDCP have made ATI Technologies aware of product information inconsistencies on the ATI.com website. ATI is ensuring the accurate information about HDCP support is properly presented. ATI's recently announced graphics chips, the Radeon X1000 family, are HDCP - ready and can be used to make HDCP-enabled board products. Many components have to be HDCP-enabled before a system can be used to view protected content. They include media content itself, the operating system, the video player software application, the graphics chip, and the monitor. ATI and our Add-in-Board partners will ship board products enabled for HDCP as soon as it is useful for our consumers – when more of the industry infrastructure is in place.
ATI's response above brings a very clear picture: products were advertised and shipped as HDCP-ready but in actuality were not (only the GPUs are). ATI and many of its partners did not indicate that products only featured HDCP at the GPU level, and that full HDCP-DVI output will not be supported. Even though ATI's statement says that its Radeon X1000 family is HDCP-ready and can be used to manufacture HDCP-enabled boards, built-by-ATI products are continuing to be sold at such places as CompUSA that say HDCP is supported. Also, there is no statement published on ATI's website but the compny has updated its specification pages to include the following note:

This feature is supported by the asic and can be specified by PC manufacturers for its add-in-boards. This feature is not typically enabled on stand alone cards.

As the last sentence in ATI's response concludes, none of ATI's products or any of its partners' products currently support HDCP. Despite ATI's response, it is clear that many customers have made purchases believing that they will be HDCP capable, in time for Windows Vista, but will have to upgrade their video card. ATI did not respond to us in regards to what its plans are for customers who purchased its products for HDCP support. The same question is being asked to NVIDIA's board partners who also made similar unfulfilled claims.

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cut it
By Visual on 2/22/2006 5:27:36 AM , Rating: 3
I think you should cut this crap already - HDCP has been hacked already, and by the time it launched it will serve absolutely no use as a protection scheme. It's only purpose is to get its creators as much royalties as possible, and I really hope neither ATI nor anyone else will be fooled to actually pay them.

On a related note, I absolutely hate the US laws about this subject - even though the protection is as simple to crack as if it didn't exist, everyone is still forced by these laws to pay royalties and taxes and higher prices... If they went with no protection and just a law stating "don't copy", it'd have been just as secure, but atleast cheaper...




RE: cut it
By bigboxes on 2/22/2006 9:42:51 AM , Rating: 2
Would you be so kind as to post a link about this "hack". I'd be interested in reading about it.


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 9:50:39 AM , Rating: 2
While HDCP has been "hacked," in the sense that it can be decrypted, I don't believe there's any easy way to bypass the requirement for an HDCP compliant monitor when the source itself is outputting an HDCP signal. Certainly not at the consumer level.

I'm pretty sure the people that are buying HDCP compliant products aren't looking to ensure the integrity of their content and help fight piracy - they just want to watch their content, in this case on their PC to their TV/monitor. When Vista comes along, this is going to be necessary for retail purchased Bluray/HD-DVD content and probably CableCard support as well, and there won't be any easy "hack" to get around it, at least not at first.


RE: cut it
By Visual on 2/22/2006 9:59:55 AM , Rating: 2
the "easy hack" will be software that just outputs unencrypted hidef signal. its unavoidable, no matter what those corporations do. it may have to be released by some company in timbuktu and be proclaimed illegal in usa, but i dont care about that.

as to what the flaws of the protection are, google... for example "hdcp flaws" :p

the wikipedia entry on hdcp has enough links too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP


RE: cut it
By Fluppeteer on 2/22/2006 10:30:15 AM , Rating: 2
I believe what *has* been produced is a way to generate arbitrary
legal HDCP keys. With such, you could make a device which strips
the content protection, and outputs to a non-HDCP device - and
because the keys can be arbitrarily regenerated, key revokation
won't work. I could have misunderstood.

So you can get past having an HDCP monitor (with an illegal
bit of hardware), but as for getting the content off the computer
without HDCP outputs, that may be different. Remember that the
H.264 decoding may take place on the graphics card (because CPUs
struggle); you'd have to hack the graphics driver and the whole
decoder in order to make it work on hardware without HDCP.

It'd probably be easier to buy the HDCP graphics card (if someone
would sell them) - the premium for the HDCP licence is tiny,
even allowing for hardware costs.

--
Fluppeteer


RE: cut it
By segagenesis on 2/22/2006 10:36:23 AM , Rating: 2
This is good to know that we have to submit to this in case I ever want to steal the output of Half-Life 2. Because your watching a copyrighted sequence of 3D images right? Man those game developers are really losing out to people ripping off images through DVI connections.

In case anyone hasnt realized yet, this was sarcasm. Why we need this crap in the first place is beyond me. Oh, well, maybe to force people to buy new computers seeing how they normally wouldnt these days. Who the hell needs to upgrade past thier current 3ghz computer for Microsoft Office?


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 12:34:35 PM , Rating: 2
There are uses for a computer beyond gaming and MS Office. Ever heard of an HTPC? Ever consider playing back Bluray or HD-DVD from your PC? If not, just go back to playing Half-Life 2 because HDCP does not concern you.


RE: cut it
By segagenesis on 2/22/2006 12:51:11 PM , Rating: 2
Captain Obvious misses the sarcasm notice. Good to see you *still* are not paying attention to anything you read!


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 12:53:45 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Why we need this crap in the first place is beyond me.

Hey you said it, AFTER you're remarks about sarcasm.

In the interest of keeping the SNR here as high as possible, let it go, ok?


RE: cut it
By segagenesis on 2/22/2006 12:56:36 PM , Rating: 2
Hey, I'm not going to buy another 20" LCD and video card just to see high def movies. It used to be you just had to buy the drive, but apparently thats not enough these days is it? All for the purpose of inconvenciencing customers who play by the rules to probably be hacked in a few months.

Tell me again what the advantage of having HDCP is again since you are the self appointed master of the technology here?


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 1:12:32 PM , Rating: 3
Well I had a nice long response all written out and then DT failed me and dropped it.

Summary:
1. HDCP is being forced upon us by the movie industry and it's not going away - deal with it. There's no benefit to users.
2. HDCP has been hacked since before any HDCP devices were available - do you see any device to bypass it yet? Do you think the movie industry is really going to allow such a device to be sold in the US?
3. No, I'm not buying any new hardware just for HDCP support, although I sure as hell would be pissed if I had recently bought a video card expecting support for it. Those are the users that are trying to "play by the rules" as you say, and they're getting screwed by ATI, not the movie industry. We all knew about the HDCP requirements, including ATI - ATI chose to save a few dollars per card and not implement the feature they were advertising. This is the crux of the issue here.
4. As you've noted, you apparently have a 20" LCD - no wonder you don't see the benefits of an upscaling DVD player.

So to simplify for you even further - there is no benefit to the user from the HDCP requirement itself, but guess what, you're going to need it now that it is required.


RE: cut it
By segagenesis on 2/22/2006 1:27:14 PM , Rating: 2
Well of course, I dont have to buy it. Neither does anyone else. And it's not required.

Well despite my lack of $3000 in my back pocket to get a large projection screen or plasma display, my 20" LCD does high def content just fine viewing OTA HDTV. So I dont know what your stiffy over an upscaler is anyways... interpolation != better picture. It's like watching crappy hollywood movies where they zoom in on a blurry video and get an impossibly detailed "enhancement", it does NOT exist. And yes, I've seen an upscaler in action before.


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 1:57:44 PM , Rating: 2
agreed, but a good upscaler is better than a shitty upscaler. And no matter what kind of display you have (unless it happens to be the native resolution of the content), you're going to be using one.


RE: cut it
By segagenesis on 2/22/2006 2:16:22 PM , Rating: 2
I was not trying to be offensive in my previous points (bad humor?) but it really grinds my gears that I *just* upgraded my system this year (in January) and to realize im still not "ready" for next generation video is rather appaling.

I set my flat panel to 1:1 mode so there is no scaling whatsoever, and if I come across 1080i I just let a small portion get cropped top and bottom. As far as the HDCP aspect is concerned, why can you still not buy a desktop LCD that contains this? (Ok maybe *very* recently) Do they *really* expect people to rush out and buy new monitors in droves just to view Blu-Ray or HD-DVD on thier computer?

Likewise, I have an "illegal" region free DVD player just so I can watch all the movies I have. It looks like I would need to get one of those "HDCP defeating" devices in the future just to not have to buy another $600 monitor within the same year.


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 2:48:03 PM , Rating: 2
This is *precisely* why everyone is irritated with ATI/Nvidia. You SHOULD be irritated, especially since they did promise the HDCP support that MS has stated will be required for Vista.

HDCP monitors have been available for a long time on the CE side of things, but more recently Gateway has had a 21" LCD with HDCP support available for maybe ~6 months now. Agreed that it's sad how long it's taking to show up on the desktop though. Dell's XX07 series should support it as well.

As for scaling - sure your video card is outputting 1:1 to your monitor, and sure 1080i content comes close to your (vertical) native res (although you'll still need to deinterlace), but what about 720p content? Or 480i/p content? All that has to be scaled by your video card.

I don't think they really expect people to go running out to buy these things for one simple reason - the vast majority of people won't be early Bluray or HD-DVD adopters. The vast majority of people also won't be especially interested in watching that type of content on their PCs - for the most part, it's just the HTPC crowd, and a large number of them are hooking up to larger HDTV displays, not desktop monitors. And the vast majority of people don't build their own PCs anyway, and will most likely upgrade to Vista with a whole new system, which would of course include the requisite HDCP support throughout.


RE: cut it
By Fluppeteer on 2/22/2006 2:46:55 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
my 20" LCD does high def content just fine viewing OTA HDTV


Um. Two things.

1) What resolution's your 20" LCD? Genuine 1280x720 (or 1280x768)
20" screens are relatively rare. 1680x1050 will be upscaling
720p input, and downscaling 1080p input. It *would* look better
on a native resolution panel. This almost starts me ranting about
why so many plasma screens are 1366x768 instead of 1280x720, but
I'll restrain myself. As it happens, I own a screen which can
do both HDTV resolutions with integer scaling (although I'd be
better off using my CRT) - but it doesn't have HDCP. You'd be
right to think I'm not very pleased about this.

2) This would be MPEG2 OTA HDTV, yes? Which (IIRC) is going to be
discontinued in favour of H.264 HDCP-protected HDTV shortly?
I'm sure you can keep getting illegal content on-line, but if
you're being a good boy then you'll shortly be stuffed, and
restricted to low-resolution pictures. Those of us in the UK
don't have any choice with the broadcast - the only high def
content available (from the major players) is H.264 and HDCP
anyway.

Interpolation *can* be a better picture, but probably only if
you've got a serious increase in resolution to start with. If
the pixels from a DVD player are enormous on your HDTV panel
(because they're being scaled up stupidly), trying to do some
clever edge detection will help increase the apparent resolution
- but not having enough pixels with which to do the interpolation
will probably make things worse than matching the native resolution
in the first place.

That's probably not relevant here, though. The high-def upscaled
output from a DVD player shouldn't need to be HDCP protected, as
far as I know. It's only if your source is high definition that
you need to worry - and a true high def picture *will* look
(somewhat) better than SDTV. How much depends on how closely you
look and the quality of your SD source, as evidenced by the number
of people (at least in the US) who thought they were watching HDTV
when they weren't, according to a recent report...

--
Fluppeteer


RE: cut it
By CaptainSpectacular on 2/22/2006 2:51:23 PM , Rating: 2