Last week's post gave an overview of High Bandwidth Digital Content Production (HDCP). In that post I explained why it is
completely useless in the fight against piracy, and how it causes major
headaches for the average consumer. This week, I'll detail my personal
frustrations with HDCP.
When I was in the market for a new TV, sets with 1080p
resolution had just hit the market and 42" 1080p sets cost between
$3,000-4,000. After doing a bit of research, I found that part of the increased
cost was due to the analog-to-digital television switch. At the time
(about 2 years before the switch), all television sets sold in the U.S. were
required to include both an ATSC (digital) and NTSC (analog) tuner. Including
both tuners increased the cost of these sets significantly.
To get around this, some electronics manufacturers
classified their products as a monitor instead of television. After looking at
a few local stores, I found the Westinghouse LVM-42W2 42" 1080p LCD Video
Monitor. By getting one of these monitors, I was able to save $1,500-2000 off
the price of a 1080p "television."
Westinghouse HDCP
Handshake Issues
 For the most part, I was very pleased with the purchase. The picture quality
stood up to all the other big-name manufacturers, but there was one issue that
was more of an annoyance than anything. Some devices, such as the PS3 (which I
have since gotten rid of) and the Popcorn Hour C-200, have both had HDCP
handshake issues with the monitor. Often times, when turning on the theater,
the display would flicker static instead of the picture. In all cases, this
static was fixed by simply turning any of the connected devices off and then
back on again.
After finding some people online with the same issue,
it was determined that the media device sent the HDCP signal to the monitor,
but the monitor was too slow to respond. As a result, the connected device
mistook the slow response as a failure of the HDCP check and would not display
the video. Although the fix for this was very easy, it was an annoyance that I
didn't want to deal with.
Possible Solutions
I found a few possible solutions online, such as using an HDMI to DVI cable (which didn't work), and read about someone who was able to bypass the HDCP decryption on their TV entirely with some minor soldering, (Don't try at home!) but I was tided over with a
temporary fix by programming a macro into my remote called "Fix Static" that
would turn my AV receiver off and then back on again. Obviously this was still
not a perfect solution.
Eventually I bit-the-bullet on a device called HDFury,
which is an HDCP stripper. Check back next week for a full review of the HDFury
line of products including their Gamma-X brightness booster.
I know I'm not alone in my HDCP frustrations as users of Apple TV, Xbox 360, and other devices have all complained about issues
displaying their legal content.
Has anyone else experienced any similar stories or HDCP problems?
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Re: HDCP Headaches (Part 2)
