Tuesday, May 23, 2006

HDMI DRM dormant until 2010 -Boing Boing

From Anti-DRM advocate Cory Doctorow over on BoingBoing:
Hollywood studios and some CE manufacturers have reportedly entered into an informal agreement to hold off on using the 'image constraint token' in HDMI DRM until 2010 or 2012. The image constraint token is a flag in a video signal that instructs receivers, DVD players and other high-definition sources to 'down-rez' their output to a low-definition signal when connecting to an 'untrusted' screen or other sink.

The effect is that if your screen or recorder isn't blessed by Hollywood, they can limit the video they send to it to a low-resolution image. Manufacturers who want the full signal have to enter into the HDMI license agreement and agree to cripple their hardware in lots of ways -- and have to promise not to make their equipment compatible with anyone else's, unless they, too, agree to cripple their hardware.

Link

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This has "class action lawsuit" written all over it. If manufacturers refuse to support it in a whole it would ultimatelly hurt our friends in Hollywood. I am supporting HD DVD bacause it is far advanced then bluray anyway. Why would bluray make a new format and keep the old MPEG 2 encoding?

Anonymous said...

Nice post sir, actually, I liked HDMI because I think it is better than the other connection used for videos. Looks like a USB but differs in shape.