More Hi-Def Hijinks

I've got little love for DRM and other copy-protection schemes. I've been an avid media consumer for most of my life, and just the idea of having to remember details like backing up licenses and that I can only listen to certain songs in certain places is enough to make me scream. Life's complicated enough already, so my general rule is that DRM is short for "Doesn't Respect Me" and I spend my money elsewhere.

This weekend Firing Squad reported on a new DRM-related problem: that if you've bought an HDCP-capable graphics card so you can watch hi-def video content when Windows Vista arrives, you've wasted your money.

HDCP is the scheme where you can't play Blu-ray or HD DVD discs in high-definition (you know, the reason you bought the things) unless every device in the chain is HDCP-compliant. In the case of computer playback, those devices are the operating system, the video card and the monitor.

According to the Firing Squad investigation, the weak link is the video card, which actually requires two levels of support: the board's graphics processing unit (GPU) and board-level support. Today's cards have GPU support, but that's it. So if you bought an HDCP board for your system now so you wouldn't waste money later, all you've done is waste money more efficiently.

This whole HDCP thing has me wondering: is this a requirement to play all high-definition discs, or do the discs have to be encoded to take advantage of it? (An analogy would be Macrovision, CSS and region-coding for DVDs: none of these are obligatory, and anyone can make a DVD without them.) Because if someone starts making really good movies and releasing them on Blu-ray/HD DVD movies that I can play anywhere, you can guess who's getting my money.