thekochs said:
I thought DHCP was just for only digital connections (HDMI) to prevent piracy/capturing of this digital content ? Hence, since Component connection is analog there is no DHCP (encryption) on it at all.
You are correct. HDCP
per se applies to digital connections
only, specifically to DVI and HDMI.
Because HDCP does not apply to analog output, and there is no way to determine if the receiving device is "safe" (i.e. does not permit recording of the content), the content providers have pressured for two
other ways to close the "analog hole": They want to be able to tell the set top box to either turn off the analog output entirely, or to "down-res" it to no more than 480p. They have lobbied Congress, so far unsuccessfully, to pass a law that requires consumer electronic devices to do able to be directed to do one or the other of these two things, so as to "close the analog hole". (They figure that since copy protection is already built into the relevant digital standards, such as HDMI, the "analog hole" is their main remaining "problem area".)
The primary battleground today is actually over terrestrial OTA broadcasting. Years of pressure from the content providers have already forced the cable and satellite operators to "do the bidding" of the content providers. The ability of the content to contain a "flag" that requires "down res" or cutoff of the high def analog outputs goes all the way back to the RCA DTC-100, which was one of the very first high-def satellite receivers (it did not have a digital output, HDMI had not yet been invented). However, except in a few cases where the flag was accidentally turned on by mistake, nobody to date has ever
actually required that analog output be turned off or "down res"-ed.
The content providers did succeed in getting the FCC to mandate a copy protection flag for terrestrial OTA broadcasting. Even there, however, the FCC balked at "down-res"-ing, and in fact the FCC directive prohibited that practice (the flag was to be used to prohibit copying, but not high-def viewing). The FCC directive was overturned by an appeals court, which ruled that the FCC had no such jurisdiction over consumer electronics devices. The content providers have continued to lobby Congress to pass a law that would reinstate the FCC directive.
The new high def DVD players (HD-DVD and BluRay), again due to pressure from content providers, do have the ability to down-res or shut off the analog component outputs. This is implemented on a "per DVD" basis - that is, there is a "flag" on the DVD that can tell the player to "down res" or shut off the analog output. The content providers (MPAA members) originally planned to release most high def DVDs with this flag turned on. At the last moment, however, they backed off, fearing a consumer backlash (since a great many "early adopters" have TV sets without HDMI inputs, and thus would be unable to view high def DVDs in full resolution on their "analog input only" TV sets). Consequently, most high def DVDs released so far do
not alter the analog output, it can be viewed in full resolution.
But the capability to "down res" the analog output is there, even if unused. It is built into virtually all cable and satellite STBs and into all the new high def DVD players. It is
not implemented in any terrestrial OTA broadcast tuners, either analog (NTSC) or digital (ATSC). (Although I once had a combination terrestrial/satellite STB, made by Panasonic, that displayed a "copyright protection" message when it was tuned to a weak terrestrial analog NTSC station! But that was simply a "bug", not a feature. Nobody has even even
proposed any form of copy protection for analog NTSC broadcasting, which is inherently low res and which is going to disappear in two years anyway.)
William C. McCain
Palo Alto, California
