We already talked about it here at length: Devices willing to handle High Definition (HD) video have to (or will have to) be all HDCP-compatible in order to be able to display anything. Recent Christmas holiday season sales will probably soon appear as somewhat lacking in this section (most of the HD-Ready TV sets don’t even include an HDMI connecteor that is a needed but definitely not sufficient pre-requirement).
Today, we start to hear about incidents for users of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console from Sony. When connected to TV-HD sets, some consoles see their display cut by some blacks and their sound dropping, etc. It is now confirmed that this is caused by a bug in the communication between the TV set and the console. Since the TV does not respond fast enough to the HDCP challenge from the console, this one decides that it is connected to a non-HDCP display peripheral and unilaterally cuts the outputs (sound and image).
The reason? A bug in the HD-TV software. The solution? Upgrade the TV. Yes, you read it. You now need to start the firmware upgrade dance with your TV set, too. The normal users will see no end to the headaches forced onto them by the music and video producers with the cooperation of Microsoft and Intel.
There is one good news anyway in the fact that the recent Las Vegas CES trade show saw Microsoft telling that the full use of HDCP would no longer be compulsory before 2008, maybe 2010 or 2012 (When is the undertaker coming to end this?).
Source: ArsTechnica.
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