One would think a marketplace war over the next home-video format would be enough to outrage viewers who invested in high-end HDTV displays. But now comes news that copy-protection technology slated for both the Blu-ray and HD-DVD optical disc formats may not play on many of today’s computer and video displays.
If fed-up consumers decide not to take it anymore – and vote with their wallets – the brewing fiasco could be enough to kill the golden DVD goose.
In a widely distributed report, PC World magazine said most current-generation HD equipment won’t play either Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs equipped with PVP-OPM copy protection. Monitors not compatible with the copy protection will either show a degraded image or Hollywood’s version of the “blue screen of death”-a message warning the owner that his display has been “revoked.”
The motion picture industry, paranoid about pirating, is behind this technology with its demand for an umbrella content protection scheme known as AACS, for Advanced Access Control System.
If Windows PCs are to play the new discs, Microsoft has little choice but to support AACS, which is where PVP-OPM comes in. According to Microsoft, PVP-OPM is designed to prevent pirates from attaching recording devices directly to the PC graphics card’s DVI or HDMI video outputs in order to capture a clean digital copy of the disc’s otherwise encrypted content.
A related component, PVP-UAB, is supposed to prevent savvy computer owners from installing data-capture cards in order to grab HD movies straight off the PCI Express bus.
Unfortunately, PVP-OPM will also shut out plenty of law-abiding movie watchers whose current displays aren’t future-proof. Few existing widescreen desktop displays support HDCP, though a handful of HDCP-compliant displays from NEC, Samsung, Sony, and ViewSonic are just starting to appear.