Consumer Electronics and Digital Rights Managment
I frequently get questions from my customers on when I’m going to have digital video switches. My usual answer is “when it’s a stable enough technology”. However that answer usually comes as a surprise, so I have to explain how not all of this stuff works perfectly yet. I bring up acronyms like HDMI, HDCP, blame Hollywood studios, certain IC vendors, etc. I’m sure it all sounds like excuses and all, but it’s the truth.
The folks at arsTechnica wrote an excellent article that makes the point…
On occasion we hear reports of HDCP snafus, primarily from readers who are upset with HDCP/HDMI implementation on their cable boxes. As it turns out, this stuff doesn’t work reliably for even the basic stuff like showing video flawlessly, let alone securing outputs. I even have a HDCP/HDMI issue with my TiVo, which decides that my TV is no longer secure about once a month, requiring a reboot.
In my business, I am dealing with professionals that are installing a $50K system. If I sold them something with these kind of problems they would hunt me down.
At the very least, if the consumer electronics industry is going to go down the DRM path, they need to find a way to do it that doesn’t turn consumers in poor saps buying DRM-age Edsels and signing up for abuse from an industry whose primary purpose in implementing DRM is wringing every last dime out of you, crappy experience or not.
The only problem with the above statement is that it’s not the CE industry that is pushing DRM. The CE industry is being pushed into DRM by many content providers, and providers of DRM solutions. Content providers may be paranoid about piracy, or possibly not understand the new market of the internet, but what they are not is security experts. For that they look to large solution providers (you know, the ones that make CPUs and OSes) who are happy to get involved in a proprietary encryption scheme that will generate royalties, and will be forced on the CE industry and it’s customers.
It’s a really big chess set, to say the least.