Bob wrote:

Steve Adeff wrote:

My goal *IS* to skip the analog step. Right now, to capture from a cable box (since my firewire output is limited by 5C, grrrr...) ... I'd love to be able to capture the video via DVI to a dedicated mpeg encoder so I could do HDTV, but I'll wait for the hardware to be available for that (or 5C gets cracked),

I hadn't realised that DRM was quite such a "clear and present danger"
as you 'merkins would say, someone in a non DMCA'd country needs to look
for a way round this DTCP stuff.

The problem with cracking 5C (and it's technologies, like HDCP) is that 5C provides a means by which "substantially compromised" protection schemes can be revoked. So, if someone were able to crack HDCP (i.e. create a computer program to masquerade as a 5C-compliant device and then decrypt the HDCP output from a 5C-compliant receiver), and the 5C's decided to revoke HDCP as a valid protection scheme, all new 5C-compliant hardware would see HDCP as insecure. So, once HDCP is revoked, all new hardware would down-res video to 480p when connected to any other piece of hardware that supports 5C protection using HDCP.

So, once HDCP is cracked, if you decided to use that crack, you would not be able to buy any new components for your system (because they see your HDCP system as insecure) until something else gets cracked, at which point you could switch to using the next cracked technology (but, no more HDCP because the new component that supports the next cracked technology sees HDCP as insecure). This "technology freeze" may not seem like such a big deal to you (how often am I going to upgrade my $4000 TV), but--especially when dealing with things like cable-company-owned STB's, you may not have a choice whether to upgrade (i.e. they switch from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), so you have to upgrade).

I'm hoping that once the general public (who aren't using cracks) get burned once or twice having to replace equipment to protect the media corporations' interests, the "learning-the-hard-way" will cause enough of a public outcry to sway the politicians' blind support of the media conglomerates. Now, with just a few techies complaining, the politicians have little incentive to do anything about it (at least until we start Internet voting--then they'll want to sway the votes of the people who crack the voting system so they can get the 2 million votes per techie ;).

Mike
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