What you will need to watch blue laser movies on a PC

September 15, 2006

The website, [H]ardOCP, has interviewed a rep from over at nVidia, in order to get some feedback on just what it will take to enjoy full resolution blue laser content on a PC. The PC is the arch enemy of Hollywood, as this is the tool required to help facilitate the pirating of their content. Therefore, we will be saddled with a new slew of copy controls this time around. It is understandable too, as the potential for blue laser is to put a digital quality master of a Hollywood film in the palm of your hand, ripe for plucking.

Unfortunately, the new digital rights management (DRM) controls are unlike the comparatively simple protections found on todays, standard definition DVD movies. So, it's best to try and educate yourself on the requirements for using these newer HD discs in your PC, before you even go out and purchase a blue laser movie title.

Just to get you started with the alphabet soup, High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection or HDCP is an Intel produced digital rights management technique. It can be used to control audio and digital content over a digital (DVI) or HDMI connection. Then, they have melded the Advanced Access Content System or (AACS) into the mix as well. If you do manage to get a disc to playback, then this will kick in to decide what you can or cannot do with the content you are watching. This scheme was a product developed between manufacturers of products close to the PC industry, such as Intel, Sony,Toshiba and Microsoft- along with the movie studios, like Disney and Warner to name a couple. Below, is just a single question and answer from the interview.

6. What if I don't have an HDCP or HDMI display?

For now you are in luck '“ as long as your display does support an analog input format such as VGA or component. The AACS content protection system defines a flag which content producers put in the header of their movies called the 'Image Constraint Token". This flag tells the movie player what to do if you are attempting to play protected content out an analog connector. The flag options are 'don't play at all", 'scale down to a lower resolution and then play", or 'play at full resolution". For now, most movie studios have chosen to let the content play through analog connections at full resolution. This way, older HDTVs out there that do not have a DVI or HDMI input will still work.

On the other hand, if your graphics card or CE player only has digital output capability and you do not have an HDCP compliant display, you will get a blank screen when you try to play protected content.

As you can see, this new content will require some specialized hardware and also some fancy software. If you do not meet the requirements, then you have what is called an "unsuitable environment" and the product will not work as well as it could, or not at all as we have just read. If you would like to read the interview, in it's entirety, then we urge you to follow this link over to [H]ardOCP! Then
after the interview, they go the next step and try out some new nVidia HD
drivers on a PC with a HD title...should be an interesting
read.

Source: [H]ardOCP