KEY POINTS:
I spent the bulk of the weekend getting aquainted with Halo 3 Xbox Live gaming, getting blasted repeatedly in a frozen landscape littered with high-powered weapons and explosives by some guy with the handle "kiwicoffee".
Sunday seemed to evaporate as I worked my way through the impressive off-line campaign mode of the game. But I'd picked up the double DVD set of David Gilmour live in concert at the Royal Albert Hall and was keen to watch it.
I popped the disc in the drive of the Xbox Elite and the audio started up but no picture - just the Xbox logo floating on the screen.
"Secure HDCP link not found" appeared on the screen. No matter what I did, I couldn't get the DVD to play using the HDMI connection built into the Xbox Elite.
I'd been playing Halo 3 with no problems on my Viewsonic LCD monitor, which I understood to be HDCP-compliant. HDCP stands for high-bandwidth data copyright protection and is a method used to protect content being sent across connections between media players and displays. I've been suspicious of it ever since I heard about it.
HDCP hasn't yet made it's presence felt but a lot of people who bought LCD and plasma screens up to a couple of years ago quite likely bough screens without HDCP built into them.
That means that when the new generation of HDCP media players - such as HD-DVD and Blu-ray players, hit the market in numbers, you may not be able to play some content on them without an HDCP-compliant screen.
HDCP is designed to protect the high-definition content of the entertainment industry being pirated. Instead, it's already caused a lot of problems for consumers and my situation isn't abnormal as the CNetand AVS forums show.
Because my Viewsonic monitor has a DVI connection I was using an HDMI to DVI connector to connect the Elite. For some reason, HDCP isn't being detected in the handshake between the Xbox Elite and the screen.
This could be down to the DVI-HDMI connector I'm using or the Viewsonic screen or any number of things. The point is that I'm trying to play a regular, standard-definition DVD I bought for $40 from the CD Store on legitimate hardware and copyright protection is preventing me from doing it. That's pretty annoying and if it's a sign of what's to come in the HDCP world, we're all in for a lot of grief.
There' s a good article explaining HDCP here.
The bottom line is, if you're buying a TV and HDMI or DVI cables linking that TV to a newish media player, the letters H,D,C,P should be front of mind. Make sure the TV is HDCP compliant.
Most high-definition TVs on the market are and new computer monitors use the technology as well, but check for the standard before you buy. The last thing you want to do is shell out on a nice, big 42-inch LCD and find you'll never be able to display high-definition content on it.
I'm heading up to the Ceatec electronics show in Japan this week and will be interested to see what the consumer electronics industry's experiences with HDCP have been. I'll report back.
"The deluge of email suggests I should have pointed out in my blog on Thursday about the new Amazon music download store that you can't access it with a New Zealand billing address.
You'll need to change the address to somewhere in the US and punch in a US zip code to gain access - I like using Beverly Hills, 90210. It doesn't matter if you have a New Zealand-issued credit card, you can still gain access as I did."
