It's because the rights holders in Japan (of whom many are broadcasters) have broadcasters by the balls and demand it and the Japanese Government goes along wit

It's because the rights holders in Japan (of whom many are broadcasters) have broadcasters by the balls and demand it and the Japanese Government goes along with it. In particular it's music labels, but various sporting events also make explicits of it. HD broadcasts in Japan (including free to air terrestrial) are encrypted with B-CAS, something that has been broken a few times over many years now. The 4k/8k transmissions over satellite have a new system called A-CAS that instead of being smart card based, is an ASIC in device that apparently receives keys and firmware out of band from the video mux. Now these kinds of systems have been the status quo in that market for over a decade, any new format coming along will most certainly have to implement _some_ form of conditional access. At least until the value of the content on it makes a minority stake on the balance sheets.