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The thing that killed it for me was buying an Apple TV and then finding out half the content didn’t work because my TV didn’t support some particular fucked up

by m0xte 6y ago

The thing that killed it for me was buying an Apple TV and then finding out half the content didn’t work because my TV didn’t support some particular fucked up combination of HDCP. I wasn’t about to buy a new TV just to get a copy protection upgrade so fuck ‘em. Torrents and a usb stick it is.

arghwhat 6y ago
Technology like HDCP, which only serves to annoy legitimate users, should be illegal. One can get HDCP bypass solutions no money at all, but the technology should never have existed in the first place. Worse yet, despite failing so horribly, development is still going into it, with major players like Netflix pushing it as well.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  I'll say there's one (and only one) good thing about HDCP: if a source/sink is HDCP compliant then it's a good indicator that it's DisplayPort or HDMI-compliant. Ever since the mid-2000s through to today there's a load of TVs, displays, etc on the market that claimed to be DP and HDMI compatible but failed on the edge-cases (e.g. pumping 4K@60Hz down a DisplayPort 1.2 pipe). In my experience the gear that was HDCP compliant tended to perform better (but by no means perfectly cough Philips...). Compare that to the mess of compliance and functionality with SCART connectors in the 1990s. I had a TV with a true RGB SCART input and a bunch of devices claimed to offer RGB SCART output, yet didn't actually support it (I assume because few consumers knew how to take advantage of RGB SCART, given the default was Composite-over-SCART and at SDTV it looks good enough).
  - arghwhat 6y ago
    That's not really a good thing about HDCP at all. Not only that, I certainly have bad devices supporting HDCP. In reality, HDCP causes issues with DisplayPort and HDMI link by being one of the weakest links (HDCP signalling is usually the problem in long or cheap cables). Any issue makes HDCP kill the connection and renegotiate content protection, which takes time where there is no content. We still to this day have trouble with SCART-like features. It's just now called HDMI-CEC, and is very much a hit-or-miss scenario, even within the same brand. Case-in-point: I have an older Philips Android TV, where CEC in my setup works fine. The same setup does not work at all on a slightly newer iteration of Android TVs from Philips, despite both running a similar Android Oreo build. ---- Also note: The default for SCART was composite, with optional S-Video and RGB support, and very rarely, component (which quality-wise would be somewhere around RGB). S-Video was the common "quality" setting that "just worked", which is close enough to component (and thus RGB) in quality for the material of the time. Plus, getting suboptimal image is not as bad as getting no image at all, or missing features. HDCP and CEC is arguably a huge downgrade from SCART in that regard. ... this comment is longer than I intended ...
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      My mistake on putting “Component” instead of “Composite”, btw. I’ve corrected my post.
      - arghwhat 6y ago
        Mistakes happen. :)
ValentineC 6y ago
> The thing that killed it for me was buying an Apple TV and then finding out half the content didn’t work because my TV didn’t support some particular fucked up combination of HDCP. I wasn’t about to buy a new TV just to get a copy protection upgrade so fuck ‘em. There are certain adapters that do other things, but can also be used to strip HDCP. It's often used as part of a setup to capture the HDMI output from Macs, since those sometimes have HDCP as well.
- m0xte 6y ago
  Yeah had a couple. Flakey as hell and tend to die after a few months if they even work at all.

by m0xte 6y ago

arghwhat 6y ago

Technology like HDCP, which only serves to annoy legitimate users, should be illegal. One can get HDCP bypass solutions no money at all, but the technology should never have existed in the first place. Worse yet, despite failing so horribly, development is still going into it, with major players like Netflix pushing it as well.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
I'll say there's one (and only one) good thing about HDCP: if a source/sink is HDCP compliant then it's a good indicator that it's DisplayPort or HDMI-compliant. Ever since the mid-2000s through to today there's a load of TVs, displays, etc on the market that claimed to be DP and HDMI compatible but failed on the edge-cases (e.g. pumping 4K@60Hz down a DisplayPort 1.2 pipe). In my experience the gear that was HDCP compliant tended to perform better (but by no means perfectly cough Philips...). Compare that to the mess of compliance and functionality with SCART connectors in the 1990s. I had a TV with a true RGB SCART input and a bunch of devices claimed to offer RGB SCART output, yet didn't actually support it (I assume because few consumers knew how to take advantage of RGB SCART, given the default was Composite-over-SCART and at SDTV it looks good enough).
- arghwhat 6y ago
  That's not really a good thing about HDCP at all. Not only that, I certainly have bad devices supporting HDCP. In reality, HDCP causes issues with DisplayPort and HDMI link by being one of the weakest links (HDCP signalling is usually the problem in long or cheap cables). Any issue makes HDCP kill the connection and renegotiate content protection, which takes time where there is no content. We still to this day have trouble with SCART-like features. It's just now called HDMI-CEC, and is very much a hit-or-miss scenario, even within the same brand. Case-in-point: I have an older Philips Android TV, where CEC in my setup works fine. The same setup does not work at all on a slightly newer iteration of Android TVs from Philips, despite both running a similar Android Oreo build. ---- Also note: The default for SCART was composite, with optional S-Video and RGB support, and very rarely, component (which quality-wise would be somewhere around RGB). S-Video was the common "quality" setting that "just worked", which is close enough to component (and thus RGB) in quality for the material of the time. Plus, getting suboptimal image is not as bad as getting no image at all, or missing features. HDCP and CEC is arguably a huge downgrade from SCART in that regard. ... this comment is longer than I intended ...
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    My mistake on putting “Component” instead of “Composite”, btw. I’ve corrected my post.
    - arghwhat 6y ago
      Mistakes happen. :)

ValentineC 6y ago

> The thing that killed it for me was buying an Apple TV and then finding out half the content didn’t work because my TV didn’t support some particular fucked up combination of HDCP. I wasn’t about to buy a new TV just to get a copy protection upgrade so fuck ‘em. There are certain adapters that do other things, but can also be used to strip HDCP. It's often used as part of a setup to capture the HDMI output from Macs, since those sometimes have HDCP as well.

m0xte 6y ago
Yeah had a couple. Flakey as hell and tend to die after a few months if they even work at all.