DirecTV Adds More HD / HDCP Woes / Radio Hanukkah

[Scott Greczkowski]

DirecTV sports fans woke up today to find that DirecTV has added more HD to its lineup, those who were especially happy are those in the New York area as DirecTV finally added the long awaited MSG-HD and FSNY-HD to their lineup. All the new HD channels added today are Regional Sports N…

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST...

Catch new editions of "The Satellite Dish" every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at MultiChannelNews.COM!

 

[Tyralak]

DirecTV sports fans woke up today to find that DirecTV has added more HD to its lineup, those who were especially happy are those in the New York area as DirecTV finally added the long awaited MSG-HD and FSNY-HD to their lineup. All the new HD channels added today are Regional Sports N…

CLICK HERE FOR THE REST...

Catch new editions of "The Satellite Dish" every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at MultiChannelNews.COM!

Good article, the only quibble I have it the sentence: "There is no word yet when HDCP will be turned on, or even if it will ever be used, but providers must have it in place and ready to work for when content providers do want to protect their work."
You may have had to say it that way for journalistic reasons, but I have to quibble with it. Content providers who enable HDCP aren't "protecting" their work, they're legally stealing from the customer by removing the customer's ability to excersise their fair use rights.

 

[LonghornXP]

Good article, the only quibble I have it the sentence: "There is no word yet when HDCP will be turned on, or even if it will ever be used, but providers must have it in place and ready to work for when content providers do want to protect their work."
You may have had to say it that way for journalistic reasons, but I have to quibble with it. Content providers who enable HDCP aren't "protecting" their work, they're legally stealing from the customer by removing the customer's ability to excersise their fair use rights.

The minute HDCP is turned on and component connections have a reduction in resolution is the minute I will smell a class action suit. If the TV set has the ability to display the full resolution and that is taken away this is grounds for a class action. I've talked with many lawyers about this and they all say they will be looking at this very closely. I have a few lawyers who said they cannot wait until this happens as it would be the first high profile case to get their career started.

This will be a very very very big issue and it most likely will create such a major uproar that the government will either stop this from being done "or" they will require the TV companies to upgrade and/or replace HDTV sets that don't support HDCP. Most likely cable and satellite HD boxes will be told by the government they cannot enable HDCP while other third party boxes will be allowed to have HDCP. So a Blue-ray HD DVD player could be allowed to enable and enforce HDCP. The issue is that your taking something away from the customers over no fault of their own.

The government can just mandate that no analog recording device is allowed to be sold and this would fix this entire issue. Beyond that the government would require that any recording device of any kind must be digital with HDCP. As long as this is done the government would only allow HDCP to stop recording of a show to a device that doesn't support HDCP. But playback via a DVR box to a TV should be allowed without HDCP.

 

[vurbano]

That Dish network policy is suspect too. DOes the contract say you must have HDMI HDCP complinat HDTV to recieve HD programming? Yeah I smell court cases.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

While I do understand why Dish and others are working to get HDCP ready, I do hope that if it is turned on that folks DO take action. We need to tell the industry enough is enough.

I do hope all 100,000 SatelliteGuys members stand together to just say NO to HDCP.

 

[Tyralak]

While I do understand why Dish and others are working to get HDCP ready, I do hope that if it is turned on that folks DO take action. We need to tell the industry enough is enough.

I do hope all 100,000 SatelliteGuys members stand together to just say NO to HDCP.

Preach on, brother Scott!