How-To Geek
HTG Explains: How HDCP Breaks Your HDTV and How to Fix It
Unbeknownst to most consumers there’s an anti-piracy protocol built right into the HDMI cable standard. Not only does it have a poor track record when it comes to piracy prevention it outright breaks the viewing experience for many people. Read on as we explain how it works, why it breaks your TV, and how you can fix it.
HDCP: DRM for the HDMI Age
Digital Rights Management (DRM) protocols are protocols designed to protect content creators and distributors against piracy. Different companies and industries use different protocols, but the basic premise is the same. The DRM generally performs one of two tasks (or both) to prevent piracy: it locks purchases to the purchase makers and it locks content to authorized devices. When you buy an album on iTunes and you can only listen to it on devices authorized by your account, you’re experiencing DRM. When you buy an operating system or video game and they can only be installed on a single computer, you’re experiencing DRM.
Content creators and distributors should be protected as it is expensive to create and distribute content, and they should be compensated for that content. However, DRM typically makes life more difficult for honest paying consumers and in many cases it can outright break the experience those paying consumers. This is the kind of trouble we run into with games that require authorization servers to run; if the company goes under so does the authorization server and suddenly the game won’t run.
In the case of the HDMI standard and digital video there’s a DRM standard just like there is in other industries and that DRM standard causes an unfortunate amount of headaches for regular old consumers just trying to enjoy their televisions and engage in other legitimate activties.
HDMI’s DRM protocol is known as High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection. The protocol was developed by Intel and is used not just with HDMI but a variety of digital video standards like DisplayPort and Digital Visual Interface. It provides for an encrypted connection between a content outputting device (like a Blu-ray player, cable box, streaming stick like the Chromecast or Roku Stick) and a receiving device (an audio-video receiver in a media center setup or the HDTV itself).
HDCP is everywhere and is built into devices like Blu-ray players, cable boxes, satellite TV receivers, and streaming video hardware like the Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV. It’s also built into laptops and computer hardware, DVRs, and other modern HDMI devices.
Like other forms of DRM, such as the previously mentioned game authorization server, HDCP isn’t without its problems and outright breaks the viewing experience for many consumers.
Where HDCP Breaks Down
Although the underlying encryption and protocols are sophisticated and outside the scope of this article, the basic premise of how HDMI HDCP works is quite simple. There is a licensing body that issues licenses for HDCP devices. Each HDCP compliant device, like your Blu-ray player or Xbox, has a license and the ability to talk to the device it is outputting the signal to over the HDMI cable.
The outputting device says “Hey display! Are you HDCP compliant? Here is my license, show me your license!” and in turn the display (or other HDCP compliant device) returns with “I am! Here is my license!” When that process is working, it happens within a thousandth of a second and you, the consumer, never even notice. You power on your Blu-ray player or DVR, it makes nice with your HDTV, and you live a happy life never knowing what HDCP even is.
Unfortunately, however, there are a host of situations where HDCP gets in the way of consumers doing perfectly legal things with their devices and content. If any device in the chain is not HDCP compliant, the video stream will fail.
For example, if you have an older HDTV set that is not HDCP compliant then you cannot watch any HDCP compliant content on it. If you plug in your Blu-ray player, a Chromecast, or any other device that follows HDCP standards you’ll either see a blank screen or you’ll see an error message like “ERROR: NON-HDCP OUTPUT” or simply “HDCP ERROR.”
Want to turn that old monitor with integrated speakers into a cheap little video box with a Chromecast? Sorry, there’s a very good chance that old monitor (despite having an HDMI port) is not HDCP compliant. You won’t be streaming anything to it unless you want to dedicate a whole computer to the project.
Want to record your video game sessions or stream them live? It’s hit or miss. Console makers have gotten better about recognizing that players want to record and stream their content but HDCP is still problematic. The Sony Playstation lineup is a perfect example of this problem. While Sony did release an update in 2014 for the PlayStation 4 that unlocked HDCP lock during while actually playing the game, they can’t provide the same update for the PlayStation 3 because the HDCP output is locked at the chip level in the PS3. Their only advice is to buy a capture device that supports component cables and use those instead of HDMI.
Even when we’re not actively watching TV or gaming, we still find HDCP to be annoying and intrusive. We write all sorts of tutorials and reviews here at How-To Geek that involve HDMI-based products like the Amazon Fire TV and the like. You know what you can’t capture because of HDCP? The on-screen menus while the video content is loaded. It’s pretty irritating to have a content protection system get in the way of you reviewing and promoting streaming devices that legitimately deliver content to millions of paying customers, we’ll tell you that much.
There’s nothing illegal or unethical about hooking a Blu-ray player up to an old TV, trying to recycle an old computer monitor into a little Chromecast-powered streaming station, recording and streaming your video game play, or trying to capture menus and screen shots to write tutorials and guides, but thanks to a flawed DRM protocol anyone who wants to any or all of those things is left in the dark.
How to Fix Your HDCP Problem
Absolutely no one should have to buy a new television set, upgrade their perfectly fine audio-video receiver, or otherwise spend significant piles of money to solve a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place, yet officially the only way to comply with HDCP is to buy a new HDCP-compliant device.
That’s the most absurd thing about the HDCP protection scheme is that there is no HDCP-compliant way to circumvent it for legitimate use cases. There are zero methods endorsed or supported by the agency in charge of HDCP that help consumers in anyway if they have older equipment or a legitimate non-piracy need to interact in any way with an HDCP-compliant device. To add further insult to injury, the HDCP standard has been compromised for years now and manufacturers continuing to pay for licenses and including it in their products has everything to do with not wanting to fight with the licensing agency and the anti-piracy lobby and very little to do with actually stopping piracy (or helping consumers). So what can you do to deal with the outdated and now compromised mess that is HDCP?
Short of buying a new television or giving up on your video game project the only way to deal with your HDCP compliance problem is to buy a cheap HDMI splitter that ignores HDCP requests.
We really wish we were kidding, but that’s the secret media center ingredient that has helped thousands of consumers and the very same secret ingredient that we use here at How-To Geek when we need to take screenshots of an on-screen menu to showcase a product we’re reviewing.
Specifically, we use the ViewHD 2-Port 1×2 Powered HDMI Splitter (Model: VHD-1X2MN3D) ($24) because even among cheap HDMI splitters there is no consistency as to whether or not they will be HDMI compliant (even, sometimes, among products from the very same company). A little careful reading and using the Amazon reviews search function goes a long way toward ferreting out cheap splitters that other consumers have had success with (like this CKITZ BG-520 1×2 HDMI splitter).
To use the splitter, simply put it between the device(s) giving you the HDCP error and the display device. For example, if you have a simple configuration like you just want to plug a Chromecast into an old monitor, you’d plug the Chromecast into “Input 1” on your HDMI splitter and use an HDMI cable to connect the splitter from “Output 1” to your display. If you have a new audio-video receiver that doesn’t play nice with your old HDTV, plug all your HDMI devices into the receiver and then place the HDMI splitter between the receiver and the display.
In the photo above you can see the simple setup on our desk, used for capturing menus and screenshots while reviewing HDMI devices. In this example we’re feeding the Amazon Fire TV Stick into the ViewHD splitter, then passing the signal over to the Roxio GameCapHD Pro so we can snap the screenshots on our computer. Where we place the GameCapHD Pro in the chain is where the vast majority of users seeking this solution would have their TV plugged in.
Here’s what our attempts at capturing good screenshots for our tutorials looked like before dealing with the HDCP problem.
You can see how such a screenshot would be pretty useless for our purposes; nobody wants to see what the menu of a device they’re considering purchasing looks like with a big ugly error message across the back. In this example, even though we’re using a capture tool, you’re seeing exactly what a home user with an HDCP-non-compliant HDTV would see: the non HDCP-protected part of the video is passed through (the menu bar and pause button) but the actual content is removed.
Here’s what the exact same screenshot looks like, but with the signal passed through the splitter to strip away the HDCP nonsense.
You can imagine, given our love for clever and thoughtful solutions to the problems that plague people, how absurd we find it that the solution to a problem which shouldn’t even exist is “buy an out-of-spec device that ignores the faulty protocol.” Nonetheless, that’s exactly the situation consumers find themselves in and thankfully, whether through poor or intentional design, there are products out there that get new media players talking to old HDTVs.
Have a pressing tech question? Shoot us an email at ask@howtogeek and we’ll do our best to help.
This is where the industry fails miserably trying to bleed every drop of money out of customers, and it does NOTHING but turn honest, paying customers into enemies. I was trying to hook up my media center. I purchased compliant cables, complaint programs, got the blue screen of denial. Updated the program for playing DVD's, updated the drivers, updated everything, and then got slow, miserable, choppy playback. I had to resort to buying a program that removed the protection entirely and only then could I watch the content I had paid for.
This industry better cater to the 99% of paying customers. What will happen is people will invest in the technology to circumvent and then have no reason to pay for content.
Back in the days of VHS, we had the same problems with HDMI and video projectors. Some projectors would fail to operate properly when fed a signal with Macrovision - this problem would be exacerbated when the signal is going through a video switch. My solution was a $20 box that blanked out the refresh interval in the video signal, effectively killing the out-of-spec signal burst that was the cornerstone of Macrovision.
I'm not going to link to them here, but there are devices specifically designed to strip HDCP from the HDMI signal.
I have been considering getting one for my parents' TV set, because while their TV's HDMI port supports HDMI, it tends to freak out and stop working about 1/4 of the time when watching a source with HDCP. So basically, their HDMI input is broken,
This is one of those frustrating areas in current Copyright law: in the US, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits building or selling a device that circumvents copy protection, but what happens when you can't legally use protected content because of this? I'm not even talking about fair-use exemptions, but the intended use of the content. This is not legal, under the DMCA, but you can't use your existing equipment without stripping the HDCP signal. For most people, though, the decision is easy: they buy the stripper and go on with their lives.
On another note: as the article mentions, not all HDMI splitters strip the HDCP protection. I have a 4-port splitter that I bought several years ago, to allow me to view my home theater content on a second TV in my office. That box will actually disable an output when a device that doesn't support HDCP is plugged in (but only when HDCP is active.) The other devices are unaffected.
Digital Restriction Management simply needs to be dispensed with. It makes life miserable for people who actually buy the content while failing miserably at stopping pirates. More and more people who would normally pay for things are choosing to go with pirated copies they can actually use. Furthermore, once you pay for something, the seller has no right to dictate what you do with what is now your property, yet they still restrict what devices you may use to read your books, play your games, or watch you movies. DRM is flawed at the most fundamental level.
The question is, what can content creators and distributors do to limit piracy and prevent people from pirating their content? Many pasts attempts have failed and annoyed paying customers.
Great article! I have ran into this and similar issues many times. Its sad that the honor system isn't enough.
Personaly I have cracked a game or 2 over the years, and still often do. Just, just don't want to have to dig out my legal CDs of Age of Empires everytime I want to play. This is a terrible inconvenience especially now days as optical drive are becoming obsolete.
Got to be a better way.
That's the problem really. The vast majority of DRM solutions do nothing to stop pirates (and a lot to annoy paying customers).
The reality of the situation is that HDCP really isn't doing much to stop piracy. Nobody who wants a ripped copy of a movie is going to buy a Blu-ray player, buy the movie, buy an HDCP stripper, get appropriate hardware and software for their computer, and then spend the time copying the movie and double checking that everything is right (audio and video sync up properly, rip is error free, and so on) when it's so simple to download pirated movies even middle schoolers are doing it.
Someone has to create that seed copy, though, and that's what (theoretically) DRM is supposed to stop. It's just too bad that plugging the analog hole does more to stop legitimate fair use than outright piracy.
For example: I will be traveling later this month. I want to take some movies with me. But oops... I can't copy them to my iPad, because DRM. So instead, I will have to rely on Netflix and my Slingbox (another device the TV networks want to kill.)
Yeah, but you can buy completely legal devices that support HDCP and allow you to bypass it, they are just hundreds of dollars.
The pirates will always have a way to easily get around any sort of DRM. The only thing it does is prevent law-abiding people from using their data where they want to.
While that's absolutely true, we all know that DRM is typically defeated shortly after it is released... which means the DRM typically does very little to stop piracy and a whole lot to inconvenience consumers.
In the case of HDCP there were theoretical security flaws revealed all the way back in 2001 and it has been broken for years now. At this point all HDCP is doing is screwing up the user experience for the paying customers while the pirates enjoy all the media they want, anyway they want it.
Yep. This is really the biggest problem with DRM. How do you design a system that allows legitimate users to make full use of their purchase while denying access to pirates?
Personally, I think the only long-term solution is a combination of education and keeping prices reasonable, so that people will pay for something like they know they should, rather than copy it illegally.
Yes, that's basically what I was saying, just not in so many words. DRM is supposed to limit piracy, but in reality it just hinders legal consumption.
What I find interesting is what's been happening in the music scene over the last decade. Apple has actually removed DRM from music in the iTunes store, and music downloads from Amazon are in DRM-free MP3 format. Both markets are doing very well, despite the lack of technological restrictions.
If music doesn't need encryption, then perhaps video doesn't really need it, either. The only reason Macrovision and HDCP still exist is because of paranoia on the part of the studios and distributors.
So the next question is: do we need DRM restrictions on video games? Soemthing tells me that this will be a slightly tougher nut to crack, simply because piracy often exceeds legal usage of games, even with DRM measures in place.
I think games will move increasingly in the direction of requiring an online subscription to play them. That's the only way to make sure that people pay.
I don't know about the subscription part, since subscription MMO's are all but dead; with ESO going F2P, I think the only subscription MMO left of any consequence is World of Warcraft.
But definitely the online part: games like Diablo 3 are a good example of "pay once, play always" online games, and we can't ignore the popularity of free games that sell in-game items to pay the bills. That may be the best model yet, as it allows anyone to play, paying what they can afford.
Maybe instead of complaining about content creators trying to make sure they get paid for what they make you should complain about the pirates making free copies available. To many tech sites are full of people boasting about how much they pirate and finding ways to justify it.
As for keeping prices reasonable, I've seen people with downloaded/burned copies of those 10 films for $5 sets you see at WalMart. Some folk simply will not pay at any price.
It is not "pay once, play always", it is pay once, play as long as Blizzard allows you - at least parts of the logic are on Blizzard's servers, and Diablo 3, even in single player, does not work without internet connection.So - same DRM, in disguise. No, thank you.
I few months ago I got cable. My TV is a 37" HDTV CRT Monitor from 1996 that supports resolutions up to something like 1200x1600. Only issue is that the inputs is RGBHV/VGA. I can plug my laptop directly into it with a breakout cable. I have an OTA box with VGA out. I have a line doubler with VGA out. But the cable box only had Composite, Component & HDMI.
I tried a component to VGA transcoder and it did a crappy job and the picture was too dark. But then I found another box with 2 HDMI in & VGA & audio out.
Works great, seems to also override HDCP. Now I can watch BluRays in HD on my 19 year old TV (Which has a better picture than anything but OLED.