MacBooks Enter a Golden Age of Anti-piracy Cruft: HDCP For All

Open any LCD monitor. The ribbon cable which connects the VGA/DVI/HDMI decoder board to the LCD panel itself (a separate product, of which there are only a few manufacturers) carries an entirely unencrypted and fairly well-documented signal. With an <$100 FPGA, any HDMI monitor can be turned into a decryptor.

I would be sooo pissed if the movie i downloaded wouldn't play on my regular TV or projector I setup or something. I don't understand why they would require encryption for an analog out? Even a digital out. The movie-cracker people do everything in software anyway, so it seems like there's really no point in encrypting the transmission link.

Does anyone else think that this is incredibly creepy? If this goes on unchecked, it's just a matter of time until you're not allowed to code unless you have a license from the RIAA...

Great. Now we have to get modchips for our laptops too?

You can find more MacBook hacking stories here - <a href="http://www.applemacbook.com/mods" rel="nofollow">http://www.applemacbook.com/mods</a>

The irony is if you're geeky enough to connect your computer up to a big display to watch movies etc, you're certainly geeky enough to circumvent a little popup warning.

HDCP only matters to people who support DRM with their money.<p>Disclaimer: Not me.