Removal of AACS removes HDCP requirements as well, no?

[Galileo2000]

I am pretty sure it does.

Someone on the other forum drives me crazy trying to convince me it does not.

Sorry for the stupid question.

[linx05]

That's one of the selling points of AnyDVD HD (http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html). Watch the DVD without having to buy expensive graphics card and display.

Allows you to watch movies over a digital display connection, without HDCP compliant graphics card and HDCP compliant display. No need to buy an expensive monitor. Sweet!

[RaynQuist]

I thought so too, but now that I think about it, HDCP is enforced by the playback software isn't it? If PowerDVD or whatever is coded to check compliance regardless of encryption, then you need HDCP. Just a guess

[Doom9]

With HD DVD, it goes like this:
If AACS is present and the output is digital, then it must be protected (not necessarily via HDCP.. there are other encryptions that are allowed as well). If AACS is present and the output is analog, then there are no restrictions (until the current license lapses and ICT becomes mandatory - then it depends on the ICT flag whether you'll get full resolution playback or downscaled playback).

With Blu-ray it's trickier since pre-recorded Blu-ray discs must contain AACS. I'm not a 100% sure there's such a player, but in theory, a player could refuse to play a pre-recorded Blu-ray disc if AnyDVD HD is running, since the disc would no longer have AACS. Of course, if you rip the files to your harddisk, then it's no longer on a pre-recorded disc and thus any player that can play Blu-ray content from your harddisk will do just fine.

[HyperHacker]

I can't see a player refusing to play an unencrypted disc unless Sony made forced it upon them, though. That'd just mean lost sales to the others that do support it when AnyDVD HD users find out it isn't compatible.

[Peer van Heuen]

I can't see a player refusing to play an unencrypted disc unless Sony made forced it upon them, though. That'd just mean lost sales to the others that do support it when AnyDVD HD users find out it isn't compatible.

There has been some confusement about this HDCP requirement thing.
Latest PowerDVD versions simply are limited to certain graphics drivers for HD playback - whether it's encrypted or not.
These drivers happen to support HDCP. That's what lead many to conclude that PowerDVD will require HDCP even with unencrypted movies.
But it still plays unencrypted video fine on a non-HDCP monitor.

The development of a HD player primarily targets users with HDCP compliant hardware, because that's how the whole thing was meant to be. I fully understand, that they at some point decided to support only graphics drivers meeting these requirements - why put additional effort into supporting drivers, that aren't supposed to work anyway? (and I understand that many are pissed off by this situation, but there's nothing I can do about it...)

About the decrypted blu-ray problem: as Doom9 had mentioned, the standard defines BDMV with AACS only. A rip no longer conforms to the standard. It is up to the developers whether they will play a non AACS BDMV disc or not.
Apparently PowerDVD does and WinDVD doesn't.

Losing sales to others: well, so far "the others" are actually "the other one". When it comes to Bluray, there is only WinDVD and PowerDVD.
It's hard to tell whether Intervideo even cares about competition at all. They seem happy with selling OEM versions. That way they leave support to the OEMs.
They do seem to offer support to retail licensees, but that support pipe seems to end in >/dev/null, haven't heard of a single case where a customer received a reply or even help.

So I wouldn't count on InterVideo implementing any feature that would prevent them from losing a hand full of sales to CyberLink...

[ByeByeBluRay]

The development of a HD player primarily targets users with HDCP compliant hardware, because that's how the whole thing was meant to be. I fully understand, that they at some point decided to support only graphics drivers meeting these requirements - why put additional effort into supporting drivers, that aren't supposed to work anyway? (and I understand that many are pissed off by this situation, but there's nothing I can do about it...)


Curious. I have a GeForce 7300GS - it was the only fanless card with hdmi I could find. It's wasn't on PowerDVD's list of approved cards (despite supporting HDCP) so it refused to play any encrypted content. It did play decrypted movies though.

I had assumed it was not on the list because it was underpowered - I couldn't play HD movies smoothly with hardware acceleration turned on (worked fine with the CPU doing the work though). However, since upgrading to Vista, I found that with the new drivers the hardware is perfectly capable of HD playback - but PowerDVD still can't play encrypted content though.

That's my reason for buying AnyDVD - even though I did what the AACS-LA asked and specifically paid for hardware that met all their conditions, I still couldn't play back HD movies.

So a big thanks are due to Slysoft for providing me with the middle finger to stick up at the AACS-LA.

[Galileo2000]

... I did what the AACS-LA asked and specifically paid for hardware that met all their conditions, I still couldn't play back HD movies.

So a big thanks are due to Slysoft for providing me with the middle finger to stick up at the AACS-LA.

To me it was only like $15 difference between HDCP-compliant and non-compliant 7600GT.

I bought non-compliant, not because I wanted to save $15, but because I knew I could show this finger you mentioned.

Thanks first to this forum, and second, to Slysoft.