HTPC fans rejoice! Yesterday Sapphire announced they’re now shipping the long-anticipated Radeon X1600Pro HDMI card. The short version of the story is that this card appears to actually be HDCP-Ready. Many manufacturers have disingenuously been touting “HDCP-Ready” in their video card specifications when the basic requirements of HDCP were never built into the card. Sapphire appears to have the “Real Deal” on the way to retail shelves.
How Do We Know?
HDCP functionality is provided through one in a series of chips made by Silicon Image. From the sample image provided by Sapphire’s website, the Silicon Image SiI 1930 chip appears next to the HDMI port. This chip supports DVI 1.0, HDMI 1.1 and HDCP 1.11
Since Silicon Image was a major contributor in developing the HDCP specification, we don't anticipate any other chip manufacturer to be able to obtain licensing to manufacture similar chips. The bottom line is without a suitable Silicon Image chip onboard, HDCP support is not a reality.
The Controversy
Many of us found out about HDCP with early Vista news stories stating that you will not be able to play High Definition video content at full resolution in Windows Vista if you don’t have an HDCP-Ready video card in addition to an HDCP-Ready monitor. Of course, the knee-jerk reaction was to bash Microsoft, but they aren't the only player. In reality, HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Procection) is a specification developed by Intel Corporation to protect digital entertainment content across the DVI/HDMI interface.2At the moment we are not aware of any available HDCP content and don't anticipate any to be released for several years. (More on this in the Conclusion)
Unfortunately, with this prerequisite being announced so early, many video card manufacturers decided to market their cards as HDCP-Ready in anticipation that consumers may hold off purchasing a video card that doesn't contain this support. Many were told, when questioning HDCP-Readiness, that the card would be made HDCP-Ready through a BIOS update to be released in the future. However, according to the HDCP Specification, the requirements for support can not be added after the card has been manufactured.
;)
;)
;)
