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Written by tinfoil
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Saturday, 21 June 2008 12:35
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A reader pointed out an article by one Tom Yager. I've quite honestly not heard the name, but the internet is a pretty big place so that doesn't mean a whole lot, I suppose? Nonetheless, the article notes the inevitable march towards digital television and the pros & cons that it brings. The very characteristic that makes digital TV look so good is the one that makes it so vulnerable to restriction and manipulation: A TV broadcast is no longer a signal, it's a bitstream, one that has far fewer points of origination than the Internet and is therefore easier to control. Digital TV is rapidly heading for precisely the sort of lockdown that entertainment and broadcast lobbies desire for the Internet, and to the extent that they can be used as video players and recorders, our PCs, Macs, and notebooks. The primary example of digital lockdown is HDMI, the High Definition Multimedia Interface. Simply put, HDMI is how you get digital video into a high-definition TV. HDMI looks like a dream come true: A single cable with a small connector passes digital video, digital audio, and control signals. HDMI has always incorporated High Definition Copy Protection (HDCP), but for a long time its enforcement was relaxed. You could hook an LCD computer monitor to a cable box or DVD player with an HDMI output. All you needed was a $20 HDMI/DVI adapter.
I urge you to read the rest of the article. It makes clear that the entertainment lobby has been left unchecked for far too long.
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