Loading ...There seems to have been a big ho-ha recently regarding broadcasters wanting to protect their shows by restricting the use of component connections, unfortunatly this fuss has now reached Freesat digital boxes carrying the component connection.
What it means is that a broadcaster has the ability to ‘flag’ a show they wish to protect from piracy which in turn disables the use of the component connection on your Freesat digital box. In these instances the only way to view certain shows would be via HDMI, which some televisions don’t carry.
The change will also prevent the use of some external devices to record the HD content. HDMI, unlike component, supports HDCP (high bandwidth digital content protection), a standard designed to make copying HD content more difficult.
Sky made similar changes a few months back by requesting Thomson to stop manufacturing their Sky HD Digiboxes with component connections.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
This should not be a problem with FTA receivers or those with PC cards.
I am not so sure Freesat could force manufacturers to do this. Freesat may not give certification but who cares.
Recording FTA satellite transmissions is perfectly legal.
May 31st, 2008 at 10:18 am
I agree with Trevor’s point, the transmissions are currently FTA and can be recorded in their original transmission quality without any of the loss of quality associated with re-encoding recordings from component or HDMI outputs. So I’m concerned about why the broadcasters would go to the trouble of disabling the component output and using HDCP on the HDMI connection when there is already a far easier way to record broadcasts. It doesn’t make sense, unless those broadcasts will not remain FTA for much longer. If they stop being FTA, that’ll be a tragedy.
May 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
As I understand things, the Freesat platform is to allow the license payers of the UK to receive a near mirror of digital terrestrial TV in areas where it does not happen now and may never happen. Now if we are to be denied access on Freesat in a different way to that of terrestrial, questions will be asked. Given the rubbish we are served most of the time, who cares anyway!?? Go get a DVD
May 31st, 2008 at 12:44 pm
If they bring out any Paid for services on Freesat, then I won’t buy Freesat, period.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:28 pm
So, does this mean when a Freesat PVR appears the recording facility will be disabled for protected programmes too? Anyone determined to ‘record’ a programme will do so anyway, that’s for certain.
Crazy eh?
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
PVR’s will be able to record all HD content regardless of HDCP, but will not be able to dump HDCP content down onto another HD carrier such as Blu Ray. The idea of HDCP is not to prevent you recording programs to watch later, but to prevent pirates being able to offer perfect HD bootlegs. Personally I think it will be a shame if component connections get disabled for some programs, especially as any recording of this is would go through two lots of conversion (d to a and then a back to d) and suffer some loss as a consequence.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I suppose that would have to be the case Stevie, makes sense. Protecting material and copyright I suppose that’s fair enough. They’ll always be someone writing a bit of software or making hardware modiifications to get around things like this so you wonder, why bother and why start now?
I wonder what percentage of people have never paid for an operating system but are fully registered and legit? Millions probably and all breaking the law.
I digress . .
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 pm
One other point, I have a couple of friends who use only ‘component’ as their monitor does not have HDMI. Therefore I assume the screen will go blank during protected broadcasts. They’ll be pleased.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
The problem is that ALL material being broadcast on BBC HD is currently flagged in the HDCP parameter to block viewing via component. I would understand if they choose to flag some programmes but surely not ALL. My Sony Plasma TV received a fantastic picture on BBC HD but I am now penalised for being an early adopter of a HD TV that does not have HDMI input.
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:12 am
hey guys just use the manual tune. then select channel 9645 i beleive. at the moment this then gets round the hdcp problem when using components with bbc hd :0) oh yeah this prob wont work with itv as that is a freesat channel only while bbc hd is a free to view