One thing that gets people hot under the digital collar is DRM, or Digital Rights Management.
These are the measures that manufacturers put in place to stop or restrict their content from being duplicated and distributed, in a bid to squash piracy.
HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), a proprietary format developed by Intel, is supposed to be built-in to every piece of high-definition equipment with digital outputs.
If the content is routed via an analogue output, then its quality is reduced to that of a standard DVD.
Why is this important? Think low-end next-generation games consoles...
We're fairly sure that the entry-level PS3 will not have an HDMI digital output. Neither will the XBox HD DVD external drive. This means that eager gamers wanting to watch HD movies will have to do so in standard definition.
Not great.
We'll have to see what the industry makes of this - and you can be sure that any copy protection schemes put in place will have a myriad of people itching to break them.
I have a feeling the legitimate consumer will lose out again in the copy protection war, given the industry's seeming belief that everyone is a pirate at heart.
Haha, this is complete nonsense.