Is My Samsung Tv Hdcp Compliant

HDCP is an anti-piracy protocol built right into the HDMI cable standard, but it doesn't actually work very well, and breaks the viewing feel. Read on as we explain how HDCP works, why it breaks your TV, and how you can fix it.

What Is HDCP?

HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) is a grade of Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM protocols are designed to protect content creators and distributors against piracy. Dissimilar companies and industries use different protocols, but the basic premise is the same: DRM locks purchases y'all make to you lot and your devices. When y'all buy a picture on iTunes and tin simply play it on devices with your account, yous're experiencing DRM.

Content creators and distributorsshould be afforded some protection, since it's expensive to create and distribute content. The problem is that DRM typically makes life more than difficult for honest paying consumers—and in many cases outright breaks the experience—while non really doing much to deter piracy. This is the kind of trouble nosotros run into with games that crave authorization servers to run; if the visitor goes nether so does the dominance server and suddenly the game won't run.

In the instance of the HDMI standard and digital video, the HDCP DRM standard causes an unfortunate number of headaches for regular one-time consumers simply trying to enjoy their televisions and appoint in other legitimate activities.

HDCP was developed by Intel and is used not simply with HDMI, but with a variety of digital video standards like DisplayPort and Digital Visual Interface (DVI). Information technology provides for an encrypted connexion between a content outputting device (like a Blu-ray player, cable box, or streaming device) on one end and a receiving device (like an HDTV or audio-video receiver) on the other stop.

HDCP is everywhere and is built into devices similar Blu-ray players, cable boxes, and satellite Idiot box receivers, likewise as into streaming video devices similar the Roku, Chromecast, and Amazon Burn Goggle box. It's also congenital into laptops and computer hardware, DVRs, and other mod HDMI devices.

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Where HDCP Breaks Downward

Although HDCP's underlying encryption and protocols are sophisticated and exterior the scope of this article, the basic premise of how it works is quite simple. There is a licensing torso that issues licenses for HDCP devices. Each HDCP-compliant device, like your Blu-ray role player or Xbox, has a license and the ability to talk to the receiving device on the other end of the HDMI cablevision.

The outputting device says "Hey display! Are yous HDCP compliant? Here is my license, show me your license!" The display (or other HDCP compliant device) returns with "Why yeah, I am legit! Here is my license!" When that process works, it happens inside a thousandth of a 2nd and you, the consumer, never even notice. You power on your Blu-ray player or DVR, it makes squeamish with your HDTV, and you live a happy life never knowing what HDCP even is.

Unfortunately, nevertheless, in that location are a host of situations where HDCP gets in the way of consumers doing perfectly legal things with their devices and content. If any device in the chain is not HDCP compliant, the video stream will fail.

For example, if yous take an older HDTV gear up that is not HDCP compliant and then you cannot scoutany HDCP compliant content on it. If you plug in your HDCP-compliant device to a non-compliant device, you'll either see a bare screen or an error bulletin like "Mistake: Non-HDCP OUTPUT," "HDCP unauthorised," or simply "HDCP Fault."

Want to plough that sometime monitor with integrated speakers into a cheap little video box with a Chromecast? Sorry, there's a very skillful chance that old monitor (despite having an HDMI port) is non HDCP compliant. You lot won't be streaming anything to it unless you desire to dedicate a whole reckoner to the project.

Want to record your video game sessions or stream them alive? It'due south hitting or miss. Console makers have gotten better about recognizing that players want to record and stream their content, but HDCP is still problematic. The Sony Playstation lineup is a perfect example of this problem. While Sony did release an update in 2014 for the PlayStation four that unlocked HDCP while actually playing the game, they can't provide the same update for the PlayStation 3 considering the HDCP output is locked at the scrap level in the PS3. Their only advice is to purchase a capture device that supports component cables and use those instead of HDMI.

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Even when we're not actively watching Television or gaming, westill find HDCP to be annoying and intrusive. We write all sorts of tutorials and reviews here at How-To Geek that involve HDMI-based products like the Amazon Burn TV and the like. Yous know what yous tin can't capture considering of HDCP? The on-screen menus while the video content is loaded. It'south pretty irritating to take a content protection arrangement go far the way of you reviewing and promoting streaming devices that legitimately evangelize content to millions of paying customers.

At that place'southward nothing illegal or unethical near hooking a Blu-ray role player up to an old Boob tube, trying to recycle an old estimator monitor into a little Chromecast-powered streaming station, recording and streaming your video game play, or trying to capture menus and screen shots to write tutorials and guides, but thanks to a flawed DRM protocol anyone who wants to any or all of those things is left in the nighttime.

How to Set Your HDCP Problem

Absolutely no one should have to buy a new idiot box set, upgrade their perfectly fine audio-video receiver, or otherwise spend meaning piles of money to solve a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place. Unfortunately, the only official way to comply with HDCP is to buy an HDCP-compliant device.

The about absurd thing well-nigh the HDCP protection scheme is that there is no HDCP-compliant style to circumvent it for legitimate use cases. At that place arenull methods endorsed or supported past the agency in accuse of HDCP that help consumers in any way if they have older equipment or a legitimate not-piracy need to interact with an HDCP-compliant device.

To add together further insult to injury, the HDCP standard has been compromised for years at present. Manufacturers continue to pay for licenses and include HDCP in their products not because information technology'southward actually helping to finish piracy, merely because they don't want with the licensing agency and the anti-piracy lobby. So what can you practice to deal with the outdated and now compromised mess that is HDCP?

Brusque of buying a new television or giving up on your video game projection the simply fashion to deal with your HDCP compliance problem is to buy a cheap HDMI splitter that ignores HDCP requests.

We actually wish we were kidding, but that'south the undercover media center ingredient that has helped thousands of consumers and the very same secret ingredient that we use hither at How-To Geek when we need to take screenshots of an on-screen carte to showcase a product we're reviewing.

Specifically, nosotros use the ViewHD 2-Port ane×two Powered HDMI Splitter (Model: VHD-1X2MN3D) ($20) considering fifty-fifty among cheap HDMI splitters, there is no consistency to whether they will exist HDMI compliant (even, sometimes, amongst products from the very same visitor). A little careful reading and using the Amazon reviews search function goes a long way toward ferreting out cheap splitters that other consumers take had success with.

To use the splitter, simply put information technology between the output and display device. For example, say you have a simple setup where you just want to plug a Chromecast into an old monitor. Instead, you'd plug the Chromecast into the input on your HDMI splitter, then use an HDMI cablevision to connect the output on the splitter to your brandish. If you have a new sound-video receiver that doesn't play prissy with your sometime HDTV, plug all your HDMI devices into the receiver and so identify the HDMI splitter between the receiver and the brandish.

In the photo above you tin can encounter the simple setup on our desk-bound, used for capturing menus and screenshots while reviewing HDMI devices. In this example, we're feeding an Amazon Burn down TV Stick into the ViewHD splitter, then passing the betoken over to the Roxio GameCapHD Pro then nosotros can snap the screenshots on our computer. Where nosotros place the GameCapHD Pro in the chain is where the vast majority of users seeking this solution would have their TV plugged in.

Here's what our attempts at capturing good screenshots for our tutorials looked similar earlier dealing with the HDCP problem.

Yous tin can encounter how such a screenshot would exist pretty useless for our purposes; nobody wants to see what the menu of a device they're considering purchasing looks like with a large ugly error bulletin across the back. In this instance, even though we're using a capture tool, you're seeing exactly what a abode user with a non-HDCP-compliant HDTV would see: the non HDCP-protected part of the video (the menu bar and pause button) is passed through, but the actual content is removed.

Hither's what the exact same screenshot looks like, but with the signal passed through the splitter to strip away the HDCP nonsense.

Y'all can imagine, given our love for clever and thoughtful solutions to the issues that plague people, how cool nosotros detect it that the solution to a trouble which shouldn't even exist is "buy an out-of-spec device that ignores the faulty protocol." Nonetheless, that's exactly the state of affairs consumers find themselves in and thankfully, whether through poor or intentional design, there are products out in that location that get new media players talking to old HDTVs.

Have a pressing tech question? Shoot united states of america an e-mail at ask@howtogeek and we'll do our best to aid.