HDCP

[venkat.siddareddy]

Hi,

I am building cinema player for an art house film club here in India. We have a small chain of places where we can exhibit our films. We also screen some commercial films here on some weekends.

I have completed building a server which can play high quality videos but I am facing a problem with piracy. During some screenings, unauthorized people are connecting DVI/HDMI splitter to our server and they are stealing our content. Is there a way to prevent this?

I was told by the studio people here that I must include HDCP in my server. I am not aware of HDCP technology. Can some one please guide me in implementing security features in my cinema server.

Thanks

Venkat

 

[babgvant]

As long as you put a modern video card with HDMI in the server it will support HDCP.

[mikinho]

Even when all your components support HDCP it is easy for a “pirate” to remove with hardware like the HDFury. You’ll need to physically secure the connections along with HDCP.

[swoon]

Hi Venkat.

It sounds like you are using unprotected files. Can you share what type of media you are using? I’m not aware of any simple way to apply HDCP to non-protected content so it will be useful to understand if that is what you are dealing with.

As Michael pointed out, even with HDCP, it is possible to get an analog copy of that signal using a device such as the HDFury so it may be important to physically secure the channel as well depending on your circumstances.

[venkat.siddareddy]

Hi,

My films will be loaded from a hard disk. If that is what you meant by media.

To explain further about my project please find the workflow.

1. Player interface is launched once the power is switched on.
2. There are two users to select 1)operator 2)Admin
3. Operator will be taken directly on to the page containing the list of available films (loaded from harddisk)
4. Once the operator selects the films, the player checks

•    is projector connected?
•   if a projector is connected the player will check for the projector info. If it is whitelisted (based on EDID info) the player checks for licence
•   if licence is valid the player decryots the video and playsback in the secondary monitor
•   While the video is being played back, a timer task keeps track of
  •   the current playback position
  •    checks if the secondary device is disconnected
  •   if the secondary display device (projector) is disconnected then the player stops the playback.

 

For the admin we have various options for file copying, playlist generation, maintenance etc.

Please let me know what we can do in this scenario

Thanks

Venkat

[venkat.siddareddy]

What is meant by physically securing the connections?

How do I do that?

Please advice.

Thanks

 

[venkat.siddareddy]

By far missingremote helped me a lot in understanding HDCP clearly.

I was under assumption that we have to encode/encrypt the videos with HDCP.

But this article http://www.missingremote.com/blog/high-definition-optical-discs-and-their-associated-copy-protection-acronyms cleared my doubts.

So the content it self need not be encrypted with HDCP. Am I right?

My video files are encrypted using AES encryption alogorithm and is decrypted on the fly.

Now I have a graphics card from Nvidia which is HDCP ready. I checked the HDCP status and it says HDCP is enabled. Now if I connect my server (with Nvidia Quadro fx 3800) to a projector with HDCP capabilities will it stop pirates from using DVI/HDMI splitters?

I understand they can use HDFury but this is not a readily avalibale product here so it is ok as long as they can’t use DVI/HDMI splitters.

Now one last doubt that I have is, how do I notify my graphics card that my content should be played using HDCP? How can the graphics card differentiate between a high value content that needs to use HDCP and normal video which need not use HDCP?

Please let me know your suggestions

Thanks

[babgvant]

One way to enable HDCP is to use the Output Protection Manager.

[venkat.siddareddy]

I started reading the material about output protection manager. It is all greek and latin for me. Is there any programmer out there who can work with me on output protection manager for my player?

Please let me know. I am willing to pay for this project.

Thanks

Venkat

[babgvant]

Is the player running on Vista or 7?  If not, another mechanism will be required to trigger HDCP.

Ideally using OPM would be built into your player application, do you have the source for your player?

[venkat.siddareddy]

I am running the player in windows 7. I am using windows media player right now. But if needed (to implement PVP or OPM) I don’t mind building a player from scratch.

Please let me know if it is possible to use Windows Media Player and implement this protection?

Thanks

[babgvant]

If you wrap the files with PlayReady and specify the HDCP flag WMP should handle everything correctly.  I haven’t looked into it too much, but I would expect that Expression Encoder 4 Pro ($200) would be able to do that.

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