Mac: HDCP comes to The Pirate Bay

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MacMini with the VGA connection

The iMac 24"


I have an iMac, a MacBook Pro and a Mac Mini. The Mini is wired to a 1080p HDTV with a DVI to HDMI adaptor.


I have a fair bit of movies in iTunes and a small mix of Hand-Braked original content. Also in the mix are pirated High Definition BluRay media, which I view separately with QuickTime, VLC, DViX or RealPlayer.


One BlueRay content on the iMac is KungFu Panda which I downloaded illegaly from The Pirate Bay (as the name would suggest) and being an .avi format, the P2P torrent named Kung.Fu.Panda.(2008).BluRay.XViD-LaR took days to build.


Panda plays fine on the iMac and MacBook Pro but on the Mini, the video shows up on the 1080p but with no audio. Now, why is that? Why is audio missing!


Some research brought up a commentary by media consultant Christian Zibreg on HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection), an Intel protocol viewed as the movie industry’s insurance policy against piracy of HD DVD and BluRay media.


It appears pirated HD DVD or BluRay content are scrambled by encryption on HDCP enabled hardware, even when external monitors or HDTVs are connected with DVI, HDMI, DP or MDP cables. Zibreg also suggested that Standard Definition content was out of the loop.


To convince myself, I routed the Mini to the 1080p with a VGA connection from the bundled DVI/VGA adaptor block to the unused VGA output at the back of the 1080p. Result. Panda played flawlessly, albeit in SD rather than HD.


My experience confirms that (a) HDCP allows pirated BluRay media to play directly on PCs but not on external monitors with DVI, HDMI, DP or MDP connections (b) HDCP allows pirated HD DVD and BluRay media to play on external monitors but only with a VGA connection (c) HDCP affects pirated HD DVD and BluRay but not pirated SD media and (d) HDCP has come to The Pirate Bay.


Cheers, Tommy


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