What is HDCP?

HDCP stands for High-Bandwidth Data Copy Protection and is an abbreviation you will see a great deal of as high definition content grows in availability and popularity.

The specification was developed by Intel and is a form of digital rights management (DRM). Its purpose is to prevent high definition disc players from making high quality copies of discs. In order to play encoded content at its full resolution, a disc player must support High-Bandwidth Data Copy Protection, for which the manufacturer must obtain a license. On order to get a license, the player manufacturer must pay a fee and agree to limit the capability of the device.

In order to watch the protected content, consumers must have an HDCP compatible player and a TV connected to it via a compatible DVI interface, or an HDMI interface.

If a player is connected to a TV using a connection not supported by HDCP, such as component video, the playback will be limited to DVD quality. Likewise, DVD-Audio discs would be limited to DAT quality.Both the high definition disc player formats, compatible Blu-ray and HD DVD, incorporate HDCP and so Blu-ray and HD DVD players will only output full resolution signals to TVs over DVI or HDMI. Support for the DRM technology is also a requirement of the European Industry Association for Information Systems' (EICTA) 'HD Ready' specification.

This digital rights management has implications for many HDTV-owners, particularly those who bought HDTV sets in the first few years they were available. Most of these TVs use component outputs to connect to HDTV receivers and DVD players, and do not hsve DVI or HDMI inputs. As noted above, these TVs will not playback HD DVD or Blu-ray discs at full resolution. Likewise, high definition graphics cards, such as the compatible ATI HDTV All-in-Wonder do not have support for HDCP and will not play back protected content.