HDCP

HDCP (High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection) is a type of program that prevents antipiracy and unauthorized copying of digital television, DVD’s, movies, audios and videos. This digital form of copy protection was developed by Intel Corporation. This technology avoids copying of video and audio content which travels across the connections. HDCP includes many types of connections like DisplayPort (DP), High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), Gigabit Video Interface (GVIF) and Unified Display Interface (UDI).

More about HDCP:

The system of HDCP is meant to stop encrypted HDCP content from being accessed or played on devices which are unauthorized. Prior to sending data or content the transmitting device will first check whether the receiver is an authorized device or not. If yes, then the transmitter encrypts the data in order to prevent snooping while it flows to receiver. This technology has attained such an achievement that nowadays this standard components are embedded in many modern devices such as HDTV, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes etc. which acts as transmitter. Many a times a high resolution monitor will also act as receiver.

However, in order to design a device that is HDCP compatible, the manufacturer has to obtain authorization from Intel subsidiary digital content protection, agree to various conditions and pay the required annual fee. The giant of computers Apple Inc. also didn’t keep quiet, in 2008 it added HDCP as an additional component to its MacBook and MacBook Pro as a program to restrict users from pirating iTunes contents.

When HDCP was initially introduced it had some compatibility issues with few monitors but nowadays this standard has achieved much advancement due to which it is compatible with every monitor which meets minimum requirement. Sometimes HDCP compliant monitor is not sufficient, it might even require a Blue-ray disk drive and graphic card.