The future of do-it-yourself video hardware in the Microsoft Vista generation is in question, as issues have surfaced surrounding two key portions of the high-definition video space.
How consumers will have to deal with HDCP, a content protection scheme, and CableCards, a means of transmitting video information into the home, have come to the fore.
Late Friday, however, a source at an add-on card maker said that his firm and all of Nvidia's partners would release cards containing the key HDCP crypto chip when the Nvidia 7600 and Nvidia 7900 cards are announced on March 9 at the CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany.
By the end of 2006, the enthusiast's living room could include a Blu-Ray or HD DVD player, a high-definition TV, and some form of a Media PC using Microsoft's next-generation OS, Vista. Content played back from a next-generation DVD will be decoded by the player and sent along a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector, a technology licensed and overseen by a consortium of leading CE makers, including Philips, Thomson, and Toshiba.
Likewise, a complementary rights-management technology, termed High-Definition Content Protection (HDCP), encrypts digital transmissions passing over the HDMI interface. To receive a digital TV signal at its full definition, HDCP needs to be supported via a graphics card or a television.
Otherwise, content could enter the home via satellite, DSL, or cable. One technology, called a CableCard, would eliminate the set-top, providing a convenient – and, most importantly, compact – means of piping the protected content into a Media Center PC.
Inside of a closed set-top box or consumer device, the problems become simpler, dealt with by the manufacturers themselves. But in a do-it-yourself environment, two issues have arisen:
HDCP content protection is enabled by a small "crypto chip". To date, graphics chip manufacturers like ATI and Nvidia have marketed their products as "HDCP ready". However, only Sony has added the chip internally. Board makers need to add these chips onto the boards, and to date none has done so.
For their part, CableCards are overseen and licensed by CableLabs, made up of the world's leading cable operators. To date, CableLabs executives have said they do not intend to license DIY implementations of Vista Media Center PCs, leading a prototype breakout box from ATI as an indicator of the future direction of the industry.
The two requirements complicate an already muddled picture surrounding next-generation content and their protection systems. Today, users must purchase either a PC or at least a piece of hardware from a retailer to purchase a Windows XP Media Center Edition software package from Microsoft, or download it from its developer network website. Consumers can then create their own Media Center PCs.
Microsoft's Vista, however, will introduce the concept of "trusted" content and playback devices, where content owners will have more control over how their content is displayed and if it can be manipulated. Next-generation Blu-Ray and HD DVDs due this spring both use a content protection scheme dubbed AACS, designed to foil crackers. But while the Blu-Ray implementation is designed to allow content providers to turn off cracked players, "DVD Jon" Johansen has already declared his intent to crack AACS, most likely using the PC as a hacking tool.
The date when Vista launches is a likely target to bring the divergent technologies together, agreed Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research in Cave Creek, Ariz. But McCarron also said he doubted that a bulletproof solution would be found by the time Vista launches. "I think it will be an open question," he said. Continued...
If a supplier supports the HDMI connector but not HDCP, Vista will downconvert the video stream to the quality of analog television. So when is HDCP coming to next-generation add-on cards? If anyone knows, they're keeping mum.
"The entire GeForce6 and GF7 GPU lines, and the 5700 (from the GeForce FX line) support HDCP protocol in the GPU," said Nick Stam, director of technical marketing at Nvidia. "An additional chip is required on the graphics board to hold a crypto key. Nvidia has provided HDCP kits to board vendors to assist in implementing HDCP on their boards since around May 2005. It's up to the board vendors to decide whether to implement HDCP or not.
"Regarding GeForce cards that implement HDCP today, you can see Sony's newly announced VGX-XL1 Media Center PC ships with a 6200-based board using an HDMI connection with HDCP capability, and Sony's VAIO RA940GN4 desktop uses a GeForce 6600 with DVI/HDCP," Stam added.
Most add-on card makers interviewed by ExtremeTech said this week that they did not have information regarding their timetable for adding the "crypto chip" required to decode HDCP-encoded broadcasts.
"Our headquarters is still going through the decision process," said Albert Poon, a marketing manager for Leadtek, a card manufacturer. "I will let you know more details on a weekly basis."
"PNY is not supporting this chip," a spokeswoman for PNY Technologies said. "Also, it is not planned for any future Verto GeForce generations right now."
Even ATI Technologies, which manufactures a line of HDCP-ready Radeon chips and cards, said that the "business model" was simply not there to support the inclusion of the additional chip.
"ATI's newest Radeon graphics are HDCP ready -- meaning that add-in-board partners can enable the HDCP security keys during the manufacturing process if they want to," John Swinimer, a spokesman for the company, said. "ATI has chosen not to include any HDCP compliant chips on its graphics cards, including All-In-Wonder X1900, because all the end-to-end elements are not yet in place to implement a fully compliant HDCP PC. The business model is not yet there."
"I don't have a date available," Swinimer said, when asked for clarification. "But it will occur when all the other elements from the other companies -- content providers, OS, applications, monitors – et cetera, are ready."
One source at an add-on card company said the decision was partly financial – without an HDCP infrastructure in place, adding the crypto chip was an unnecessary cost that was simply unjustified in the cutthroat add-on card market. However, he could not say what the actual price of the add-on chips actually was.
However, a second source in the add-in card market reported that "all" of Nvidia's partners designing cards around the GeForce 7900 and 7600 cards launching on March 9 would use the chip, including his firm. Nvidia representatives declined to comment on unannounced products. Continued...
Although cable modems and cable television are merely one way of piping video and data content into the home, CableCards are being looked at as a compact way of transmitting video content into the home. Cable providers today use a set-top box to decrypt encoded content, although the CableCards will eventually replace them via an FCC order in 2007. For a do-it-yourself PC builder, CableCards also eliminate the need for the set-top box, although the current generation of CableCards (using version 1.0 of the specification) offer only one-way downloads and no conditional access.
For a next-generation Media PC, the CableCards offer one additional hurdle: implementing them requires the approval of CableLabs and its member companies, a collection of cable operators.
However, CableLabs executives told ExtremeTech that they have no answers for do-it-yourself high-definition boxes that will accept digital cable. An upcoming cable interface card standard dubbed CableCard will require CableLabs certification, and only a prototype breakout box from ATI will receive the necessary certification, executives said.
"I don't know about the do-it-yourself bit but it is true that Microsoft and its partner OEMs design true Media Centers, and that the unit will take a CableCard," said Don Dulchinos, senior vice president for advanced platforms at CableLabs, in a recent interview.
When asked how a consumer wishing to build a Media Center PC using Vista would do so, Dulchinos replied. "It's a good question. I don't know that we have an answer to that."
PC OEMs, however, will be licensed. According to published reports, Microsoft will assist smaller OEMs to receive CableCard certification, which CableLabs may end up essentially rubber-stamping. "In this game, they [Microsoft] essentially warrant to us that the PC [they're endorsing] isn't basically going to spew out unprotected content," Dulchinos said.
An additional solution may come from the industry, in the for of a prototype breakout box that ATI demonstrated at this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, dubbed the ATI OCUR, for the Open Cable Unidirectional Receiver. Breakout boxes like the OCUR may be the direction for the industry while it works out the content issues, ATI's Swinimer said.
No timetable for the OCUR's production has been released, and neither has pricing. Still, Swinimer said, "there's a lot of interest in what you'll see us produce."
Editor's Note: This story was updated on Feb. 17 at 2:54 PDT PM with additional information from sources and Nvidia representatives.
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