Lack of copy protection threatens digital TV................
eet.com
<<Lack of accord on copy protection threatens DTV
By Junko Yoshida
with additional reporting by George Leopold
LOS ANGELES - With only five months to go before the scheduled
digital TV rollout, service and equipment providers have yet to achieve
formal consensus with Hollywood production studios on a copy-protection
scheme for consumer device interfaces. That could cripple the initial
commercial prospects for DTV, which is locked into a Nov. 1 debut, as
well as delay standardization of the OpenCable spec, which dictates how
cable set-top boxes will "pass through" signals for high-definition TV and
data services.
That was the stark message from six senior engineering executives,
representing DirecTV, CBS, PBS, CableLabs, Thomson Consumer
Electronics and Zenith Electronics, who voiced their concerns during the
DTV panel discussion at the International Conference on Consumer
Electronics (ICCE) this past Wednesday.
Failure to settle the issue has consumer-electronics manufacturers and
service providers sweating bullets. "It's going to harm all of us," said Robert
Plummer, director of advanced technology at DirecTV (El Segundo, Calif.).
"I believe that this is a much bigger issue than any format wars we've seen.">>
<<SNIP>>
<<Without copy protection, the group warns, digital broadcasters could
become what the MPAA spokesman called "full-blown distributors" of
films. "We need some rules of the road [to] prevent digital-to-digital
copying," he said. "I don't think it's a Gordian knot, but it's a big one."
Unless consensus is soon reached, consumers willing to shell out $7,000 to
be the first on their block to own a 55-inch rear-projection HDTV might
find "a lack of high-value-added content" to justify their purchase, said Tom
McMahon, architect of digital TV and video for the Consumer Platforms
Division of Microsoft Corp. Even if the industries can agree to an encryption
system sometime next year, the models sold this fall aren't likely to be
equipped to handle appropriately encrypted streams.
The lack of agreement on copy-protected interfaces could also deprive
consumers of fundamental connectivity between DTVs and conventional
VCRs. First-generation-DTV users who want to record a program for later
viewing can do so only via a bit-stream VCR, such as D-VHS. Unless a
VCR is fully integrated into the DTV set, there are no interfaces available
today to connect the two.>>
<<SNIP>>
<<"We must complete a copy-protection spec for the IEEE 1394 interface
first," said Richard Prodan, senior vice president and chief technical officer
at Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs, Louisville, Colo.), which
is drafting the OpenCable spec. "We must first agree on robust interfaces.
Unlike the computer industry, the cable industry can't go off and tell its
customers, 'Oh, well, we'll patch in the new copy-protection scheme by the
next software revision.' "
Jack Chaney, senior manager of the digital-media lab at Samsung
Information Systems America, agreed that the copy-protection extends
beyond the IEEE 1394 interface: "There are a lot of other places inside a
set-top or PC where professional hackers can tap in if they are serious
about illegal copying."
The bus interface between the set-top MPEG decoder and SDRAM, for
example, would still be"totally unprotected," Chaney said. [NOTE: Sounds like a job for embedded DRAM.] When a
movie-studio representative suggested adopting the same copy-protection
mechanism that has been agreed to for IEEE 1394, Chaney said, "First of
all, I'm not a licensee for the 1394 copy-protection scheme. I don't even
know what the cost is going to be, or how feasible it is to use the same
copy-protection [scheme] everywhere inside the set-top.">>
<<SNIP>> |
