Watching hi-def DVD’s without HDCP compliant hardware

Many people have bought new equipment ready for the hi-definition movie era. This may include servers or flat-screen TV’s all of which may have been labelled as “HD ready” – they may even have the HDMI connectors (hi-def media interface) ready and waiting. BUT…. The movie industry seems intent on ensuring a stringent level of copy protection, and so there is another protocol that must be supported in your media playback system: HDCP, or high definition content protection. If any of your components does not support HDCP then you will not be able to watch your disk at high resolution. The resolution could be downgraded to a lower res, or even not play at all. So, check the documentation for your components, your screen, and make sure that you have bought equipment that supports HDCP.

What do you do if you don’t have HDCP? Well, you will be forced to accept low-res viewing at best; OR, you can remove the need for HDCP support at all by removing the applied copy protection at source.

Essentially this means ripping the DVD to hard drive, or when hi-def DVD rewriters become affordable, producing a cloned DVD without content protection.

So, how do you do this? Well, there is a set of commercially available software called “AnyDVD HD” from a company called SlySoft. In fact they have a range of ripping software for all types of DVD’s and CD’s. I guess they haven’t been shut down by the US Government under pressure from the MPAA or RIAA because the company isn’t based in the US.

Please check the legality of such software in the counry or countries you intend to use it in, as I couldn’t possibly condone the act of being a Naughty Person and breaking the law…