HDMI Licensing Strikes Again

The organization that controls the HDMI spec appears to be cracking down on unlicensed products. And its first significant victim is Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cables, as the specification only permits HDMI connectors. In fact, Macrumors reports that Monoprice has already pulled their inventory… offering instead an adaptor/dongle.

As a Macbook Air owner intending to turn this 23″ television into an external display, I’m somewhat bummed that I hadn’t previously made a purchase. However, I expect cables to remain available via a variety of online storefronts – including ebay.

Of course, it’s worth reiterating that HDMI licensing and related specifications (including HDCP) are the factors preventing devices like the Slingbox from utilizing the more compact and lossless technology to capture video (along with audio). It’s not a technical limitation, it’s the terms. And why we spotlighted both the Gefen HD PVR and HDFury which had seemingly bypassed those requirements to enable recording over HDMI. Yet, unlike possibly misguided DRM attempts to limit piracy, attempting to remove the relatively harmless but oh-so-practical Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable from the marketplace emphasizes an overly restrictive and antiquated industry thought process. C’est la vie.

21 thoughts on “HDMI Licensing Strikes Again”

  1. Oddly, I find the reasoning behind the decision to be sound, upon first appraisal.

    The org wants HDMI cables to “just work”, and thus wants you to dongle from non-standard ports to HDMI. That way, if something isn’t working, you can try a second cheap HDMI cable, and if it also doesn’t work, you’ve already started to easily isolate the problem.

    Compare and contrast to the shenanigans that Apple is up to with their MagSafe™ connector, which is designed to easily break, and can only be replaced by another high-priced cable sold to you from Apple. 3rd party cables are outlawed via patents. That’s evil, while HDMI seems to be in the range of sensible.

    (I haven’t read anything about the topic yet, but I’m betting that expensive Thunderbolt™ cables will only be available via Apple by the same methods that expensive MagSafe™ cables are kept off the 3rd party market…)

  2. Evan, I did as well. Interestingly, the 3′ cables are more expensive than the 6′. But I’d rather have the shorter run.

    Chucky, I’d say it’s not black or white, that there are varying degrees of openness… and we take the bad with the good. True, HDMI has become a universal and rather well known “standard.” But there are variations of the spec which has led to devices of varying capabilities. Yet, at least the connector has remained consistent (as opposed to say DVI or SCSI hardware variants).

    However, in thinking bigger picture, HDMI’s success and controls have facilitated the content industry’s deprecation of component output from HD to SD… and the ultimate death of analog output altogether (at least in regards to Blu-ray). Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, except HDMI (and HDCP) are regulated by the industry and the rights or desires of consumers are afterthoughts to the threat of piracy. How we use that video output will no longer be up to us.

  3. While I find the cable discussion more interesting, I will try to step in here:

    “However, in thinking bigger picture, HDMI’s success has facilitated the content industry’s deprecation of component output from HD to SD… and the ultimate death of analog output altogether (at least in regards to Blu-ray). Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, except HDMI (and HDCP) are regulated by the industry and the rights or desires of consumers are afterthoughts to the threat of piracy. How we use that video output will no longer be up to us.”

    Aw. C’mon now. Every piece of physically distributed video commercial content since the mid-1980’s has disabled analog output. That stretches from the 1/2″ tape era to the optical disc era.

    For physically distributed video commercial content, locking down digital output is even more important than locking down analog output, for rather obvious reasons.

    HDMI and HDCP just maintain the 25 year status quo, which also seems reasonably sensible to me. (However, I’m not intricately versed with the specs, and there may be objectionable aspects of HMDI and HDCP I’m not aware of.)

    I’m always of the mind that the sweet spot for content protection is 90/10. You should implement practices that keep 90% away from doing stuff, but let 10% through who are willing to jump through hoops. So if I want to grab a screencap off my Blu-Ray of Barry Lyndon, I can run the spawn of DVD Jon’s code to rip the movie for my own personal use, which is de facto legal, and then grab a screenshot off the file on my platter drive. But since HDMI is locked down for the movie, the content owners were able to justify spending some money on a good transfer and selling the Blu-Ray in the first place.

  4. Component has outputted 1080 content. However, it’s being lowered to 540p on Blu-ray players and will ultimately vanish from them and cable set-top boxes (as they have in the UK). One of the negatives is the loss of HD placeshifting as we get from the Slingbox PRO-HD. Not everyone has embraced or is required to utilize Macrovision. I assume the reason TiVo went down that path is because they were forced to by bringing out hardware with DVD drives. (Although I’m sure they kept it around to appease the content industry.) I’m OK with content protection, as long as it’s handled reasonably, and as you know I purchase rather than pirate content. But when the industry can’t turn a blind eye to this displayport-to-hdmi solution, I’ll call them out as boneheaded. There’s minimal risk of market confusion here.

  5. “Not everyone has embraced or is required to utilize Macrovision.”

    I’m several years out of date on the state of play here, but at least where physical media are concerned, I thought the DMCA did indeed mandate copy-protection of analog output of commercial video content.

    “One of the negatives is the loss of HD placeshifting as we get from the Slingbox PRO-HD.”

    No doubt. But that’s why I never paid much attention to Sling in the first place. It always seemed obvious to me that it wouldn’t be permitted into the mainstream.

    (I know you had a personal history there, I feel your pain, and I fully acknowledge that many cool things have been aborted by the current approach to content protection.)

  6. Chucky, I’m fairly sure the fact that there’s a completely different (and different looking) connector at one end means that you’ll realise you can’t use this as a standard HDMI cable. It isn’t like Sony’s Thunderbolt implementation which is based on a USB connector and can cause confusion when a USB cable is plugged in, theoretically.

    I’m almost positive that this is more about the 10c per HDMI port the HDMI licensing agency gets per port – they now get 20c more per connection: one for the other HDMI plug, one for the HDMI socket.

  7. Chucky

    actually, Apple is the only online retailer (besides EBay sellers) still selling the HDMI to MDP connector!

    Oh, that EVIL Apple! ;)

  8. “actually, Apple is the only online retailer (besides EBay sellers) still selling the HDMI to MDP connector! Oh, that EVIL Apple”

    Unless I’m missing something here, you’re just wrong.

    The MDP connector is licensed to 3rd parties at no fee from Apple, and a 20 second trip to Amazon indeed found a 3rd party HDMI / MDP dongle for two and half bucks.

    But I may be missing something here…

  9. “I’m almost positive that this is more about the 10c per HDMI port the HDMI licensing agency gets per port – they now get 20c more per connection: one for the other HDMI plug, one for the HDMI socket.”

    You may well be correct that that is their true motivation. I don’t know the politics here.

    But I can imagine sensible potential motivations that don’t involve the dime, even if they weren’t the actual motivations here.

  10. OK. I think I understand what PSTMD meant now. But a trip to Apple’s webstore didn’t offer me a one-piece cable option, so perhaps PSTMD was the last person to see it…

  11. Can you suggest a sensible potential motivation here? The only one you’ve suggested so far is compatibility on the connector side, but I think it’s pretty clear there is little to no ability to confuse them (and in fact, there’s more confusion between the standard HDMI and mini-HDMI and the mini-HDMI and micro-HDMI than there is between mini-DP and HDMI).

  12. PSTMD, Others are still selling cables and will probably continue to do so:
    http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=mini+displayport+to+hdmi+cable&um=1&hl=en&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1302&bih=702&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=14603302000788483459&sa=X&ei=c_YZTrnBGqfu0gHBsqWXBQ&ved=0CJgBEIIIMAg

    varum, unfortunately “sensible” doesn’t have to apply. You and I agree that there’d be limited to no end-user confusion in regards to HDMI. But the licensing organization may feel differently. And then there is that matter of royalty fees you brought up. However, I didn’t realize it applied to cables. Without being a member of hdmi.org (unable to see “Attachment B”), this was all I was able to dig up:

    Q. What are the fees – annual and royalties – for a low-volume HDMI Adopter agreement.

    $5k/year fee + flat $1/unit administration fee + variable per unit royalty Designed to lower up-front barrier to entry cost for customers until higher volumes. Royalty is device-based and not dependent on number of ports, chips or connectors

    $0.15 no HDMI logo
    $0.05 HDMI logo (requires compliance testing)
    $0.04 HDMI logo + HDCP included on product

  13. I’m not sure what the fuss is about. Monoprice still sells an adaptor that takes Mini Displayport + USB (for audio) and converts it to HDMI with audio. All you need is an inexpensive HDMI male-to-male cable, which is also available from Monoprice. Solves the whole issue, and adds audio too. I have this and it works perfectly with my late 2010 MBA.

  14. “I’m not sure what the fuss is about.”

    Folks hate unnecessary dongles. But I tend to agree with you.

    “varum, unfortunately “sensible” doesn’t have to apply.”

    You can include me in the group who think “sensible” doesn’t have to apply if this is just a grab for dimes. But to figure out if it was just a grab for dimes, I’d have to figure who hdmi.org actually are, and where the economic incentives lie.

    If we stipulate that it wasn’t just a grab for dimes, architecturally, I really can imagine reasons in favor of wanting the spec to be as pure as possible.

    But then again, I don’t really have strong opinions about the matter. The decision could well be either corrupt or stupid. I just think it could also quite possibly be correct.

  15. I do hate dongles, but it’s only a minor fuss. More of an FYI (buy now) and another opportunity to educate folks on why we don’t record content via HDMI.

  16. “and another opportunity to educate folks on why we don’t record content via HDMI.”

    Ah. So you did really want to talk about HDCP ;)

    In the current world, I’d be in support of a HDCP that followed my 90/10 rule on content protection, which would be defeatable by hobbyists jumping through hoops, but wouldn’t be monetizeable by stuff like Sling. (AFAIK, HDCP isn’t defeatable at all, which isn’t the way tech should ideally work.) I’m less interested in the topic, however, because it ends up coming down a battle that was lost in 1998.

    If we talking content protection, I’m more interested in last week’s news about the accord between the major ISP’s and the content companies. That’s sorta big news, and nobody is really discussing it since it deals with grey/illegal behavior. But I’d guess most computer folk who have consumed content over the past decade have downloaded a least one illegally shared file, so it’s an interesting topic for the audience. I dunno what the hook for a post on that topic would be, however….

  17. I can’t remember where I read it, but somewhere seemed to indicate that the HDMI group was planning on “fixing” the requirement that prevents these cables from being legal.

  18. This is not the end of the world. Basically, HDMI Group says all HDMI cables should have some sort of HDMI connector on both ends, but one of the blogs (TIMN, Eng, or Giz) said that adapters are fine. Given how many HDMI cables most of us have by now, an adapter might be a better solution anyhow.

  19. What I presume to be Gefen’s press representation (2bluesky) has sent me a note objecting to my characterization of the Gefen HD PVR’s ability to capture content over HDMI and store it unencrypted. What follows is their correspondence and my reply, minus the opening and closing formalities.

    From Linda:

    In reference to your article here on HDMI Licensing:
    https://zatznotfunny.com/2011-07/hdmi-licensing-strikes-again/

    You mention a few facts about Gefen:
    “And why we spotlighted both the Gefen HD DVR and HDFury which had ignored those requirements to enable recording over HDMI.”

    First, the Gefen product is called the HD PVR (Personal Video Recorder) and secondly, we were very upset to see that you indicated that Gefen “had ignored those requirements (HDCP) to enable….”

    For the record, Gefen completely adhered to HDCP requirements. They have always operated with complete accordance to all HDMI specifications. You were able to record HDMI by breaking open the box and taking out interior components to make it possible, but in no way, shape or form, did Gefen ignore HDCP requirements. In fact, as soon as they found out about your activities, the boxes were updated to prevent that from happening.

    We are requesting you to correct these errors on your site and clarify the record, as soon as possible.

    From Dave:

    I have corrected the name of the device an tweaked some text at your suggestion.

    However, we stand by our analysis of the Gefen HD PVR. The HD PVR hard drive was only removed in order to determine if Gefen employed any file copy protection. They didn’t. The HD PVR was clearly capturing content for storage via HDMI, prior to our opening of the device and irrespective of opening the device. Which was something prohibited by related licensing at the time based on my understanding of that licensing.

    I’d be happy to discuss with a company representative how the Gefen HD PVR functions and craft a follow up post sharing that position and those details. While I was vaguely aware of an optional firmware update, I’m not sure what it encompasses in terms of HDMI/HDCP licensing and content copy protection. Until such time, I’ve published this email and my response in the comment section of the respective article so folks are aware of Gefen’s position.

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