HDCP Support: A Mirage

I couldn't believe what I was reading in this article.

You want to know a secret? None of the current ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards will support the full capabilities of Windows Vista.

The top-end graphics card usually fetches more than US$500. Recently, quite a few people who've been buying new computers or just a new graphics card are doing so to have a good-enough computer for Vista later this year.

We’ve been able to confirm that none of the Built-by-ATI Radeons support HDCP. If you’ve just spent $1000 on a pair of Radeon X1900 XT graphics cards expecting to be able to playback HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies at 1920x1080 resolution in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

NVIDIA, being a GPU manufacturer was unable to discuss the plans of board manufacturers. We contacted all six of NVIDIA’s Tier-1 board partners. None of the GeForce 6 or 7 video cards available on the market, including the most recently released GeForce 7800GS, have HDCP support. So if you just spent $1500 on a pair of 7800GTX 512MB GPUs expecting to be able to play 1920x1080 HD-DVD or Blu-Ray movies in the future, you’ve just wasted your money.

Ouch! If this is true, then thousands of elite buyers just got shafted.

Link via Tom's Hardware.

Comments

[Woody]

Thanks for linking to this. I've just been shopping for a Media Center PC and this article puts a new spin on my anti-Sony bias. I may have to go with the VGX-XL1 after all...

[Isaac Schrödinger]

You're welcome. It must be a tough decision considering that you can end up with a PC that doesn't "fully" play the available HD content in 6 months time.

There has been a lot of misleading advertisement from these companies. ATI, nVidia and the board makers seriously need to get their act together.