CII and HDCP

[machu]

2 questions:

1.
I have a Pioneer 50MXE-1 plasma screen (NON HDCP) and I just purchased an HD sat tuner for German Premiere HD subscription. If I connect sat tuner to Crystalio via hdmi and Crystalio to screen via DVI I will not see any picture - is that a correct assumption?

2.
I own a Crystalio I. Since most (if not all) european broadcasters (will) use H.264/MPEG-4 video codec (not supported by CII) and in my household we usually watch 70% SD sat, 10% pal DVD (left 20% for Premiere HD), is there any point in upgrading to CII ?

[Jason]

2 questions:

1.
I have a Pioneer 50MXE-1 plasma screen (NON HDCP) and I just purchased an HD sat tuner for German Premiere HD subscription. If I connect sat tuner to Crystalio via hdmi and Crystalio to screen via DVI I will not see any picture - is that a correct assumption?
Correct.

Jason

[madshi]

Fortunately Jason is not fully correct this time.

Both currently available HD sat receiver boxes in Germany activate the copy protection HDCP only for "Premiere Film", but not for the sports nor documentation channels. Also Pro7 and Sat1 HD currently send without copy protection. So right now you can connect the HD receiver to the CII via HDMI and the CII to your DVI port and you will see a picture - as long as you don't switch to "Premiere Film".

At least that's "as far as I know".

[stlblufan]

most (if not all) european broadcasters (will) use H.264/MPEG-4 video codec (not supported by CII)

Why won't the MPEG-4 video codec be supported by the CII? Technically, this doesn't make sense to me. Does that mean that any MPEG-4 signal would be passed through the CII without processing?

[Stefano Plebani]

Why won't the MPEG-4 video codec be supported by the CII? Technically, this doesn't make sense to me. Does that mean that any MPEG-4 signal would be passed through the CII without processing?

I don't understand either.


SP

[madshi]

The CII's media player doesn't support H.264, but that doesn't matter as long as you use the CII as a video processor, "only". It only matters if you want to play H.264 content through the CII's media player.

[Jason]

Fortunately Jason is not fully correct this time.

Both currently available HD sat receiver boxes in Germany activate the copy protection HDCP only for "Premiere Film", but not for the sports nor documentation channels. Also Pro7 and Sat1 HD currently send without copy protection. So right now you can connect the HD receiver to the CII via HDMI and the CII to your DVI port and you will see a picture - as long as you don't switch to "Premiere Film".

At least that's "as far as I know".
I am not aware that this sat receiver box doesn't activate copy protection in certain cases.

madshi, you are right, if that is the case, Crystalio II will have active video output without HDCP on HDMI port when input is any source without HDCP.

Jason

[madshi]

There are two HD sat receiver boxes out right now in Germany, one from Pace, one from Humax. Both activate HDCP on the HDMI output only if the broadcasting copy protection flag is set.

That's great - but it comes with a negative side effect: If you do have a HDCP compliant display, there's a noticable delay everytime you switch from a non HDCP channel to a HDCP channel, cause the HDCP handshake must be fully redone everytime. Customers are complaining about that, so I fear that receiver manufacturers will turn on HDCP all the time. I sincerely hope they won't - or at least make it adjustable in the configuration dialog.