Understanding the HDCP Master Key Leak: Via Freedom to Tinker.
On Monday, somebody posted online an array of numbers which purports to be the secret master key used by HDCP, a video encryption standard used in consumer electronics devices such as DVD players and TVs. I don't know if the key is genuine, but let's assume for the sake of discussion that it is. What does the leak imply for HDCP's security? And what does the leak mean for the industry, and for consumers?
HDCP is used to protect high-def digital video signals "on the wire," for example on the cable connecting your DVD player to your TV. HDCP is supposed to do two things: it encrypts the content so that it can't be captured off the wire, and it allows each endpoint to verify that the other endpoint is an HDCP-licensed device. From a security standpoint, the key step in HDCP is the initial handshake, which establishes a shared secret key that will be used to encrypt communications between the two devices, and at the same time allows each device to verify that the other one is licensed.
As usual when crypto is involved, the starting point for understanding the system's design is to think about the secret keys: how many there are, who knows them, and how they are used. HDCP has a single master key, which is supposed to be known only by the central HDCP authority. read more... »
License to Kill Innovation: the Broadcast Flag for UK Digital TV?: Via EFF.org Updates.
The British MP Tom Watson has highlighted a digital TV consultation by UK regulator Ofcom, held in response to an inquiry from the BBC (the consultation deadline is this Wednesday):
The BBC has indicated that third party content owners are seeking to ensure that reception equipment will implement ... copy protection. Because [these] requirements are not mandatory, representatives of content owners have asked the BBC to take steps to ensure that reception equipment will implement the specified content management arrangements.
Veterans of the broadcast flag battle in the United States will recognise this language: rightsholders are once again attempting to use the power of the public regulators to force universal DRM on the general public, and place their veto power over the next generation of HD digital TV technology. read more... »
FCC will run nationwide DTV "soft test" on May 21: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.
The "end is near," declared Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein at Tuesday's Open Commission meeting. Adelstein was referring to the DTV transition, scheduled to conclude on Friday, June 12, one month from now. There are still 927 full power television stations that have to make the jump from analog to digital by then. To get a sense of who is or isn't really ready for this apocalypse, the agency has called upon those broadcasters to run a "soft test" of the switch three times on Thursday, May 21.
Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)
TiVo, AppleTV, Boxee, and the future of HD television delivery: Via Freedom to Tinker
I don't watch as much TV as I once did. Yet, I'm still paying Comcast every month, as they're the only provider who will sell me HD service compatible with my TiVo-HD. Sadly, Comcast is far from ideal. I'm regularly frustrated at their inability to debug their signal quality problems. (My ABC-HD and PBS-HD signals are right on the edge, in terms of signal quality, so any slight degradation makes those channels unwatchable through the MPEG block errors, which seems to happen on an irregular basis.) Comcast customer service wants me to sit around all day waiting for a tech to come out when the problem has nothing whatsoever to do with my house. When I've attempted to report the signal strength measurements I've taken and how they vary from channel to channel, I've found I might as well be speaking to a brick wall.
Yes, I know I could put an old-school antenna on the roof and feed it into my TiVo. That would do pretty good for the local channels, but then why am I paying Comcast at all? Answer: for the handful of shows that we watch from cable channels. More than one person has asked me why I don't just download these shows online and cut the cable. You can get Comedy Central programming from their web site. You can get all sorts of things from Hulu.com. All free and legal! read more... »
Most Hackable Coupon-Eligible DTV Converter?: Via Slashdot
An anonymous reader writes "So I've finally gotten my DTV coupons, now I have to choose a converter before the analog signals go dark. I'd like to get one that is hackable, but haven't had much luck finding information about the internals of the units available. My question is, What chipsets do the different coupon eligible converters use, and which one is the most hackable? It'd be great to be able to send my own MPEG stream and have it displayed, or to grab the raw stream out of the device."
Read Original Article ( Via Slashdot. )
DTV Coupon Program Out of Money - Via Post I.T. - A Technology Blog From The Washington Post - (washingtonpost.com):
If you haven't ordered a coupon for a converter box to prepare for next month's switch to digital television, you may have trouble getting one before the Feb. 17 deadline.
Today the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is running the coupon program, said it is nearing the program's $1.34 billion funding limit. That means people trying to order coupons will be placed on a waiting list until more funds become available. Here's a story with more details. read more... »
Converting to Digital TV - IEEE Spectrum Radio - Via IT Conversations:
On February 17, 2009, all analog television broadcasting in the United States will convert to digital. Millions of households will need to either replace their televisions, sign up for cable or satellite service, or install a digital signal converter. While the Federal government has subsidized these and assured that the switch will be cheap and easy, a reporter for IEEE Spectrum radio who tries it herself finds that for her, it is neither cheap nor easy.
(Read Original Article - Via IT Conversations.)
HDTV and Home Theater Podcast #333 - Post Black Friday HTiB Round-up: Via HDTV Magazine - Industry News (Beta)
We did this a couple years ago, and it's probably just as good an idea now as it was then. Being that many of you may have recently purchased your first HDTV at a great price on "Black Friday," we wanted to do a show that will help you decide on a Home Theater in a Box (HTIB) system that will bring the other half of the HD experience into your HD Theater. We list and briefly discuss 5 systems; all of which support Blu-ray - some even include it. read more... »
Digital TV foreshadows erosion of Internet rights | June 18, 2008 03:00 AM | Tom Yager - Via Ahead of the Curve | Tom Yager | InfoWorld :
With regard to the free exchange of information over the Internet, we, the people, have mostly managed to hold our ground. We can thank activists, hacktivists, legislators saying "no, thanks" to money from the entertainment lobbies, and forward-thinking artists and content distributors--I'm proud that writers and publishers took the lead on this--who recognize that reach is the currency of the digital age.
We should take as a warning sign of descent down the slippery slope toward the loss of Internet freedoms Internet providers' arbitrary blocking and throttling of BitTorrent traffic. The rationale points to the bandwidth wasted by BitTorrent. That doesn't ring true. There are other flavors of traffic such as VOIP, streaming news, advertising and entertainment, photo galleries, remote PC access, Usenet repositories, denial of service attacks, and spam that consume beastly amounts of bandwidth, but somehow none of these warrants detection and control at the provider's end of the pipe. It makes one wonder, what's so special about BitTorrent that it cries out to be controlled in such a radical manner?
That's an easy one. The entertainment lobby (my shorthand to avoid spewing the alphabet soup of movie, TV, and music trade groups), having failed to get the feds to impose a tax on videotapes and recordable discs, or to hold Internet providers liable for copyrighted content transferred through their networks, or (so far) to add a piracy tax to every broadband user's monthly bill, is using the most powerful weapon yet devised: "Standards." read more... »
Hacker in Murdoch Trial Acknowledges Receiving Money from Murdoch Firm - Via Threat Level:
An American hacker who is at the core of a piracy trial against a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary, testified this week that he created pirating software for the company but did not use it to sabotage the company's rivals.
Earlier this week I laid out the case against NDS Group, a UK-Israeli firm and a majority-owned subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corporation. The company is accused of reverse-engineering access cards created by competitor NagraStar in order to provide pirates with counterfeit cards. EchoStar's Dish Net used the NagraStar cards, and the counterfeit cards allegedly allowed pirates to access Dish Network pay-TV content for free. read more... »