I didn’t quite expect that I would be allowed to watch the DVD, but I also wasn’t counting on being given the option to change my computer’s region code. Not that this makes me happy — region codes are just another bullshit way that Hollywood tries to control culture in the name of profit.

(Photo of Detalle de la conexión al MacBook by iBuffet under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-ShareAlike License.)

What does this mean? Well, High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) is an insidious form of DRM that prevents video sources from transmitting to non-compliant receivers. Conventionally speaking, it was designed so that new generations of disc players would only output to HDCP-compliant TVs and projectors — and not a DVR, computer, or general-purpose recording device.

To my limited knowledge, it works by encrypting the video coming out of the device’s port, then having the devices “know” what’s on the other end of the cable. If the player doesn’t “recognize” the device that’s displaying the movie, then the player stops*. (In the screenshot in the Ars article, the MacBook error message tells the user: “This movie cannot be played because a display that is not authorized to play protected movies is connected.”)

It’s extremely vexing to see Apple implementing DRM on its display ports — and it’s pushing me even further away from choosing an Apple laptop as my next computer.

* Depending on the devices being used, the player may instead simply lower the quality of the image, completely ignoring your hard-earned dollars of investment in “high definition.”