Does FREEVIEW include HDCP in it's broadcast?

[roman-r]

Reason I ask is thinking of getting a HDMI DVD Recorder but my scaler (ISCAN HD) can't accept HCDP but does have DVI for non HDCP material.

Cheers in advance

[ianh64]

HDCP is trigged by a flag in the data stream. This flag would be controlled by the individual broadcaster, possibly on a programme by programme basis.

Obviously HDCP would only be an issue if your freeview box output over HDMI/DVI - not particularly common although some upscaling boxes do and the ones on the HD Freeview trial did.

I believe that it is the same flag that is used to trigger the macrovision circuitry thus it would affect analogue recordings too. As I have never had a freeview programme that did not record due to copyright reasons, I don't believe this flag is widely, if at all, implemented. But we don't know what the future holds.

[roman-r]

Thanks for the reply Ian.

Although I've also read that it's the Macrovision that triggers it I'm sure HDCP only currently effects the Digital stream (HDMI/DVI) as they're currently avoiding a pure digital copy.

New DVD recorders have HDMI so must stream the data with this option but whether it's HDCP is my concern.

Anyone else tried it?

[ianh64]

How are you getting the freeview output into the DVD recorder?

Im not quote sure if you fully grasped the implications. HDCP is not part of the freeview broadcast and the same way that it is not part of a DVD etc. HDCP is added (for digital output) by the source player (Freeview box in this occasion) if the copy protect flag is set in the input data. Its exactly the same flag that (for analogue output) controls whether macrovision is added by the source machine. Sorry if you already know it.

So HDCP has nothing more to do with Freeview than Macrovision does. So if a video/DVD recorder is going to object to recording a Freeiew programme with analogue, its going to have the same problem over HDMI.

Where you should be looking is how your DVD recorder is going to output a signal to your lumagen. Is it going to apply HDCP for all recorded material and commercial DVD's, or is it only going to apply HDCP for copy protected material, either on the DVD or on personally recorded material? Its going to be specific to your particular model of DVD recorder.

I suspect that the answer will be that your DVD recorder will trigger HDCP for copy protected discs. And that if user recorded material is copy protected, either from having macrovision or the copy protect flag set on a Freeview transmission, then its not going to be recordable in the first place.