HDMI Splitter HDCP problem

[TheFreeman]

then it's all fine for you and i'm happy you can get what you wanted from a cheap splitter, initially i only suggested to someone with a problem to use a more expensive one that comes with more features to ensure great compatibility in various setup and that would fix his issue immediately and make any others fly away.

[usually_quiet]

then it's all fine for you and i'm happy you can get what you wanted from a cheap splitter, initially i only suggested to someone with a problem to use a more expensive one that comes with more features to ensure great compatibility in various setup and that would fix his issue immediately and make any others fly away.

Getting a new $20 splitter like the one that broke would fix his issue too. Chances are it would last for at least a few years.

There is no law of nature which would prevent a more expensive piece of electronics from breaking after two days. With any electronic device, some individual units will suffer infant death. In the HDFury's case sending it back for replacement under warranty would not be cheap. Throwing a $20 device in the trash hurts less.

[TheFreeman]

if you don't shed tears for natural resources wasted in the process, i guess it can work i always prefer having something with inherent value and reputable.

[usually_quiet]

if you don't shed tears for natural resources wasted in the process, i guess it can work i always prefer having something with inherent value and reputable.

The OP wrote this:

Oh nooooo :'( :'( :'( too saad...!! May be it need another kind of HMDI cable? Which kind is better?

You must not be a student of human nature. Does that seem like it was written by someone who is likely to be willing to spend $100 on a new splitter?

It has been speculated that much of the cost of HD Fury products is related to their illicit nature. HDFury advertises their products as HDCP strippers. Deliberately making a product to defeat HDCP is a violation of the HDMI license. Most reputable companies don't break technology licensing agreements.

[TheFreeman]

It has been calculated that a couple hundreds dollars product from them perform as good as a couple thousands dollars units from lumagen or dvdo

I'm not sure where you saw them advertising as strippers, they actually have the sole solution to connect any hdmi source to any display (no matter it's native res or input connector type).

So you think the cheap crap splitter only built for digitally deafeating the hdcp and clearly nothing else, are less illicit ? (if any of them are illicit at all)

[usually_quiet]

It has been calculated that a couple hundreds dollars product from them perform as good as a couple thousands dollars units from lumagen or dvdo

I'm not sure where you saw them advertising as strippers, they actually have the sole solution to connect any hdmi source to any display (no matter it's native res or input connector type).

So you think the cheap crap splitter only built for digitally deafeating the hdcp and clearly nothing else, are less illicit ? (if any of them are illicit at all)

HD Fury products certainly were advertised as a solution for connecting HDCP compliant devices to non-HDCP compliant displays. HD Fury products used to be sold by a number of home theater specialists in the US, but those venders were required to halt sales because the devices were unlicensed products as well as a violation of the DMCA due to their advertized purpose. Since legal action against HD Fury was successful, there is no question about their illegality now in my country and some others, regardless of what HD Fury and their fan boys say

As far as the cheap splitters... Even though users claim that the inexpensive splitters defeat HDCP, the product listings generally don't claim that they have that feature, except maybe on ebay, in which case the seller is probably operating offshore like HD Fury. That is the difference. If someone proves that the maker intentionally designed their product to remove HDCP, US sellers might be forced to stop offering the inexpensive splitters that remove HDCP, but today they are still legal.

[TheFreeman]

AFAIK, there is 2 legal actions pending regarding hdcp stripper and none of them concern HDfury.
One is from DCP against AVADIRECT and the other is from a reseller who is sueing DCP. (which can very much make all stripper legal if they win)

Also, on the HDCP and HDMI adopter list i can see HDfury, i cannot see any others producing the cheap splitter, and afaik the hdfury products were always licensed so i'm sorry but most of your informations seem wrong to me.

Legal action against stripper always come with a big studio backup because they are all based on the "copyright holder rights" so they need a studio like warner to co-sign any legal letters they are sending out.

I'll support them just for the consumers rights battle they have engaged against the industry, but i understand many do not care about such thing.

[usually_quiet]

AFAIK, there is 2 legal actions pending regarding hdcp stripper and none of them concern HDfury.
One is from DCP against AVADIRECT and the other is from a reseller who is sueing DCP. (which can very much make all stripper legal if they win)

Also, on the HDCP and HDMI adopter list i can see HDfury, i cannot see any others producing the cheap splitter, and afaik the hdfury products were always licensed so i'm sorry but most of your informations seem wrong to me.

Legal action against stripper always come with a big studio backup because they are all based on the "copyright holder rights" so they need a studio like warner to co-sign any legal letters they are sending out.

I'll support them just for the consumers rights battle they have engaged against the industry, but i understand many do not care about such thing.

AVADirect doesn't have much chance of winning, based on what has happened with other suits involving DMCA violations. Consumers already lost the battle in the analog era. Macrovision removers and CGMS-A strippers can't legally be sold here either.

I have read all of HDFury's explanations as to why they are complaint with the HDMI license and why their products are legal. Intel/the DCA don't seem to agree with their reasoning. The actions taken by them here against HD Fury occurred around 2010 or 2011, with the result that venders here stopped carrying HD Fury products. At one time Curt Palme released a statement saying that they were no longer selling HD Fury products for legal reasons, and I have no reason to doubt them. Some say the legal reason was that HD Fury devices violated the DMCA, others say HD Fury devices violated the revised HDMI licensing agreement, which seems likely to be true based on what HDMI and HDCP are supposed to do.

[TheFreeman]

AVADirect doesn't have much chance of winning, based on what has happened with other suits involving DMCA violations. Consumers already lost the battle in the analog era. Macrovision removers and CGMS-A strippers can't legally be sold here either.

I have read all of HDFury's explanations as to why they are complaint with the HDMI license and why their products are legal. Intel/the DCA don't seem to agree with their reasoning. The actions taken by them here against HD Fury occurred around 2010 or 2011, with the result that venders here stopped carrying HD Fury products. At one time Curt Palme released a statement saying that they were no longer selling HD Fury products for legal reasons, and I have no reason to doubt them. Some say the legal reason was that HD Fury devices violated the DMCA, others say HD Fury devices violated the revised HDMI licensing agreement, which seems likely to be true based on what HDMI and HDCP are supposed to do.

I can see hdfury device on curtpalme website so something have changed or is about to change.

I've also read and i agree with them when they say that copyright holder have to grant or deny access. The free thinker should collude to grant access to their work as opposite to the big studios who of course collude to deny access.

[usually_quiet]

Unlike the items Curt Palme was forced to remove, Dr HDMI is not marketed as an HDCP stripper. If it strips HDCP, it could still be subject to legal action at a future date, as could be the cheap spitters that strip HDCP.

The studios you are discussing have the legal right to use DRM to protect profits. HD Fury is a business that makes money from defeating DRM, which is a violation of the law in many places. Get real. This is one business fighting another over money, not any kind of altruistic consumer rights campaign.

[TheFreeman]

I see them throwing efforts in order to get HDMI sources displayed on PJ, HDTV, monitor, while they could just release a one feature device like the cheap splitters you recommend here, so for me, they are doing this for the people who bought display that are technically capable but cannot use them due to DRM from big studios, that not only protect the studio right to profit, but make the consumers unable to access their own work or third party work that no one ever wanted to be protected. in my opinion, they are making something more legit (or less illicit) than your cheap splitter, it's not about advertising when you read the law, the law is about "sole/main purpose". the sole/main purpose of your splitter is to remove encryption. Their products have much more purpose than just removing encryption.

[usually_quiet]

I see them throwing efforts in order to get HDMI sources displayed on PJ, HDTV, monitor, while they could just release a one feature device like the cheap splitters you recommend here, so for me, they are doing this for the people who bought display that are technically capable but cannot use them due to DRM from big studios, that not only protect the studio right to profit, but make the consumers unable to access their own work or third party work that no one ever wanted to be protected.

Posture all you want. It doesn't change the fact that it is still against the law in many places to sell devices that remove DRM.

in my opinion, they are making something more legit (or less illicit) than your cheap splitter it's not about advertising when you read the law, the law is about "sole/main purpose". the sole/main purpose of your splitter is to remove encryption. Their products have much more purpose than just removing encryption.

The main purpose of a splitter, including mine, is to allow an HDMI source device to feed two or more destination devices. HDCP does not have to be removed in the process for this to happen.

I would still need a splitter to feed the signal from my cable box to both a TV and a capture device, whether it removed DRM or not.

Anyone who sees you as anything other than a rabid fan-boy after this BS has questionable judgement.

[TheFreeman]

of course i'm a fan boy of quality, just like you are a fan boy of cheap crap. there is no question about it.

You need to split the signal in order to record the signal anyway (as long as you need one separate display for monitoring). You are educated enough to guess the sole purpose of such device. You are also well enough educated to understand that a device offering up or down scaling, picture enhancement, aspect ratio, scan conversion and i don't know how many others have different purpose than just defeating the CP.

Now IF the device have other sole/main purpose than defeating copy protection (which is not the case of your cheap splitter) and IF the copyright holder (any of them) give you authorization to bypass technological CP measures, then you have a legit right to do so. Don't you think so ?

[usually_quiet]

In fact, most people use an HDMI splitter to feed an HDMI signal from one source to multiple TVs. I needed a splitter to be able watch TV with my PC turned off.

There is no point arguing with fan boys or idiots, and you are both. I'm done

[TheFreeman]

Yes, if the device do not bypass CP, then splitter is a legit use, but if the device bypass CP just like your cheap splitter, then splitting unprotected signal and doing nothing else.. is by itself nothing else than the perfect sole/main purpose hardware under dmca definition.

Happy to know than after being called "narcissist", "convinced that i'm superior", i'm now called an "idiot" and "fan boy".
I'm ok with the fan boy, like i said, i like everything that is quality. so i'm happy to be called fan boy of quality.
For the rest, such insults are useless and deserve your speech, since you pretend and seems to be educated, you should know it.

[TheFreeman]

To close the discussion, i suggest we listen to a third party point view, Keith who is admin from emotivalounge, they had an interesting thread going on in their forum, it fall right into our topic.

To answer your final question (How different can two splitters be?)
Unfortunately, the answer is that there is a lot of room for differences.

For one thing, the HDMI signal uses a lot of bandwidth, and is very fussy in terms of timing and signal levels. This means that a badly designed splitter can degrade your picture quality, or cause all sorts of odd and unusual problems like flickering, and dropouts, and funny colors, and even certain devices not working with other devices. In short, a bad splitter can cause more problems, and more interesting problems, than a bad cable or a bad component.

For another, unlike an analog audio splitter, an HDMI splitter is doing something much more complicated. Whenever you connect two HDMI devices, they exchange information, and then negotiate the best way to connect to each other, and the best resolution and signal format to use. When you add a third device, this negotiation becomes a lot more complicated. The splitter must actually consolidate the information from your two target devices, then pass this information on to the source device to "facilitate" its ability to negotiate the best choices that will work with BOTH of the destination devices. There are all sorts of ways in which a badly designed splitter could screw this up, resulting in negotiation failures (where one or the other device simply doesn't work), to bad choices (where the common format chosen isn't the best possible one), to situations where the negotiations don't go correctly if one device is already playing and you turn the other on or off.

Therefore, while doing it right doesn't seem like it should be that difficult, there are a lot of ways in which someone can do it wrong.....
(and certain flaws may only show up with certain associated equipment)

[johns0]

This thread has run it's course.