More about Starhub HDCP - Starhub has good people!

We've reached a stage where ... sigh ... the slightest glimmer of brilliance elicits a big response. This does not belittle a staffer in Starhub called Justin Cheng though. He is VERY good. I don't know whether he's management level or just some grunt, but he's good. See this email:

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From: Michael Tan
Mailed-By: gmail.com
To: customerservice@starhub.com
Date: May 23, 2006 1:43 PM
Subject: HD TV trial programme enquiry

Starhub and MDA definition of HD is different!

Please click on the links for details

Starhub has released HD trials. Great! BUT, Starhub does not mention HDCP at all, but MDA states that you must have HDCP in order to have HD-compliance. So how now? Well, I think Starhub will not broadcast HDCP content in the trials, but eventually they will do so. But once they implement HDCP, if our monitor do not have HDCP, the content will be degraded to 480P from 720P. Starhub should clarify! -- ____________________________________________
Michael Tan

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And Justin Cheng answered:

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From: customerservice@starhub.com
Mailed-By: starhub.com
To: michaeltanyk@gmail.com
Date: May 30, 2006 2:21 PM
Subject: Re: HD TV trial programme enquiry

Dear Michael

Thank you for your email.

We apologise for the late reply.

With regard to your enquiry, we would like to inform you that ourset-top box is HDMI/HDCP and it should be fully comply to TV withHDMI or DVI/HDCP.

At present, the HDCP is not triggered till there's a need, so most of the TV will not be affected. However, if it comes to a time that this is triggered, then those TV's without HDMI/HDCP should see the warning message below. Also, the viewer still can switch over to component or composite output for viewing, as they are analog transmission to the HDTV.

HDCP Warning
This material is copyrighted and your display is unable to handle its protection properly. Therefore, you will not be able to watch the program using HDMI. To watch this material, please use analternative type of video output connection from your set-top box, e.g. YPbPr

For other reference about HDMI/HDCP, please visit http://tv.about.com/od/hdtv/a/hdmidvihdcp.htm

If you have any questions on StarHub Digital Cable and MaxOnline services, please call us on our Customer Care hotline at 1633 (+656820 1633 from overseas), email to this address or fax in to 67251603.

Best regards
Justin Cheng
Customer Affairs

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Don't you just love Justin, in an era where people reply you things which are so much bullshit? Justin, you're damn good. You may be a manager, but you probably can be king.

Anyway, let's calm down and see Justin's message content. It's shocking, right? So your S$4,000 to S$35,000 LCD TV which does not have HDCP will just display the wonderful message, rendering your digital port .... useless for HD.

One more point - I'm not sure that Justin's workaround on the analog port is accurate. Here's my additional query to Justin:

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From: Michael Tan
Mailed-By: gmail.com
To: "customerservice@starhub.com"
Date: May 31, 2006 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: HD TV trial programme enquiry


Justin, thank you for your excellent answer, MDA's reply paled very much in comparison.

One clarification - if one switches over to analog when you get the message, there has been talk about the HDCP scheme requiring analog output to be downgraded to 480P/576P from HD resolutions. Is this true?

This is summarized here:
http://miketan.blogspot.com/2006/05/less-discussed-complications-of-hdmi.html

with sources from here:
Matthew Torres of About.com thinks that the signal may be blocked

On a HD DVD or a Blu-ray disc, if the manufacturer or publisher of the disc has set the HDCP protection flag set as ON, if this player is connected to a non-HDCP compliant LCD TV, the player will output a downsampled signal of 540p .

This question I think is essential, because out of 300K people who have plasma/flatscreen, 90% of them have it without HDCP.

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Let's hope Justin replies my question and sheds more light on this situation.