Tags: video on demand, vod, vudu

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Appearing to cave to Hollywood demands, Apple has quietly added a restrictive copyright protection mechanism to its new MacBooks that is preventing customers from watching movies on external displays.

Apple has secretly included a copy protection scheme called High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) in the external display ports on the latest models of it MacBooks, released in the middle of October.

Apple has not disclosed the new anti-copying mechanism, and now increasing numbers of customers are discovering that they cannot play movies bought from the iTunes online store on many external monitors, TVs or projectors. 

"I tried all the movies that I have purchased from the iTunes Store with the same result," said "Maxyourmacs," who complained about the issue on Apple's support forums. "None of them will play on anything but the MacBook's small 13-inch screen. This is crazy unacceptable."

Released by Intel in 2001, HDCP is designed to prevent digital pirates from outputting movies to copying devices, such as digital video recorders. In industry parlance, the technology plugs the "analog hole" -- the security hole created by analog devices like TVs and monitors.

By definition, the technology also prevents movies from playing on non-compliant devices like older computer monitors or flat-screen TVs, which many Apple customers are just now discovering. Even TVs a couple of years old may not be HDCP compliant.

The issue is complicated by obsessive secrecy surrounding the technology. HDCP has been added to many models of Blu-Ray players and other entertainment devices, and several laptops from a range of PC manufacturers. However, it is unclear how many devices are HDCP-compliant: Manufacturers don't explicitly label which products are and aren't. Even industry analysts don't know how widely the technology has been adopted.

Intel declined to comment, and Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

However, the surging popularity of Apple's laptops and its iTunes online store is bringing the issue to the fore.

The copyright mechanism is posing problems for some customers, who are complaining in Apple's support forum that they had no idea their viewing devices were not compliant with the HDCP standard, forcing them to watch movies purchased from the iTunes Store on their small laptop screens.

"You really shouldn't be expected to know whether your video devices are compliant," said James McQuivey, a technology and media analyst at Forrester Research. "It's not your job. To require that burden on them is an unfair thing to do."

Apple's new MacBooks (including the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air) are the first Macs to include HDCP. McQuivey said Apple is clearly giving in to pressure from its studio partners.

McQuivey said studios are reluctant to deal with iTunes since its movie-purchasing model involves downloading content straight to a hard drive, where it is vulnerable to copying. Movies are easily copied and shared with friends on DVDs or thumbdrives (as long as the sharer also provides their password).

Movies from services like Vudu and Netflix, on the other hand, which stream movies over the internet, are much more difficult to copy and easier to police, he said.

McQuivey noted that iTunes' movie offerings (about 1,500 movies) pale in comparison to Vudu (5,000 movies) and Netflix (15,000 movies) because studios are distrustful of customers downloading movies to their hard drives.

Michael Cai, director of digital media at Parks Associates, a digital market research firm, said the headaches caused by HDCP is largely a result of poor communication between manufacturers.

"The industry hasn't done a very good job in coordinating with each other to make sure their devices are compatible with each other so you won't feel this issue," Cai said. "And they haven't done a very good job in terms of educating consumers with these issues."

Cai, himself, experienced the pains of HDCP. He recently tried to plug his Blu-ray equipped Sony VAIO laptop into his Sharp high-definition TV, and the image wouldn't show up.

McQuivey added that the HDCP restriction might be counterproductive for both Apple and movie studios: It could encourage MacBook owners to resort to illegal means of downloading, such as BitTorrent.

In the Apple support forums, this already seems to be the case.

"Apple will be out of luck, because we will, as of today, buy no more movies from the iTunes Store," writes a new MacBook Pro customer, who said he couldn't play an iTunes-purchased copy of Terminator 2 on his TV. "If this starts hitting the TV shows and the music videos, too, then we'll stop buying them from the iTunes Store as well."

Intel declined to comment. Apple did not respond to several requests for comment.

Those who are thinking of picking up the PSP-3000 now have yet another choice - the Ratchet & Clank Entertainment Pack that will feature a black PSP-3000 along with Everyday Shooter. Guess what we speculated back in October proved correct, and you can at last pick up the classic black color instead of toying around with silver and echochrome. The entire bundle will cost $199 when it arrives in December, so don't hold your breath waiting for a standalone $169 black version since no release date has been set yet.

Add a comment | From: PSP Gets New Ratchet & Clank Entertainment Pack | Visit Ubergizmo | Good deals

Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has elaborated on the Android handset due to drop in 2009 announced in October. South Korean service provider, KTF, will also be carrying the device, purportedly for 20% less than the usual cost of smartphones due to savings from using Google’s free operating system. We had already seen what doors are opened by a free OS through basement entrepreneurs like Australia-based Kogan, but as seen by these savings, larger operators are in a good position to slash prices on their phones and rope in a wider audience.

[via Reuters]

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• Australian manufacturer making Android handset

"In space today, an operations team must manually schedule each link and generate all the commands to specify which data to send, when to send it, and where to send it. With standardized DTN, this can all be done automatically."

NASA's interplanetary Internet tests a success, Vint Cerf triumphs again originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 05:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As expected, the Samsung Gravity T459 has made its way to T-Mobile for the holiday season. Confirmations have been reported that the Gravity is in stores, but not on display at this hour. The Gravity T459 is a nifty little slider with the following features:

• Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• Aqua with white or Lime with Gray finish
• Web-enabled
• Multiple messaging options (text messaging, picture messaging, video messaging)
• Built-in email clients including AOL, AIM and Yahoo! as well as easy access to popular POP3 email such as Gmail
• AOL®, ICQ, Windows Live®, and Yahoo!® Instant Messenger
• Bluetooth® wireless technology
• microSD™ (up to 4 GB) expansion memory
• Advanced speech recognition
• Music and video player
• Speakerphone
• Personal organizer (calendar, calculator, currency converter, notepad, to-do list)
• Dimensions: 4.53” x 2.07” x 0.70”; 4.3 ounces
• Display: 176 x 220 Pixels, 262K TFT
• Internal memory: 60MB
• Standard Lithium Ion Battery: up to 6 hours usage time; or up to 300 hours standby time

If you decide to head over to T-Mo to pick one up, you should be able to choose from two color options. Lime and gray (above) or aqua with white. Pricetag will fall-in at $49.99 with the usual $50 mail-in rebate and 2-year contract.

[Via: BGR]

Related News from IntoMobile:

• Samsung Gravity T459 coming November 17th?
• Hands-on review of the AT&T Samsung Epix
• NTT DoCoMo's FOMA SO903iTV
• LG KS360 messaging phone hitting in Europe this week
• G1 coming to the UK on October 30th.

• Sadly, I didn't get one of these exclusive invites. But from Nov. 17- 21, Verizon Wireless is hosting a Private Sale for "valued customers." Invitees will most likely believe the sale has something to do with the BlackBerry Storm, but the BS doesn't arrive in stores until Nov. 21. — The Boy Genius Report
• For $5, you can download an iPhone app called Gas Cubby that will help you track your car maintenance. — Gizmodo
• A new website called No Smoking Room is intended to help empower young girls to say no to smoking, as well as encourage those who are smoking to quit. — Gizmodiva
• The 24-inch LED Cinema Display's that Apple announced in October are now available for order. — MacRumors
• It's giveaway time! Be sure to log in for your chances to win a Nintendo DS Lite and fitness games! — geeksugar

Apple on Tuesday began taking orders for its new $900, 24-inch LED cinema display. The display will begin shipping later this month.

Marketed as a companion for your Mac notebook, the display includes a universal MagSafe power adapter for the MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. The screen connects to the notebooks through a Mini Display Port.

When Apple announced the LED cinema display in October, Steve Jobs stressed the "green" aspect of the product. He said Apple greatly reduced the use of polyvinyl chloride -- a chemical that produces dioxin, a dangerous carcinogen, during manufacturing -- in the display. Though some environmentalists commend Apple for this effort, they also say this isn't a purely altruistic effort, as hard times are pressuring tech companies to produce greener products to save substantial amounts of money.

Product Page [Apple]

See also:

• Recession Drives the Greening of the Electronics Industry
• Environmentalists Cheer on Apple for Getting Greener

Photo: Apple

Yesterday's list of Five Gadgets That Were Killed by the Cellphone proved rather popular. It also provoked a lot of response, some in the more traditional form of hate mail* and some offering suggestions for yet more victims of the cellphone's relentless growth. Here are few of the things we didn't include, yet have certainly been clobbered by the gadget widow-maker that is the mobile phone.

Photo: artzy.viva/Flickr

The Pager

The most popular suggestion was the pager:

5 gadgets? How could you forget the ubiquitous pager? In the not too distant past no drug dealer would leave home without it. The pager was the number one casualty of the rise of the cellphone. – Lenny

I couldn't put it better, Lenny. The beeper was indeed killed by the mobile, and rightly so: Not only were you always on call, you had to find a payphone in order to ring back, and you had to pay for it.

It offered some advantages, though -- doctors could go out to dinner in a fancy restaurant and be called off to work just after ordering (every medical drama made in the 1990s) and, on the other side, patients awaiting transplants could be tipped-off the moment the organs were in stock. All in all, though, a text message is a lot quicker and easier.

The Wristwatch

I still wear a wristwatch, although more as jewelry than as a time-telling tool. In fact, judging by the number of unusable watches our own Danny Dumas buys from Tokyo Flash, it's probably safe to say that watches don't even need to tell the time anymore. The cellphone may not have killed the watch, but it has certainly made it less essential. That hasn't stopped the likes of Vertu trying to hawk overpriced "luxury" cellphones to the same people that buy Rolexes.

Pocket Calculator

I got a surprising amount of suggestions for this one, and I actually considered putting it on yesterday's list. But although the cellphone will add, subtract and everything else, the keypad just isn't up to the task.

Anyone who adds up in a professional capacity (accountants, bar managers, shop owners) will always prefer a big, solid desktop calculator. Those things are accurate, and above all, fast. You try tapping $100,000 worth of recepts into a cellphone and see how long it is before you throw the thing out the window.

Alarm Clocks

True. Although an iPod also makes a pretty good alarm clock, and it doesn't irradiate your head as you sleep.

SatNav

Another great suggestion. GPS is finding its way into more and more phones, and even those that don't have it can guesstimate your position using cell-tower triangulation. The problem is that many phones need a network connection to actually pull down a map, whereas standalone SatNav devices store everything on-board and only need to connect to the satellite.

This means that a phone makes a pretty bad GPS device when you are out in the wilds -- arguably where you need it most.

Books

Here at Gadget Lab, we're fans of reading books on the iPhone, but we still don't think the book is anywhere near dead. For starters, the screens on cellphones just don't cut it as e-readers (although the iPhone gets close with a decent size and high 163ppi resolution). Heck, even purpose-built e-readers aren't there yet.

One day, though, the dead tree version will be obsolete, but we give it some years yet. The irony? Tiny text files are perfectly suited to small, low power devices.

Handheld Consoles

Will the phone kill the Gameboy? Perhaps. Nokia tried it with the taco-shaped N-Gage and failed. Apple is trying with the iPhone, and doing OK. But in the US the Nintendo DS is the second best selling console for October, beaten only by the Wii. Nintendo is shifting around half a million of them every month. That doesn't sound like a dead market.

What's certain is that the cellphone is becoming the default device for more and more things, slurping up other gadgets like a a giant Katamari Damacy ball. It might not be the best tool for a given job, but it's certainly the most convenient.

*The best hate mail was this one:

(You are so full of s**t that I hope they do not pay you to write your dribble and some [...] Gandpa [sic] my ass----who are you a young punk who cannot get a job except for writing???