NVIDIA and ATI HDCP Compatible Graphics Cards Roundup
by Josh Venning on November 16, 2006 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Playing a Blu-ray Movie
Before we look at the cards, we want to talk a little bit about our test platform for our HDCP testing in this review. Our Blu-ray drive we have for testing is the Pioneer BDR-101A Bluray player.
Just like watching a regular DVD, in order to watch a Blu-ray movie you'll need a Blu-ray player software. Cyberlink provided us with a version of its Power DVD software that has Blu-ray support (you'll currently need a different version of the player if you have a HD-DVD drive instead). Note that in order to play movies from your Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive over a digital connection, your playback software must have HDCP support or the movie won't play, but most manufacturers should include HDCP compatible software with their Blu-ray or HD-DVD drives.
With the graphics card as the next step in the HDCP chain, not only must the GPU and card be HDCP compatible, but the graphics drivers must have HDCP support as well. Up until very recently, NVIDIA and ATI's public drivers did not include support for HDCP, but this has been added as of their latest Catalyst and ForceWare driver releases.
The last link in the HDCP chain is the display, and an HDCP compatible monitor or TV is required to play our Blu-ray movie. The TV we chose for this is a Westinghouse lvm-42w2, which fully supports HDCP and is a native 1080p display. Of course, you will need a Blu-ray or HD-DVD movie to make use of an HDCP setup to begin with, and the one we have for our testing is the movie "Click" which was one of the first 50GB Blu-ray discs available.
If any one of your hardware or software components within this chain does not support HDCP, then your Blu-ray or HD-DVD movie will not play. Most of the time an error message will pop up and give you an idea of what is wrong; If the graphics card is not HDCP compatible, PowerDVD gave us an error message saying, "fail to enable HDCP. Please switch to analog output (VGA, D-Sub) and try again." If the graphics drivers were incompatible, we got an error message along the lines of "please make sure your graphics drivers support HDCP." These are both fairly straightforward error messages, and for the most part, we were able to tell where the chain was failing whenever we had problems.
If the graphics card itself didn't properly support HDCP the result was a bit more in your face. For instance, we had a X1600 Pro sample with an HDMI port from Sapphire which was listed as being HDCP compatible, but we tried to play our Blu-ray movie we were greeted with a screen full of static.
For the most part, if the card you're using supports HDCP and you've got the right drivers and player, then you're good to go. It's also worth noting that not all outputs on the cards we looked at support HDCP, but where there are limitations we've done our best to point them out in the individual card sections.
Before we look at the cards, we want to talk a little bit about our test platform for our HDCP testing in this review. Our Blu-ray drive we have for testing is the Pioneer BDR-101A Bluray player.
Just like watching a regular DVD, in order to watch a Blu-ray movie you'll need a Blu-ray player software. Cyberlink provided us with a version of its Power DVD software that has Blu-ray support (you'll currently need a different version of the player if you have a HD-DVD drive instead). Note that in order to play movies from your Blu-ray or HD-DVD drive over a digital connection, your playback software must have HDCP support or the movie won't play, but most manufacturers should include HDCP compatible software with their Blu-ray or HD-DVD drives.
With the graphics card as the next step in the HDCP chain, not only must the GPU and card be HDCP compatible, but the graphics drivers must have HDCP support as well. Up until very recently, NVIDIA and ATI's public drivers did not include support for HDCP, but this has been added as of their latest Catalyst and ForceWare driver releases.
The last link in the HDCP chain is the display, and an HDCP compatible monitor or TV is required to play our Blu-ray movie. The TV we chose for this is a Westinghouse lvm-42w2, which fully supports HDCP and is a native 1080p display. Of course, you will need a Blu-ray or HD-DVD movie to make use of an HDCP setup to begin with, and the one we have for our testing is the movie "Click" which was one of the first 50GB Blu-ray discs available.
If any one of your hardware or software components within this chain does not support HDCP, then your Blu-ray or HD-DVD movie will not play. Most of the time an error message will pop up and give you an idea of what is wrong; If the graphics card is not HDCP compatible, PowerDVD gave us an error message saying, "fail to enable HDCP. Please switch to analog output (VGA, D-Sub) and try again." If the graphics drivers were incompatible, we got an error message along the lines of "please make sure your graphics drivers support HDCP." These are both fairly straightforward error messages, and for the most part, we were able to tell where the chain was failing whenever we had problems.
If the graphics card itself didn't properly support HDCP the result was a bit more in your face. For instance, we had a X1600 Pro sample with an HDMI port from Sapphire which was listed as being HDCP compatible, but we tried to play our Blu-ray movie we were greeted with a screen full of static.
For the most part, if the card you're using supports HDCP and you've got the right drivers and player, then you're good to go. It's also worth noting that not all outputs on the cards we looked at support HDCP, but where there are limitations we've done our best to point them out in the individual card sections.
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LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, November 21, 2006 - link
Behind Enemy Lines? Explains why Blu-Ray adoption is so slow.NullSubroutine - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
I think ATi er AMD had been working on the drivers for GPU accelration for HD movies longer than Nvidia is all. You only have so much resources in a given department, it would make seense that Nvidia put more focus in other things (like Linux drives) where as Ati was working on this and Folding @ home stuff.dickie1900 - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
Do you think the results will change for the 8800s when DX10 rolls out with Vista or are we going to have to wait for games to be developed that use some of the newer instructions?DigitalFreak - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
I would doubt it. I don't believe Blu-Ray/HD-DVD decoding has anything to do with DirectX.DigitalFreak - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
Dude, it's a unicorn. :-)
phusg - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
First off, thanks for the great review.Why not? Many people just look at the graphs and this way they would miss out on the 2 quietest cards.
Also (unrelated), it's a shame there was no mention of AGP cards. I'm sure I'm not the only one looking to stretch the life of their AGP HTPC.
And one more thing (unrelated), aren't there initiatives that are looking to handle the HD decoding in software? I'd love a review of these. What is the slowest CPU you can decode HD content with?
mino - Wednesday, November 22, 2006 - link
I second that.EVERY noise measurement should include reference of the bacground (system without the thingie which noise one measures).
As those 0dB would would not be 0dB. There would be the noise of the system without the noise of the card - hence the bacground noise.
Try to consider that in the future. No much work required for MUCH information added.
Spoelie - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
coreavc is the fastest h264 software decoder, no competitionTheir cpu-only implementation is most of the time faster than the competition WITH gpu support, but they're working on gpu support as well.
It is payware tho.
http://coreavc.corecodec.org/">http://coreavc.corecodec.org/
NullSubroutine - Friday, November 17, 2006 - link
I originally had written this up in response to an artical that MS Office has mandatory authentication checks when doing updates. However, I think the idea of what the "intellectual property" industry is putting consumers through is rediculous.....this just in, cars now 'phone home' to validate the vehicial is authentic prior to fixing factory installed parts.....refridgerator units must now be activated via phone call before the cooling units will work....lotion now comes with EULA, which is automatically agreed to at time of purchase (information is inside the bottle)....desk drawers will now automatically lock after free trial period has ended....fees must now be paid to bacteria colonies each time a user flushes the toilet....due to people stealing food, the price has increased 1000x, if the food is not authentic it will tell you, via voice, that your food is not real food, and where authentic food can be purchased if you give the food companies the information on where your not real food was purchased; when asked about the policy, supporters claimed that food was an optional luxery, paint companies now produce super ultra high quality paint products - but can only be applied with a special paint brush on special surface (microchips installed) or else the paint looks like normal paint - when cosumers were asked about the new paint they said it looked great but unless they wanted to buy all new everything, it was all meaningless...
shecknoscopy - Thursday, November 16, 2006 - link
Wow... the Blu-ray era's off to a stunning start, eh? No more complaining about the poor game options for the Wii launch, when the stunning new world of BLU-RAY is kicking off with "Click."
Lawdy, help us.
-Sheq