With my additional desk real estate comes two changes to my studio.
First, there are two additional monitors and a laptop. My TriCaster, running on a PC and the focal point of the desk, is never used as a PC. The laptop is my office computer. The two other monitors are for my prompter and controlling the Dejero VSET LIVE. Its monitor used to sit on the floor!
Second, I brought down the cable box from my upstairs office. It’s HDMI. My TriCaster is HDMI. Why not wire it in so I can watch TV?
Right. There’s no way AT&T or any rights holder is going to let me have unprotected video in my switcher. They should. I’m a paying customer.
HDMI is protected by HDCP. Try to watch cable on anything but a TV. It stops working. Your cable company in action.
HDCP stands for High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection, a copy protection scheme to eliminate the possibility of intercepting digital data midstream between the source to the display.
There is a way around this. The cable box also outputs unprotected YPbPr video. It’s analog and will have to be converted to HDMI. In other words, I can use it if I allow it to be crapped up first and spent $30 for the box and cables to do it.
This is one reason (of many) people are cable cutting. Rights protection is making it too difficult to use what you’re paying for. And these locks only keep out honest people.