It turns out that Apple's new MacBooks and MacBook Pros have a hidden "feature" -- HDCP, or High Definition Content Protection, is baked in to the new Mini DisplayPort connector.
Why? To annoy and inconvenience you, of course. The purpose of HDCP is to plug the "analog hole", the point at which a digital signal is turned back to human-friendly sounds and pictures. HDCP keeps the DRM going right up to the monitor, so in theory you can't hook up a recording device to pirate a movie.
Of course, this – as ever – punishes the legitimate user, in this case "John", the friend of Ars Technica's David Chartier. John tried to hook his new MacBook up to the school's projector (he's a teacher) to watch Hellboy 2 which he had downloaded from the iTunes Store. He was greeted with the message in the picture.
John says that not all movies are thus encumbered, so there is no way of finding out if they will play without just trying them out. It's great that honest John, who seems to buy a lot of movies from the iTunes Store, gets shafted by DRM whereas somebody who grabs the same movie from a BitTorrent tracker can play it anywhere they like. Way to destroy your own business, movie companies!
Apple brings HDCP to a new aluminum MacBook near you [Ars Technica]
