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Level 1

31 points

HDCP Content System Requirements?

Little did I know, this is apparently a typical story. I bought my first TV episode from iTunes to play on my 11" MacBook Air, connected to my 20" Cinema Display, and received this message when I attempted to play the video:

The selected movie won't play on your display.

This movie can be played only on displays that support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection).

I looked into it:

OK, what does this mean? (from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3382#8):

7. What is HDCP?

HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) is a form of digital copy protection that requires compatibility between a source—such as your computer and video adapter if present—and a receiver, such as a high-definition television. If any of these devices or cabling do not support HDCP, your content may not play, may present a warning message, or may play back at a lower resolution than expected. An example of content that supports HDCP is an HD movie on the iTunes Store. Note: For information about whether your cabling, receiver, or television supports HDCP, refer to the manufacturer of the device.

The above doesn't tell me anything definitive ("such as" is not an exclusive term; see "adapter" below).
Educated guess: Wrong adapter? (from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3382#8):

8. Does the Apple Mini DisplayPort adapter support HDCP?

Apple Mini DisplayPort adapters that offer digital connections—such as the Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter and the Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter—support HDCP content. Apple Mini DisplayPort adapters that offer analog connections—such as the Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter—do not support HDCP content.

Ok, that's not the problem; I have an Apple Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter, it supports HDCP content, and such adapters are for connecting monitors, not TVs.
Two versions of the movie were downloaded, an .m4v and an (HD).m4v. Neither plays in iTunes (same message).
I opened both with QuickTime. The non-HD movie played on my 20" but the HD did not.
That doesn't sound like content protection to me, at least for the non-HD movie.
Nothing during my purchase indicated system requirements for playing HDCP vids (if there is somewhere in the bowels of the iTunes store, it is not apparent, nor did I dig for it; I just bought a TV show);

My issues / questions:

Only after digging on the forums did I find out that my Cinema Display would not play HDCP vids.
There is nothing at all in the above Apple support article to indicate that HDCP vids cannot be played on a 20" Cinema Display. In fact, by any reasonable interpretation, Question No. 8 would indicate that all is hunky dory with HDCP and you're good to go. Question No. 7 is ambiguous, but only in retrospect (after perusing the forum).
Is a non-HD .m4v an HDCP vid?
Why does QuickTime play the non-HD movie, but iTunes doesn't?
Where in the iTunes store (pre-purchase) are there system requirements for playing HDCP videos?
This irritates the living kwap out of me – I bought a new Mac so I could play HD videos. Yes, I now know that this has been an issue on-and-off on the forum since 2004, but until an hour ago it news to me. What this means to me is that Apple has had since 2004 to figure out either how to allow their monitors to play HDCP content, or has had since the iTunes Store offered video content to clearly inform potential purchasers that if they don't have an HDCP-compatible device (and how to tell), the video won't play. Oh, and the above support article was last modified on March 15, 2011 (yes, I sent feedback to Apple).

If you're inclined to offer an answer to the 3 questions above, I'd be grateful. Don't worry about responding to my venting, that's just frustration.

Posted on Jun 12, 2011 12:55 AM

60 replies

Dec 12, 2012 1:25 PM in response to Asatoran

Asatoran - What if you have a late-model AppleTV and download the same movie, and the AppleTV is connected to an HDTV which doesn't support HDCP? Won't play?

moodray

Level 1

0 points

Mar 28, 2013 12:01 AM in response to bablemem

I ran into this problem previously and did some research into how best to deal with Mac's tendency to HDCP-encrypt the signal even when showing a PPT or surfing the Net, just because the Mac was connected to an HDCP-compliant display.

Because I have a matrix switcher which my Mac plugs into, and then on the output side there are BOTH HDCP and non-HDCP displays, I couldn't even view my Word documents on the non-HDCP displays because the Mac was encrypting the signal...

The answer is to get an EDID Manager V4 from Lightware, which has an HDCP Enable/ Disable feature. It just tells the Mac that it is not HDCP compliant, and the Mac will not encrypt the signal... Simple! Of course, if I play a Bluray, or Movies from iTunes, they won't play, but I knew that from the beginning.

Jun 21, 2013 8:18 PM in response to ollie_86

Similar story, except even more ridiculous. I bought a movie in HD, ACTUALLY WATCHED IT in HD, but later, when I try to watch it again, I get the same HDCP disclaimer. So, for some reason, only NOW can I not play an HD movie on my Mac because it can't support HDCP. This is inexcusable!

Oct 24, 2013 8:03 AM in response to Mr. Mellow

Late to the party - but in Maverick, check your screen resolutions. Make sure your display panel shows Resolution higher than the minimum HD resolution (anything higher than 1080). Mine had automatically selected the "Best for Display" setting in Maverick and suddenly my Samsung synchmaster screen was giving the HDCP error. Reselecting 1920x1080 gave me back my screen for HD!

deboni

Level 1

15 points

Nov 6, 2013 10:22 AM in response to Mr. Mellow

Bought and watched HD movies without any problem on Mac Pro with 27" EIZO monitor. Suddenly I started getting this HDCP error message. I did ALOT of actions, trying to resolve this problem. Finally called apple support and went through more steps with the technician on the phone. Spent almost half a day with the result that it didn't change anything.

The steps included the usual things like permission repair, emptying all the caches, reseting user permissions, setting up a clean new user, reinstalling 10.8.5.

At that point, the apple support said he had to forward it to the engineer.

I played around with it some more and tried with an old acer monitor. A very cheap monitor, I think 24" and the HD movies played with no problem!

I tried again with my EIZO. No luck. I then played around with the resolution an found out, that the HD movie show when I LOWER the resolution. It does not work on any resolution higher than 1920 x 1080 but works all the way down tp 800 x 600. The native resolution is 2560 x 1440.

Very strange.

I still should here back from apple. I will write here again if I get any news.

Message was edited by: deboni

Nov 14, 2013 7:18 PM in response to Mr. Mellow

The High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection problem just struck me too.

I have an iMac 27" 2009 model 8GB memory with Mavericks and iTunes 11.1.3.

I have 9 episodes of Breaking Bad in HD all of which have 1 or more plays with nary a problem.

Last play was 8-November.

Suddenly today I can't watch any of them with this newly minted problem!

Then, I quit a background video process.

They play again.

So, it must (may) be related lack of sufficient resources (processor, memory, etc) to play the video.

I was quite unhappy for a few minutes. Faith restored. Forgive me for doubting!

rkachel

Level 1

10 points

Dec 19, 2013 2:09 PM in response to Steven Kutoroff

I was about to get very cranky abou this 'till I read "Then, I quit a background video process." and remembered I had screen capture software running at startup. I disabled it and the HDCP message went away and I'm able to view my HD purchase on my Air. Whew.

thermeon

Level 1

0 points

Dec 20, 2013 11:43 PM in response to rkachel

I echo rkachel - "quit a background video process" triggered me to realize I was using 'screen sharing' to the mac mini that had the HDCP problem and as soon as I quit that the problem went away. Fortunately I only lost an hour but no $ chasing other possibilities. I wish apple would give a clearer message, perhaps a list of video output devices it recognizes at the moment that aren't HDCP?

Feb 19, 2014 2:11 PM in response to Mr. Mellow

I want to record my two cents...

Just got off the phone with Apple.
I purchased the Sound City movie in the HD format a year ago. At the time I tried to display the movie on a 23" Apple Cinema Display. It would not play. It played on the laptop display only. It gave a dialog stating that other hardware was required to display the file.

At the time, I had seen the film in the theatre. So this particular issue, though it was annoying to discover it was not pressing, so I did not pursue a solution from iTunes.

Yesterday, I decided to rent "Why We Ride" from iTunes. This was the SD version. The download encountered an error. In my interrogation I tried launching Sound City HD while the 23" display was connected and was reminded that the movie would not play there.

Today, I tried to get support from iTunes to resolve this. And they did nothing for me. They stood firm regarding the length of time that had passed. I asked them to swap out the HD for the SD. No dice. All sales are final.

Apple if you are listening, this customer is done. I will never buy or rent anything from iTunes ever again.
It's just entertainment. There are many alternatives for obtaining content in the future.

I had the impression my Apple equipment was capable of displaying all the products in the iTunes catalog.
This is a hard lesson. But one well learned.

Buyer Beware.

me_2011

Level 1

10 points

Mar 23, 2014 8:23 AM in response to Mr. Mellow

For what it's worth, I was experiencing a similar problem attempting to view an HD movie (Thor: The Dark World) on a Win 7 system. After receiving the same "Display not able to blah blah blah" and reading the entries here, I decided to try fiddling with the display resolution on the monitor.

The native resolution for the monitor is 1920x1200 and was set accordingly.

I lowered it to 1920x1080 and again tried starting the movie and it then played.

Oddly enough, I reverted the resolution to native during playback and the movie continued to play without issue.

So, before jumping through a series of hoops, some of which are on fire, try dumbing down the screen resolution to 1920x1080 if it is set greater than that.

MacsAre1

Level 1

0 points

Jun 9, 2014 8:55 AM in response to Mr. Mellow

I had this problem and I'm using a new HDCP compliant external monitor, with a Mini-Displayport to HDMI adapter with my 2013 Macbook Air, and an HDMI to DVI cable plugged in to that (that's what my monitor came with!). I could have sworn that I tested these iTunes videos when I first set up the monitor and it had worked, which is why I found this thread. I can confirm that just changing the resolution of the display to 1600x900 and then changing it back to the native 1920x1080 solved the issue. iTunes now plays movies without showing the HDCP error.

Aug 19, 2014 4:12 PM in response to MacsAre1

I have exactly the same problem in combination with an Apple 24" LED Cinema Display which is definitely HD capable. However, I can not confirm that changing the resolution to 1600x1000 and back to 1920x1200 will fix the issue. At least it did not for me.

Started a thread here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6489849

Nov 19, 2014 4:24 PM in response to Werner Goldbach

None of the suggestions worked for me as I could no longer play movies in iTunes on my MacBook Pro nor iMac 27" ... Apple support had me remove a package called DisplayLink. Goto upper right hand corner and click spyglass and type "display" ... I saw "DisplayLink Uninstall" and double clicked that to remove it ... After a reboot, I was able to play my iTunes Movies. This package is installed in one of two ways: 1) A Dell monitor 2) A software package that enables sharing your screen. Either way I had both of these items and this package was installed as a result.

Nov 23, 2014 7:55 PM in response to done_w_windows

THIS IS THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM. I have been searching for days and was getting quite frustrated that my purchased video media, all quality levels was not playing in the iTunes player. I found this post and opened the spotlight search and lo and behold, that displaylink thing popped right up. Once I uninstalled and restarted, VIOLA! Like magic my videos are playing again! Apple should post this fix at the top of the thread! Stupid displaylink!

Dec 26, 2014 9:40 PM in response to Mr. Mellow

After upgrading to Yosemite I suddenly started getting the HDCP error message for music videos (some, not all) and certain movies I purchased and played many times on my iMac 27" through iTunes previously without issue. Unfortunately I searched for DisplayLink but it wasn't on my machine so I had to look for something else. I tried the change of display resolution but that did nothing.

I reset the SMC i.e. Shut down, unplug anything connected to the machine, unplug the Power cord, leave for about 15 seconds and then reconnect and restart. Seems to have done the trick. Simple solution and hopefully equally applicable to the other circumstances described by those getting the HDCP error message.

HDCP Content System Requirements?