It seems that once again the manufacturers have put the cart in front of the horse. I have written about the complications with HDMI and HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)- essentially making it unusable for any purpose other than watching the content or recording to a personal DVR for future personal playback. Today we have issues with DirecTV receivers telling us that our TV is not HDCP compatible (which all are) and to please hook up using component level cables…. Excellent, we can go backwards 10 years in our hook up to satisfy a DirecTV compliance issue, which should not even exist.
Along comes HDCP 2.2 which is configured for the copy protection specifically for 4K viewing. It means that your entire chain of devices which might include: source device like a Blu-Ray or new cable type device or over the air broadcast device, your surround receiver and your TV all must be 2.2 compatible. Bad news to anyone who bought or is considering buying a 4K TV as none or zero of the current 4K TV’s being offered have 2.2 compliance.
Manufacturers have been telling us for many generations “Go ahead and buy that new TV which currently has no programming as it will be compatible with future signals” –WRONG. They also have told us that they can take a signal let’s say for the sake of the current argument a 1080 signal and up-convert it to a higher resolution using some fake fill in the blank technology. It is impossible to improve on the quality of a given picture; you can process it and make it look different, but never better.
Save the money and buy only a 1080p compliant TV for today’s needs and worry about 4K when this TV is worn out or broken. In about 10 years.
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