is there a simple tool to determine if my combo of video card and TV is HDCP compatible?

I'm using Arcsoft TMT3 to play Blurays. It's been playing fine for a few years but all of a sudden TMT3 says that my system isn't HDCP compatible. No changes to anything in the system -- possibly a change to Win7, upgrade to SP1. The manufacturer of TMT3 thinks the issue is with the vid card driver but I'm getting the same results before and after an update to the vid card driver.

I wonder if there is a simple tool I can use to determine if my setup is HDCP compliant? That way I can determine if it's an issue with the video card or the player software.

jcollum

Posted 2011-07-27T19:58:29.860

Reputation: 3 737

Has the gear attached to the output changed at all? Is there a driver installed for the display itself? – Shinrai – 2011-07-27T20:18:43.203

No, TV has been same for 2 years. No driver installed for the display. It's just a pretty standard HDTV. – jcollum – 2011-07-27T20:35:25.227

Answers

Cyberlink has a free utility that's intended to assess Blu-Ray and 3D playback readiness. While you're asking about the more general case of HDCP compatibility, period, the requirements are essentially the same and this will even break down component by component what the problem is.

Shinrai

Posted 2011-07-27T19:58:29.860

Reputation: 18 051

Awesome, will check it out! – jcollum – 2011-07-27T21:07:47.897

It was a good idea, but the utility was a big fail: failed to detect my BD drive, failed to detect my display, failed to detect my software player and said my driver version was 8.x.x when it is more like 275.33. Keep in mind that the setup that I have was successfully playing Blu-Rays just a few weeks ago. I'm trying to troubleshoot why it suddenly wants to stop playing about 30s in to the disc. – jcollum – 2011-07-29T01:53:38.013

Ouch! I've used it successfully before myself so I don't know what's different here. (FYI, if it's an Nvidia driver that version number probably is right - the version you see when you download it is the PACKAGE version, not the actual driver version itself. I'm running 266.58 here but Device Manager shows the video driver as 8.17.12.6658 - notice how the last five digits match.) – Shinrai – 2011-07-29T14:14:19.357

It may have been reporting correctly then, since I was using the tool over Remote Desktop. I ran it directly on the TV and it found the TV and the BD drive. Arcsoft also has a tool to do this, called BD HD Assistant or something like that. – jcollum – 2011-07-29T15:44:41.880

The nVidia control panel will display the HDCP status of your card, cable, and display. You'd still need another tool to check the drive and anything else, though.

Have you recently added any drivers? I think windows disables HDCP when certain drivers are loaded because the drivers could access decrypted data and can't be trusted to not abuse that privilege (unsigned drivers, or if you're running windows with driver signing disabled).

Darth Android

Posted 2011-07-27T19:58:29.860

Reputation: 35 133

Yikes, hadn't considered that. I haven't changed any components in the system for quite some time, even the mouse has been the same for more than 6 months. Wonder how I'll track down unsigned drivers... – jcollum – 2011-07-29T16:21:11.440

I was looking for something like this to test if I could watch purchased Amazon videos in HD, but I didn't really want to download and install anything to my machine.

Amazon actually has a free video linked to in their documentation which can give you an idea of whether your setup supports HDCP. One thing that it doesn't seem to do is explain why your setup doesn't support it. (I think in my case it's my dual monitor setup again.)

James Skemp

Posted 2011-07-27T19:58:29.860

Reputation: 303

There is an Arcsoft tool that can be found here: http://www.arcsoft.com/en-us/bd_assistant.asp

jcollum

Posted 2011-07-27T19:58:29.860

Reputation: 3 737