Building a new system, i want it to be HDCP compatible

[menorton]

Howdy,

I am building a new C2D computer and i want it to be more or less future proof for the next 5-10 years. At least, make it as future proof as reasonably possible right now. I keep hearing HD, HDCP, and HDMI. What exactly is the difference for all of those? HDMI i thought was just an HD cable, but how does that figure into HDCP? Can DVI still do things just as clear?

I am trying to think of the hardware chain here. You need media, optical drive, graphics card, display. The media will already be HD (be it blue ray or hd-dvd), i am holding out buying a hi-def drive for a few years untill there is an agreed upon mid point, i see an upcoming GPU that has HDCP (8500gt), and i have a monitor that says HDCP.

Is there anything else i am missing?

 

[engiNURD]

HD is short for High Definition, usually applied to video. More info here.

HDMI is basically a DVI cable with audio. More info here.

HDCP is High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection. HDCP compliant hardware is needed to view any HD/BD-DVD at full resolution. More info here.

Looks like you got it all. There are current vidcards that are HDCP compliant already, in case you were wondering.

 

[menorton]

great, thanks. I was reading wiki too, but that clarified things for me. So just to be redundant, the video quality between DVI and HDMI is the same? The only difference is HD-Sound (which i dont care about). And yes, there are HDCP cards already ( think my 7800gt is one of them), but none are DirectX 10 and reasonably priced.