Leading German newspaper Der Spiegel claims to have information on an unofficial agreement struck between the movie studios and CE manufacturers including Sony and Microsoft which will see the implementation of the High Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) and the Image Constraint Token (ICT) being delayed for at least four years.

The move would mean that all movie content produced until 2010 at the earliest, and possibly as far as 2012, will not carry the ITC – a security feature which would restrict high-definition playback only to equipment with HDMI ports and HDCP encryption.

Hollywood studios had insisted on this technical feature, which would encrypt all image data sent between the player and the television set – and would mean that users had to have TVs with HDCP-enabled ports as well as new players – as a measure to prevent piracy.

Gamesindustry.biz says the deal has been widely rumoured in technology circles for some time, but further confirmation is offered by the Der Spiegel article – and at a crucial time for Sony and Microsoft, both of whom are set to launch high definition DVD offerings in the coming six months which will lack HDMI ports and HDCP functionality.

The fact that few of the HDTV sets sold so far around the world - and in Japan and North America, market penetration has grown quite quickly - have HDMI ports or HDCP compatibility has certainly played a key role in the decision to delay HDCP implementation. (Source: gamesindustry.biz).

Story filed 24.05.06