[ my public key: https://keybase.io/bobdvb; my proof: https://keybase.io/bobdvb/sigs/sJtwH4_BwTN906267jbgXXsXD8i5td_d5Ez0MbjSlec ]
- bobdvb parenthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiresias_%28typeface%29
- We waste so much resources in storing/transiting data in human readable forms. Ultimately it's binary, we already use software to display it, requiring the data be in forms that are human readable just wastes resources.
If the data spends more time being executed than read by humans it doesn't deserve to be human readable.
Use binary packed data and have an AI write you an interpreter for the structure.
- I'll upvote you because you're mostly right.
But to be fair, there is a standard that could have been used for digital video, SDI/HD-SDI, but the transceivers were expensive and it doesn't support any form of bi-directional handshake. There was already prosumer kit, mostly in the US, which had SD-SDI connections as an alternative to component. It didn't get popular in Europe mostly because of SCART.
I was once talking with someone who was very much involved in the process of standardising TV connectivity, a senior engineer at Gennum, and he said it wouldn't have been practical and SDI couldn't have been competitive with HDMI.
Personally, I would have loved the idea of some kind of SDI with return path signalling, like a test probe connector: https://w140.com/tekwiki/images/thumb/8/86/Tek_Interface_Evo...
- No, the connectors wouldn't be regulated, you're not violating any IP by buying them and there's no prohibition on any of the manufacturers selling them to unlicensed companies. At worst you can assert a patent against the design but there's no specific patent for that design, there are patents for some aspects of the design/implementation but they're hold by the manufacturers of the connectors themselves.
There have been many examples in the past of consumer electronics companies selling things that are electrically and logically compatible with HDMI, but they just have to avoid using the word HDMI.
Probably one thing that the HDMI forum is holding over AMD/Valve is that there's an API to manage some of the functions of the HDMI driver. They could infer that this API is a part of the closed standards of HDMI Forum. But 90% of the threat is about certification and branding I am sure.
- I need to post this everywhere:
THIS ISN'T AN IP/PATENT ISSUE!
This is branding and marketing issue. Anyone can implement the spec, it doesn't need to be a cleanroom implementation. It's almost certain that you could license the patents from the patent holders because HDMI doesn't develop it's own patentable stuff, they just get it from Sony, Panasonic, etc.
THIS IS A MARKETING / BRANDING ISSUE.
Saying they don't want an open source implementation is just a smokescreen. 99% of the implementation is in hardware anyway.
- HDMI's gate is certification and the ability to then use their marketing brand.
This is absolutely not a technical issue. You can implement the 2.1 spec if you want, you just can't say it's 2.1.
If Valve wanted they could happily get it to work and let people figure out that it works, they just can't use that title in their marketing.
- They don't really have to worry about patent infringement, the biggest issue is that they can implement anything they want, they just can't call it HDMI 2.1 without certification.
That's confusing for the consumer but technically viable.
HDMI exists to write standards, to certify them and to enforce the brand integrity. Patents are a different issue and would be handled separately.
(I am an engineer who spent half his career dealing with this stuff at a technical, legal and commercial level).
- No, they don't put DP on because every $ of hardware they fit to the TV needs to provide value. DP requires a large board component that may need manual handling, circuit traces (+ decoupling) and silicon on the chip to interface. It then requires software support in the stack and that needs testing/validation.
The percentage of people who will actually use DP to connect their TV vs HDMI is tiny. Even people who do have DisplayPort on their monitors will often times connect it with HDMI just because it's the more familiar connector. I spent a decade working in that area and we literally were debating about spending cents on devices that retailed for hundreds, or thousands. The secondary problem that drives that is that ~90% of TVs sold use the same family of chips from MStar, so even if you wanted to go off-track and make something special, you can only do it from off-the-shelf silicon unless you pay a fortune for your own spin of the silicon. If you want to do that then you better commit to buying >1m chips or they won't get out of bed.
HDMI forum was founded by mostly TV manufacturers, they're not interested in constraining the market in that way. It's all just been market consolidation and making TVs cheaper through tighter integration.
- One of my projects won one of these.
It was for standardising widescreen switching signals, in the early 2000s that was a big issue because each company had a different interpretation of what the flags meant. Thus when you were watching TV you would often get the wrong behaviour and distorted pictures. A small group of us sat down and agreed what the proper behaviour should be. Then every other TV standards body in the world adopted it.
I never did get a statue.
- Apple is considered golden because it's hard to tamper with the video pipeline. Windows isn't perfect but you can take steps. But overall 90% of premium content is not viewed on computers, it's TVs and STBs.
If it wasn't going to get blocked by some prominent factions on principle, I think you could build some trusted web technologies that allowed secure video delivery pipelines. But there's too much of a position that nothing like that should exist from some quarters that it'll never happen.
- I've spent >20 years doing content security in various forms at various companies. Until recently I was directing the technology at a major streaming platform.
I can confirm that while there are serious issues with Widevine (and to a lesser extent PlayReady), the protection measures aren't totally ineffective. My work in improving security had measurable results saving significant amounts of money and reducing content leakage. One memorable time my colleague and I had a call with a big rights owner who tracks the piracy of their assets and they said "Can you tell us what you've been doing recently? Because the amount of piracy from your platform has dropped significantly."
Anti-piracy and content security is also a differentiator between platforms when bidding for content deals. Rights owners will absolutely give the best deals to the provider who provides more assurance and avoid platforms which are leaky buckets.
I know that doesn't fit the narrative, but until recently this was literally my job.
- From previous experience some platforms are considered a "leakage source" for content and major rights owners won't put their content there because it's too easy to steal from. The security measures that are put on streaming platforms aren't totally ineffective, they're restrictive but it's considered worth the trouble because platforms can actually measure the effect of restrictions.
The low resolution option is something many rightsholders accept, but from a product proposition perspective it's difficult to explain to many customers. They're just grumpy that they paid for content and can only watch it in SD, that reduces your customer satisfaction. Better to do nothing than a poor job sometimes.
- I worked for a company that built a really advanced TV DVR software stack, commissioned by a well know Linux distro company, could have been amazing. It was capable of handling combinations of TV playback and recording that would make any current solutions envious. But then said distro company decided they didn't want to get into the TV OS business, so they stopped the project when it was 75% complete.
Our company retained the right to use the source code. We pushed it, but some circumstances and some assholes stood in the way. The business started to struggle, we considered open sourcing it but the contract was complex and it would have been difficult to prepare the code to be open sourced. We didn't have the time and money to open source it and said distro company didn't want to pay us to do that.
Eventually the company was bought by some Russian company, the team laid off, the code was forgotten about and likely just illegitimately sits in a handful of ex-staff drives.
I feel it was a loss for the world that a huge effort never saw the light of day.
- It wasn't really a comment on the tech of DRM but of the business threats that require its use.
That being said, streaming content security is more than just DRM and DRM is more than just copy protection. There's a whole suite of tools inside DRM systems to manage content access at different levels and rulesets that can be applied for different situations. It's still fundamentally controlling an encrypted bitstream however. But I've implemented a great deal more than just DRM in order to build a better content security platform. Transit level controls, advanced token schemes, visible/invisible watermarking, threat/intrusion detection and abuse detection, there's quite a bit that can be implemented.
- 1) I've never had an issue with this on Teams or WebEx calls.
2) When more than one person is on a call, try to find a meeting room. Then everyone else in the desk area doesn't have to suffer.
3) This is why I stopped going to the office when I am in a day full of calls, there's no point in sitting at a desk annoying everyone else.
- Until I changed job recently, I spent the past 8 years working in an area of tech that many people on places like HN and Reddit think that the work is a horrific waste of effort (DRM and content security for a streaming company).
The idea that if companies like my former employer would stop doing DRM their audience would embrace it is rife idealism. But based on bitter experience so enough people will do bad things just for the lulz that you need to cover your ass.
My home lab will never have an open port, I'll always put things behind a CDN or zero trust system, even then...
FWIW, it's worthwhile just for educational reasons to look at abuseipdb.com quite revealing.
- There are lots of platforms where people pay for their distribution, but they're not as successful.
The main problem is that smaller creators couldn't afford the true cost of hosting and indexing to the level that YT provides.
As someone who's spent many years building streaming platforms, the lack of understanding of the economics and this kind of massive over simplification is really sad.
There's no conspiracy with YT, they've built a 'wonder of the world' which has a very low barrier to entry and which has paid out billions to creators.
- In streaming your website is typically totally divorced from your media serving. Media serving is just a question of cloud storage and pointing at an hls/dash manifest in that object store. Once it starts playing the website itself does almost nothing. Live streaming adds more complexity but it's still not much of a website problem.
Maintaining the media lifecycle, receiving, transcoding, making it available and removing it, is the big task but that's not real-time, it's batch/event processing at best efforts.
The biggest challenges with streaming are maintaining the content catalogue, which aren't just a few million records but rich metadata about the lifecycle and content relationships. Then user management and payments tends to also have a significant overhead, especially when you're talking about international payment processing.
- I sponsor several creators on Patreon, I don't watch early release videos because that would require me to log into Patreon and follow the link.
I've told the creators that I follow that I'm paying to enable them to do what they do, I don't need any more return than that.
I tried Nebula and others, honestly the content was either unappealing, low quality recycled material, or it took too long to find something interesting. The variety of YT is important and I'd also say 30% of my selections are based on duration, fitting the content into my lifestyle as well as my mood.
