Hacker News Reader

Comment by daodedickinson | Hacker News Reader

I got a dumb external monitor for my laptop and then learned it doesn't have the right DRM for me to watch Blu-rays on it. Literally, I can view the Blu-rays on my laptop screen, but if I drag the window to the other screen, it won't display the video.

View on HN

There are plenty of ways around HDCP - some cheap HDMI splitters completely bypass it and will allow you to use your other screen.

Typically the review section of a given HDMI splitter on Amazon is a dead give away as to wether they bypass HDCP. Failing that you can buy a HDFury device - which I've used plenty of times in large AV installs to avoid HDMI/HDCP problems...

Is it 4K? If it is, you're out of luck, but for 1080p you can buy HDCP strippers since the encryption is breakable.

Sounds like HDCP. I've read that some cheap hdmi splitters will strip HDCP as an undocumented side effect. By strip I mean communicate to the player/source that the display/destination is compliant regardless of whether that's true.

> I've read that some cheap hdmi splitters will strip HDCP as an undocumented side effect

I haven't heard that before, but according to Wikipedia a master key was leaked or reverse engineered 10 years ago, so presumably manufacturers out of Intel's legal reach can produce devices that strip HDCP.

For 1080p yes; 4K generally uses HDCP 2.0 which as of now is unbreakable. OP unfortunately didn't specify.

(An alternate option might be to rip the 4K BluRays, which is doable if you have the right drive, but also a bit of a pain.)

> (An alternate option might be to rip the 4K BluRays, which is doable if you have the right drive, but also a bit of a pain.)

This is what I have been doing with MakeMKV.

Rip it to disk first.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com