Roni Kitt

In other words, you may not be able to watch all future 4K programming on your current 4K TV or even the receiver you purchased this year.

It’s important to keep copyrighted material safe. You have to choose between HDCP 2.2 and 2.3 because that’s what you need to do. Which one is better?

Let’s find out what this is.

For non-4K material, you don’t need to bother about HDCP 2.2 at all.

You cannot play or view 4K UHD/HDR material without an HDCP 2.2 compatible source (TV stick/box, blu-ray player or console, etc.) and an HDCP 2.2 compliance receiver (TV, projector, monitor, etc.).

Splitters, switches, matrices and AVRs, as well as your soundbar or home theater, are all included in this category. Streaming 4K material necessitates the use of an HDCP 2.2-protected interface, so any devices you use must comply.

It is a way to protect the copyright of the video. Most commercial UHD videos use HDCP 2.2 or higher. It would also need to be part of the HDMI implementation on any device you plan to use to play commercial 4K or higher sources, pass the video through, process the video, or show that video. There are a lot of things you need to do to get the 4K video that comes with a UHD disc, like make sure that your player, AV receiver, and TV are all at least HDCP 2. You wouldn’t be able to get more than 1080p or none at all at all from the source without this compliance.

Most sources are not encoded to take use of the latest capabilities of HDMI 2.1, therefore HDCP 2.3 compliance is unlikely unless you’re dealing with 8K sources. If your receiver doesn’t support HDMI 2.1, you won’t have any problems using HDCP 2.2 instead of 2.3, because your receiver doesn’t support HDMI 2.1.

Different types of TVs can support HDCP 2.22 or 2.2.3 protocols. This depends on what kind of TV you have and when it was made. When it comes to HDCP 2.3, it is backwards compatible with the previous version, however HDCP 2.2 is not.

It’s expected that when UHD content becomes more widely accessible over the following several years, HDCP 2.2 – the most recent version – will enable 4K video transmissions.

Theoretically – HDCP 2.2 is a more secure protection system for all of the new material that filmmakers and TV production firms are investing in to safeguard 4K UHD video.

HDCP uses a series of encryption keys to verify that all devices in an AV system are HDCP 2.2 compliant (think of it, maybe, as a series of digital ‘handshakes’ between devices) and that they are not ‘rogue’ HDCP non-compliant recording devices.

Additionally, HDCP 2.2 includes a ‘locality check,’ which prevents long-distance sharing of HDCP 2.2-protected media. To authenticate the signal, the locality check delivers a random number from the Transmitter that must be received by the Receiver within 20 milliseconds.

Errata updates to the locality check protocol, responsible for certifying the distance between receiving devices and transmitting devices, were published in July 2021 and are supported by Synopsys’ DesignWare HDCP 2.3 IP embedded security modules (ESMs).

Customer options are available with DesignWare HDCP 2.3 IP for customers that wish to use the pre-errata version for compatibility with current field installations.

Users of DesignWare HDCP 2.3 ESMs may quickly and perhaps without the need for RTL modifications update to newer standards. Allows for a less-invasive update that eliminates the need for silicon re-spins.

Digital media and display technologies are going through a lot of changes. More important video and audio content is now being streamed between a wide range of large, high-resolution devices that are becoming more common. System designers and content creators want to make sure that this content is properly protected. For HDCP 2.2, it is important to keep 4K UHD digital content safe as it moves between HDCP-protected digital interfaces on both the transmitter and the receiver, so that it doesn’t get stolen. On the other hand, the HDCP 2.3 security protocol is widely used in the industry for a wide range of interfaces, such as HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB Type-C. It is also changing with the technology. For the interfaces, security solutions are needed, not only to meet the most up-to-date standards but also to protect against malicious attacks.

Flexible and future-proof HDCP solutions need to be able to quickly adapt to new threats, and they need to be ready to work with new specification changes as much as possible without having to re-spin the chips that make them.

This FAQ is here to solve some of your problems that that may arise while walking in the pavement of this sound system.

The Hialeah Park Race Track is a historic racetrack in Hialeah, Florida. Its site covers 40 square blocks of central-east side Hialeah from Palm Avenue east to East 4th Avenue, and from East 22nd Street on the south to East 32nd Street on the north.