When Game Consoles are Blu-Ray Players

The latest round of game consoles are intended to be full home-entertainment systems, including playing disks, hooking to streaming services, etc. This means they tend to come with strong DRM and anything played off the console tends to be covered by HDCP. This effectively excludes most recording devices, as the console manufacturers don't want their machines used to make copies of DVDs and such.

However, for gamers this is a major pain as they increasingly want to record and share their gaming, both informally with friends such as "Let's Play" videos or formally as is done by many game reviews, guide creators, etc. If the HDMI output from the console uses HDCP then most recorders won't work. Breaking HDCP, even for legal purposes, is still a crime in the US so it's a relief to learn that Sony will be turning off the HDCP while their PS4 is being used to play games.