How does the PS3 remain as the only unhacked system? And for how long?

[alpha_dk]

Prodigy_BE said:
There are too many gates that have to be passed, if you want to hack your PS3. You have to chip your console, get a BD burner, get clean BD disks, and be able to move huge quantities of data.

A big plus for Sony, towards publishers.

And even if hackers manage to pass all their gates, Sony still has a secret weapon:
Every HDtv set has a piece of hardware that checks the source of what comes through the HDMI port. They don't use it now, but IF pirates hack the PS3, they will. So if you play a non-original game through HDMI, your HDtv will say: "you're not coming in through here". So you'll have to chip your TV also.

And believe me, few people will do that.

So in the end, Sony vs Pirates: 1 - 0

(and it's also one of the big reason the film industry will start to push BD a lot more when the holiday season starts.

That's not what HDCP does. (HDMI is only the cable; HDCP (high-def content protection) is not necessary for implementation of HDMI, but is required for the playback of source from HD-DVD, blu-ray, etc.)

HDCP has nothing to do with the TV (display) policing the source.  You can connect any sort of device you want to an HDCP-enabled set, and it will work fine; there's nothing special about HDMI that means it can't be used to connect it to a computer, for example.

HDCP is *only* for verifying the display to the source; the source (ps3) can choose to say "oh, this monitor doesn't have content protection; we're not going to give it high-definition video so that it can't record it." [This is also the reason GameTrailers is forced to do their comparisons in 720p instead of 1080p, as an aside].