Content Protection in Powerpoint

[Chris15]

So Sales folks have been telling me for a while that in Office 2010, one can enable content protection, ie. HDCP / AACS a la Bluray.

Has anyone around here had experience with that and how do I enable it?
I want to demostrate why a HDCP happy system would be worth the extra dollars over one that does not play so nice...

 

[cpf]

HDCP in PowerPoint? Now that's a good one...

In all seriousness, I haven't seen any feature that would let you "protect" your presentation with HDCP, and there's just as little online. HDCP video embedded inside a PowerPoint should play fine (on a HDCP-compliant system).

As for proving that HDCP is worth it, find a HDCP-protected Bluray disk and pop it into a noncompliant system in front of them.

 

[ScottT]

I think you can save the .ppt as a .pps. .pps is simply the slideshow, and does not allow for anything except playback.

Zat help?

 

[venuetech]

I think PPS (powerpoint show) does not offer security it just launches directly into the show, not the edit screen.
but i could be wrong on that point.
you can still get to the edit page with the escape key.

 

[shiben]

So Sales folks have been telling me for a while that in Office 2010, one can enable content protection, ie. HDCP / AACS a la Bluray.

Has anyone around here had experience with that and how do I enable it?
I want to demostrate why a HDCP happy system would be worth the extra dollars over one that does not play so nice...

First, why on PPT? seems silly. The blue ray demo seems like a better setup.

Now on another note, can we kill off content protection? Its annoying.

 

[cpf]

I think PPS (powerpoint show) does not offer security it just launches directly into the show, not the edit screen.
but i could be wrong on that point.
you can still get to the edit page with the escape key.

Correct, with ppt03 and below you can merely rename the file to ppt and be back in action, 2007+ you have to tweak some values in a file, password the presentation or disable saving just requires a free app to crack the "protection." All in all, there's no way you can really protect powerpoints from duplication or unauthorized use.

 

[museav]

Now on another note, can we kill off content protection? Its annoying.

What "we" are you referring to? Content protection would not be required if people did not illegally copy content, but as long as they do then I don't see the content producers letting content protection go away. I do wish there was something better than HDCP/AACS, but those are now so widely accepted and so integrated into electronics that I don't see them going away soon.

I have also heard the PowerPoint would be able to enable HDCP and my understanding is that it was considered for 2010, but is not in the final version. If it were enabled then I can see this being an example you would want to demonstrate as I have many clients where content protection for commercial Blu-Rays or DVDs would not be a major concern but content protection for PowerPoint would be an issue.

 

[ruinexplorer]

I remember when Vista first came out, it automatically placed DRM on PowerPoint files. This caused quite a problem in the Corporate AV market where the presenters would bring their presentations on a thumb drive and it wouldn't be able to play on the show computers because of the lack of rights. So, we didn't investigate further than downgrading to XP and get some programs that were able to strip the DRM (I think it may have even been provided by Microsoft).

If you truly want to represent the HDCP, it is best to start with a source that always uses it, like Blu-ray.