So, there is a great new technology that all the newest TVs and computers have: it’s called HDCP. This technology is great – it offers incredible resolutions for you movies, bringing a level of clarity to them that hasn’t ever been seen before.

The problem is, you might not be able to watch movies from iTunes on your TV at home if you’re using one of Apple’s new Macbooks.

HDCP encrypts data from point A to point B, largely in an effort to prevent people from copying the data (i.e. making your own copy/backup of the data while it streams from point A to B). Ars is reporting that iTunes’ Fairplay Version 3 DRM requires that you have a HDCP source and destination to play content wrapped in this DRM. If you’re going from HDCP to analogue, then you’re out of luck.

While I can appreciate that Apple has a real need to ‘secure’ the content in the iTunes library if they’re to keep ‘Big Media’ happy, it seems unreasonable that customers may be prevented from watching their videos on non-HDCP enabled screens if they want to. No wonder Jobs was pushing the new Apple monitors so hard when he revealed the new macbooks…