In a nutshell Lona its a device to overcome DRM, the nasty thing that Intel and the film/music industries have developed to stop you being able to play back certain films and music, or copying them for your friends.
To watch HD (High Definition) the viewing and playback devices will connect through either component cables (bulky, multiple cables) or HDMI (similar to a USB cable in shape and size).
HDMI will incorporate HDCP (High Definition Copywrite Protection).
This will mean that you will at best watch a HD movie in a lesser standard than its capable of or at worst a fuzzier picture than you get now on SD tvs or maybe no picture at all :shock:
This clever little box, and hopefully similar cheaper boxes are now being made that will bypass the HDCP part and enable full HD to be watched on a HD TV that has HDMI, whether you are playing a DVD or similar that they have ripped you off into paying silly amounts of your hard earned cash for or if you get a copy off your local pirate DVD supplier or download from the net
If the film and music companies sold DVDs and CDs at a more reasonable price then of course none of this would be necessary.
While they rip us off here in the UK by charging us approximately twice the cost of the same article in other countries then I am in favour of people avoiding making the large corporations even richer at our expense.