Thats it exactly. The new HD stuff is protected and the only legal way to make software that will play it is to get their permission…and to get that they had to build in protection. You think Microsoft would go to all this trouble if they didn’t have to? Look at the flack they are taking.
Yes. The entertainment industry is also freaking huge and incredibly profitable, and does not rely on Microsoft, so as a result can very much survive MS not implementing their standard. So yes, it is very much the case that Microsoft had to implement the HDCP-style restrictions if they wanted their OS to be able to play HD-DVDs and BluRay discs; they have to implement the standard in full if they’re going to license it. Current computers can’t play Super Audio CDs for precisely this reason (although there’s a dead format if ever I saw one).
If Windows isn’t able to play the latest discs, people are going to want to know why. And frankly, if they’re too thick to understand that it’s the studios screwing them over with HDCP, they’d be too thick to understand why their shiny new Vista PC can’t let them watch Finding Nemo. You want to talk Microsoft’s responsibility? It’s not their responsibility to dictate what you demand. By implementing the standard, they’re giving you a choice. Express your displeasure with the shitty HD standards by not buying crippled media.
For what it’s worth, of course, no studio has yet dared to use the down-res “feature” of their respective HD specs. Just as with Sony’s rootkit fiasco, the correct response is not to buy any product from those that do. Don’t blame people that implement the spec. Or at least be consistent, and berate all the TV and player manufacturers using HDMI ports.
I’ve asked this before and didn’t get a great answer to it.
Why does the HD content have to go throught the operating system and associated software contortions? Why not just go from the DVD player right to the video card and then to the monitor/tv?
You know, just like a stand alone DVD player that can play HD content does. Why all the hoops?
Is it true that Microsoft has stopped selling Windows XP?
I was in a [del]Radio Shack[/del] The Source CC last night buying a VGA cable (loaner home computer, no DVI port), and the man in front of me was buying a Vista upgrade. I got to talking with the salesperson about wanting to get XP so that I can install it for work in a virtual machine under Parallels if/when I get my new Mac, and the salesperson mantioned that MS had already requested vendors to return their copies of XP. I mentioned the more restrictive EULA of Vista that prohibits all but the most expensive versions fr4om running in a VM, and he was quite surprised.
Technically, it can. There is nothing stopping MS or Apple or anyone from doing it that way. MS has chosen to add these extra steps and restrictions to satisfy their agreements with the MPAA. I presume the same is true of Apple.
Frankly I stopped reading as soon as I discovered that you need 1GB of RAM just to run the piece o’crap.
Show me a program that requires that much memory and I’ll show you a bunch of programmers with too much time on their hands.
In my opinion it is a big deal. Studios can now mandate what equipment you use to play back content, e.g. what sound card or video card you must have. It is what enlightened consumers have been fighting against this past 15 years.
It just isn’t triggered yet because the hardware isn’t available.
Coupled with device driver revocation ability and mandated driver certification, which will go a long way in killing indie development for the platform, this isn’t good neither for privacy nor open markets.
Vista is a good OS (I think, I haven’t played with it yet) but I’m surprised MS decided to include this kind of code. It almost the opposite of what W98 was.
But it could be worse, considering the ideas they have been working on in the palladium project.
It’s true you cannot buy XP in stores anymore. You can still get it off ebay (just make sure you buy new, not used).
Yes, but it’s not microsofts fault…its not a big deal that Microsoft did what they dd because its pretty much what anyone playing those formats have to do.
you can us un-certified drivers, just not to play the protected content.
The principle is turned on its head here. Instead of leaving it to the studios to either pass on Windows or develop their own security measures (to run independently from the OS), they are locking in consumers to use technology and software pre-approved by Microsoft and the studios.
What they could have done is develop a box where DRM content had to pass through for playback. Consumers would have to buy the box in order to play DVDs on their computer. Consumers would have a choice, as well as control over their own hardware. Noone mandated the studios to sell content on CDs and DVDs, which today can be played on computers. They did so of their own free will, even though they new about the piracy problem.
You cannot load drivers on x64 Vista unless they are WHQL certified, and the x64 version will likely be the default OS in a year or two or three from now. Microsoft can refuse to approve drivers if it pleases them (unless a court order tells them otherwise), e.g. envision a new codec competing with Windows Media Player. Or we may see a court ordering Microsoft to revoke a driver, turning off software remotely when users run Windows Update. And driver certification costs money, which independent developers do not have much of.
Granted, none of this is happening tomorrow, but I think it’s clear where we are headed.
Well, they did make a box, just a software one. Consumers have a choice to not buy protected content and if they dont then the studios wont release it as protected content.
Well, the x64 version of vista that I ran was still in Beta but I could definately run non-certified drivers. I run the 32 bit version because Palm still hasnt released a 64 bit driver and I depend on my phone syncing with outlook…that and my wholesale supplier didn’t have x64 in stock and my beta was expiring.
I may switch to x64 some day. Do you have a cite for the not being able to run non-certified drivers on X64 Final?
Uh, Photoshop? Sure, it doesn’t require 1 gig of RAM, but if you want to process 50+ megabyte files with anything resembling speed, you’d better have at least 2 gigs of RAM on your system. And for folks running Maya, even moreso. It’s been at least five years since I’ve had a computer with less than a gig of RAM on it. These days, 1 Gig is a reasonable minimum requirement, in my opinion.
No, they didn’t add a box, they turned the entire OS into a box. Those who do not use protected content still have to pay for the cost of implentation and they have to live with the performance degradation. Are you suggesting that it is unfair that those who buy protected content pay for the cost of verification?
Beta yes, final release no: ‘For Windows Vista and later versions of the Windows family of operating systems, kernel-mode software must have a digital signature to load on x64-based computer systems’. Cite. Also spelled out here or google.
Sure, if you do heavy-duty graphics work then you want a decent amount of RAM. My point is that Vista is now supposedly the basic OS for anyone and everyone. Why does my mother, for example, who wants to use a bit of email, type the odd letter and maybe edit a few 2-3MB photo files, what do they gain from such a massive bloated piece of software apart from slower performance and more crashes?
How do you figure? It doesn’t effect those who don’t use protected content in any way. There isn’t any performance degradation for people who don’t use protected content.
Like the massive and bloated XP performed slower and crashed more than the positively nippy and stable Win 9x? Or like the massive and bloated OSX (for which 512MB to a gig of RAM is also a practical minimum) crashes all the time? Hmm.
One thing Vista’s using all that memory for is pre-loading your frequently-used programs in to memory, which (surprise) makes them load faster when you choose to open them. Another thing is the advent of managed programming languages, which make software development easier and more reliable precisely because developers don’t have to fart about with tortuous manual memory manipulation, and as a result don’t write so many bugs, buffer overflows and vulnerabilities. Believe it or not, the memory is being used for genuine reasons.
I don’t understand why this bothers people. Memory is so cheap these days it’s practically free; why do people get upset that it’s used (when they don’t, for example, mind buying ever-bigger hard drives)? There’s no need to go hand-optimising machine code to get your app to fit in 8K any more, and the benefits gained by actually using the extra memory can be huge. Sure, some of it gets “wasted” on whizz-bang stuff, but then on the other hand people piss and moan about how their computer isn’t “pretty” enough if the fades and animations aren’t present.
Apart from anything else, I don’t know why this canonical granny/mother keeps getting brought up in these discussions. So she only uses email? Fine, then she probably doesn’t need a souped up hypermachine; hell, she could probably survive with a Mac Classic. But I don’t see the ads saying “Windows Vista: almost as good as a nice cup of tea and a sit down,” so what’s the problem? It’s not like you’re being forced to run out and buy the latest thing; presumably your mother already has a computer, right? Why is it only operating systems that get subjected to the granny test? Do you look at a Ferrari and think, “fine, but does my elderly mother really need three and a half thousand cubic centimetres of displacement, generating two hundred and seventy five foot pounds of torque? I think not!”
Lots of people are using their machines for things that would previously have been considered outrageously heavy-duty. I remember watching “Tomorrow’s World” years ago and being told by a saucer-eyed presenter how in “the future” we might be watching tee vee on our pee cees, while a top-of-the-line computer strained in the background to produce a grainy, jerky, five-second clip of his face. Now we’re streaming telly to our desktops without a second thought. We’re editing home movies, touching up our photos, ripping our CDs … you name it. The person who only checks their email is a receding myth (hell, even my own mother, who’s a pensioner now, has started to get to grips with YouTube). Face it; the formerly difficult is becoming commonplace, and all of this takes memory, just as it takes disk space and processor power.
Who do you think end up paying for (re)development of drivers and hardware so that these can comply with DRM specifications? That DRM leads to lower performance is well know, at least in the gaming community, consider this discussion an example.
However, I’m in favor of DRM. I just find it troublesome that these rules and limitations are forced upon those who do not use protected content. Particularly when it leaves consumers with less freedom over the products they buy, whether software or hardware.
But they aren’t, and it doesn’t. Vista was moving over to a new driver model anyway, and I struggle to think of a major OS release where redevelopment of drivers wasn’t necessary. Driver development is one of the costs of such a heterogeneous hardware environment, and is nothing that’s unique to Vista. It’s not going to materially affect anyone except those who choose to buy crippled media. Do you really think Microsoft are going to click their fingers and disable everyone’s machine that isn’t equipped with a secure content path? It’s just not going to happen. This is a company that’s getting fined squillions by the EU, and is being looked at askance for having the temerity not to let arbitrary programs modify the OS kernel (which is a pretty damn sensible idea). The idea that Microsoft will fuck over their customers by disabling a competing codec, for example, is just fanciful in this day and age. No, MS aren’t saints by any means, but the days when it was reasonable to simply imagine the worst thing they could possibly do and assume they’d do it have gone.
Fundamentally, they want you to move to Vista. Take-up of new OSs is slow and incremental enough as it is; they’re not going to shoot themselves in the foot by disabling your graphics card, deleting your codecs and confusing your granny. They just aren’t.
Less consumer freedom and choice? I’m completely at a loss here. As it stands, no personal computer can play the sort of content we’re talking about. With Vista, you can, as well as doing everything you did before. How would not offering this choice represent more freedom? I’m honestly baffled. Really: what can you do with XP that you can’t in Vista? If you don’t like the de-res restrictions, don’t buy media that enforce it. I sure as hell won’t be. But I truly don’t understand how letting the wallies that do want to play it on their PC do so affects me in any way whatsoever.
As for Starforce, that’s a complete red herring; a shitty rootkit-esque piece of malware that takes it upon itself to actively cripple your computer. It is not the same as an OS-supported authentication system, and it affects all of your computer use, not just the crippled game you had the misfortune to buy. Saying that Starforce is crap, therefore “DRM” has a negative effect on performance is like saying Britney is ugly, therefore all haircuts are rubbish. Of course there are awful copy protection systems out there; that doesn’t mean that Vista’s implementation of this particular DRM capability will affect you. It’s apples and orangutans; Starforce is a hardware-based copy detection technique that squats on all of your drives whether you want it to or not, and attempts to spot key differences between CD-Rs and properly mastered discs; Vista’s DRM is about supplying a secure content path that can be used if required.
Are you saying that how Windows treats your media depends entirely on what the company producing it does?
Yes.