Vista DRM Q&A

[pxc]

Good God.

Vista's content protection mechanisms will not affect you if you choose to stay away from protected content. If you don't like DRM, don't buy products that use it.

QFT p-e-r-i-o-d

I can't believe that Guttman article is even being taken seriously. He is laughably wrong on several of his points (I thought a slow 15 year old wrote it the first time I read it because he obviously didn't bother to do even basic fact checking). It's obvious Guttman has an agenda, let no facts get in the way!

There are 2 cases:
1. You for some reason want to play back anti-consumer DRM using Vista and want to complain about the restrictions if you don't have compatible hardware. People who have compatible hardware and want to support the MPAA cartel will have no problems.

2. You just ignore anti-consumer DRM and it *doesn't affect you*. Go ahead and use your old or current hardware. It works.

This is nothing new. I've been using beta versions of Vista for over a year and all media I have play at full quality.

 

[ferrisnox]

1. Video card prices have been going up on their own for quite some time without the help of the MPAA. Motherboards - come on, who here has seen an HDCP compliant motherboard?

Trust me, next to the cost of FABing a high performance GPU on a 90nm or lower process, an HDCP chip may as well be made out of tinker toys.

2. Drivers are free, and 1. covered hardware.

3. Again, drivers are free. As for errors just because of DRM - I doubt it.

4. Yes, it will use CPU cycles - if you use protected content! If you don't, the system doesn't care.


Did you know that since Windows XP, driver makers have had to include an implementation of OpenGL in the driver? Compared to that, supporting third-party encryption is likely small potatoes. But then, I've never actually written a driver before - have you? Has the person who wrote that paper?

First off while I have not written a device driver as a coldfusion programmer I can assure you that coding a modern driver for windows xp and directx with hdcp support for say an Nvidia processor takes some of the smartest people on earth. It is not a simple process.

Second lose your shortsighted attitude it sucks, the reason I mentioned motherboards is because
1. Many oem, low-cost, and notebook motherboards have video built it... so this will increase costs for these boards and their motherboard drivers.
2. There will be millions of dollars spent on QA testing these cards with different motherboards and LCD combinations to make sure they work, plain and simple.
People have hdcp issues between just a tv and dvd player, a computer and driver of unknown hardware combination makes this infinitely more difficult to predict the results.

2. Drivers are not free. Look at video card reviews before unified driver architectures, drivers themselves were reviewed. Drivers are as important as the hardware if not more so.

4. Again this argument is not one of just cpu cycles its of principle, Just as Sony should not be able to root kit your computer, HD-Content should not be able to adjust my display properties, and I don’t want the logic clogging up my computer.

 

[ferrisnox]

1. Video card prices have been going up on their own for quite some time without the help of the MPAA. Motherboards - come on, who here has seen an HDCP compliant motherboard?

Trust me, next to the cost of FABing a high performance GPU on a 90nm or lower process, an HDCP chip may as well be made out of tinker toys.

2. Drivers are free, and 1. covered hardware.

3. Again, drivers are free. As for errors just because of DRM - I doubt it.

4. Yes, it will use CPU cycles - if you use protected content! If you don't, the system doesn't care.


Did you know that since Windows XP, driver makers have had to include an implementation of OpenGL in the driver? Compared to that, supporting third-party encryption is likely small potatoes. But then, I've never actually written a driver before - have you? Has the person who wrote that paper?

First off while I have not written a device driver as a coldfusion programmer I can assure you that coding a modern driver for windows xp and directx with hdcp support for say an Nvidia processor takes some of the smartest people on earth. It is not a simple process.

Second lose your shortsighted attitude it sucks, the reason I mentioned motherboards is because
1. Many oem, low-cost, and notebook motherboards have video built it... so this will increase costs for these boards and their motherboard drivers.
2. There will be millions of dollars spent on QA testing these cards with different motherboards and LCD combinations to make sure they work, plain and simple.
People have hdcp issues between just a tv and dvd player, a computer and driver of unknown hardware combination makes this infinitely more difficult to predict the results.

2. Drivers are not free. Look at video card reviews before unified driver architectures, drivers themselves were reviewed. Drivers are as important as the hardware if not more so.

4. Again this argument is not one of just cpu cycles its of principle, Just as Sony should not be able to root kit your computer, HD-Content should not be able to adjust my display properties, and I don’t want the logic clogging up my computer.

 

[Araanor]

Nope, it doesn't work that way. You see, we have this law called the "DMCA" that, no matter how retarded you think it is, must be followed. According to the DMCA, you are a criminal if you bypass or help bypass media copy protection. If Vista supported HD media, but not AACS, they would be in violation of the DMCA, and therefore subject to the due punishment of the law.

Which is completely beside my point. Microsoft has had discussions with the media companies for a long time; they could've convinced them to soften the standards. Microsoft is one of the most powerful companies in the world! Instead, they've seen the kind of control this setup gives them and desired it. They want to turn our computers into "appliances".

There are a lot of good comments to that Vista blog entry. I'll quote one:

I would like to know if MS ever thought to ask customers if we wanted our computers turned into an "Appliance" as David Marsh said in his Power Point presentation at HEC. Vista is taking computers a step closer towards set top devices like the cable companies provide to us.

David Marsh even hinted that MS has even more drastic Measures PAP,(PUMA), HFS, PVP-UAB and Encryption of the PCIe Bus that it plans to implement after consumers have accepted their computer has been turned into an Appliance like Device. Slide #6 from HEC

It seems to me that Vista is not consumer friendly but is an attempt to re-define the PC into a content delivery device sacrificing the customers own equipment in the process.

As for the DMCA; it's what I would term pure distilled idiocy, and I'm not subject to US law on this continent last time I looked (until our politicians get lobbied enough or a certain supranational entity gets bent enough due to its undemocratic setup).