http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt

Guys, it seems that nobody will be able to make his own movies with Vista
because M$ thinks that all devices and drivers should be certified to allow
them working.

Also take a look at this one:

"Decreased Playback Quality
--------------------------

Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires
that
any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality
that passes through it if premium content is present. This is done through
a
"constrictor" that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then
up-
scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in
quality. So if you're using an expensive new LCD display fed from a high-
quality DVI signal on your video card and there's protected content present,
the picture you're going to see will be, as the spec puts it, "slightly
fuzzy", a bit like a 10-year-old CRT monitor that you picked up for $2 at a
yard sale [Note F]. In fact the specification specifically still allows for
old VGA analog outputs, but even that's only because disallowing them would
upset too many existing owners of analog monitors. In the future even
analog
VGA output will probably have to be disabled. The only thing that seems to
be
explicitly allowed is the extremely low-quality TV-out, provided that
Macrovision is applied to it.

The same deliberate degrading of playback quality applies to audio, with the
audio being downgraded to sound (from the spec) "fuzzy with less detail"
[Note G]."


Sounds scary. I'm wondering if anybody really wants to switch to Vista
I'm talking not only about digital video or audio, but medicine where the
quality of images and signals can be deathly dangerous, etc. BG created a
very nice system for the whole digital world You will not be able to
control your own machine and have to live with NT/W2000 or XP without
service packs because they can apply any critical service pack automatically
through the INternet to "improve" these systems and turn all your critical
devices off. Or move to Linux.

How do you like that?

Just D.

The same will happen to Audio in due course - eventually, Vista won't
play audio unless the all-digital encrypted "secure audio path" is
implemented.

To be fair, it's worth qualifying that all this jiggery-pokery is
related to rights managed (DRM) content, not any old standard content.

Brave new world indeed.

Cheers - Neil


On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:38:13 -0700, "Just D" wrote:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt

Guys, it seems that nobody will be able to make his own movies with Vista
because M$ thinks that all devices and drivers should be certified to allow
them working.

Also take a look at this one:

"Decreased Playback Quality
--------------------------

Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires
that
any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality
that passes through it if premium content is present. This is done through
a
"constrictor" that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then
up-
scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in
quality. So if you're using an expensive new LCD display fed from a high-
quality DVI signal on your video card and there's protected content present,
the picture you're going to see will be, as the spec puts it, "slightly
fuzzy", a bit like a 10-year-old CRT monitor that you picked up for $2 at a
yard sale [Note F]. In fact the specification specifically still allows for
old VGA analog outputs, but even that's only because disallowing them would
upset too many existing owners of analog monitors. In the future even
analog
VGA output will probably have to be disabled. The only thing that seems to
be
explicitly allowed is the extremely low-quality TV-out, provided that
Macrovision is applied to it.

The same deliberate degrading of playback quality applies to audio, with the
audio being downgraded to sound (from the spec) "fuzzy with less detail"
[Note G]."


Sounds scary. I'm wondering if anybody really wants to switch to Vista
I'm talking not only about digital video or audio, but medicine where the
quality of images and signals can be deathly dangerous, etc. BG created a
very nice system for the whole digital world You will not be able to
control your own machine and have to live with NT/W2000 or XP without
service packs because they can apply any critical service pack automatically
through the INternet to "improve" these systems and turn all your critical
devices off. Or move to Linux.

How do you like that?

Just D.



------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs

On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:38:13 -0700, "Just D" wrote:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt


[]
Or move to Linux.


What about Macs or will Apple go the same route ?


How do you like that?

Just D.

On Mon, 01 Jan 2007 06:21:51 GMT, KidA wrote:

On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 13:38:13 -0700, "Just D" wrote:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut00...vista_cost.txt


[]
Or move to Linux.


What about Macs or will Apple go the same route ?


OSX is a layer on top of BSD Unix, which is broadly open-source (the
source code may be checked and modified / recompiled)

As a result, the OS internals may be inspected with the correct
in-memory deubgging tools, making DRM as implemented in windows
broadly unworkable (because the OS isn't locked down, the unprotected
data may be acquired at some point) - this is known as "curcumvention"

Without investment by Apple to modify BSD architecture to provide a
secure digital path for protected content, there are 2 consequences I
can think of :

(1) Hard for Apple to definitely keep protected content 100% locked
down, to the satisfaction of the pigopolists.

(2) Unwillingness for MS to release DRM component to Flip4Mac, so Mac
currently can't get DRMv2 content playback for windows media content

I'm not sure what if any effect the availability of the TPM chip would
have on that scenario - at present it's intended to prevent OSX being
run on non-apple hardware AFAIK, but it could likely be used in any
secure digital path implementation - see

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/21...-controversial
http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2...e_evil_drm.htm


HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2006
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs