Another drop of rain on the Longhorn parade...

[Mr. Analog]

 Longhorn to Require Monitor-Based DRM

Engadget has an interesting article regarding a new feature in Longhorn entitled PVP-OPM (Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management) which detects the capabilities of the display devices you are using and manages how (and if at all) content is sent to it. In short, this means that if Longhorn detects that your monitor is not "secure" enough, then your premium video content won't play on it until you buy one that is. Who gets to decide? The content providers of course." From the article: "So what will happen when you try to play premium content on your incompatible monitor? If you're "lucky", the content will go through a resolution constrictor. The purpose of this constrictor is to down-sample high-resolution content to below a certain number of pixels. The newly down-sampled content is then blown back up to match the resolution of your monitor. This is much like when you shrink a JPEG and then zoom into it. Much of the clarity is lost. The result is a picture far fuzzier than it need be.

So let's see:

Avalon? Who knows when, anyone? Bueller?
No WinFS
No shell until the server version

And now a crippling DRM.

Yeah, I think I'll miss out on this version of Windows...

[Shayne]

 Heres the thing...

Around the same time that Longhorn launches to the public, Mac will be running Intel.  All accounts that i have seen thus far show that you can run windows on these machines.

...so, perhaps a Mac is the way to go.  OSX, Linux, WindowsXP/LH.  Im thinking thats what i'll do come summer 2006.

Longhorn really is falling apart.  I was really excited when i heard that its shell would be exculsive to longhorn and be full of really advanced stuff.  Then i found that it was being ported to XP as part of SP3/4....so all the real large advancements in that regard will be on XP.

I like what OSX is, and ive used it for about a week as i was setting up my sisters new Mac Mini.  Its a great OS, much better thoughout then Windows....the lack of DirectX is truely crippling though.

Interesting times ahead.

[Darren Dirt]

 Hopefully this is one of those cases where M$ comes up with a dumb proprietary idea and *nobody* copies them. Geez Louize, what's next, a "filter" between your keyboard and hard drive to make sure nothing "unlawful" is stored in My Documents???

Heres the thing...
...so, perhaps a Mac is the way to go.  OSX, Linux, WindowsXP/LH.  Im thinking thats what i'll do come summer 2006.

Longhorn really is falling apart.  I was really excited when i heard that its shell would be exculsive to longhorn and be full of really advanced stuff.  Then i found that it was being ported to XP as part of SP3/4....so all the real large advancements in that regard will be on XP.

I like what OSX is, and ive used it for about a week as i was setting up my sisters new Mac Mini.  Its a great OS, much better thoughout then Windows....the lack of DirectX is truely crippling though.

Interesting times ahead.

Yeah, Mac isn't just for poetry-spouting latte-drinking artists anymore My brother bought a Mac in May (e.g. http://www.apple.com/imac/design.html ), and within 2 days he was Mr. Mac Evangelist, seriously it was like a living "apple.com/switch" ad... There are some amazing interface features in Tiger, I admit, and to see how fast certain windowing events happen etc. Plus many of the most useful utilities are now available in open source versions (Azareus for BitTorrent, Audacity for sound editing, MPlayer for playing content...) that if it weren't for the games I do actually on occasion play I would prolly also "switch".  :unsure: (then again, he just finished playing through "Halo" and he also installed "Deus Ex" so maybe things are even looking up in that department...)

PS: "ITA" - nice retro "Computer Paper" quote

[Darren Dirt]

 after reading the article, and some user comments...

"To be fair – it’s not just Microsoft. The next generation of digital content will, by and large, be protected to the display. Recently Toshiba released their HD-DVD specifications and have dictated HDMI/HDCP as a display requirement for playing back high-definition content. Most expect Blu-ray to have similar restrictions."
Oh crap. There goes competition and free consumer choice.

"As #6 said, someone will release a hack for this pretty quick. But that's not the point - why should consumers have to pick up the tab and fork out another ?200 or more for a new monitor just because MS and some fat cat execs think that everyone is out to steal their beloved content?"
Yeah, I love paying extra dough in order to support an industry decision that I am guilty-before-proven-innocent, oh wait I'm not even given the opportunity to prove I'm innocent!  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:


- - -

although maybe there's hope after all:

"In the short-term, people will go to increasingly extraordinry measures to bypass this garbage. We're talkng people that can afford all the content they could ever want. Eventually, when the hardware is in place to, from end-end, make unauthorized copying virtually impossible (and the requisite laws have been passed to enforce this corporate psychopathy), people will begin to withdraw. They'll stop buying the content (and likely products and services in general if they can help it), the hardware (they'll have long snce walked away from MS). Shortly thereafter we'll see a social collapse, and the people responsible will be hauled in front of the people and ripped to pieces on live TV, to the cheers of hundreds of millions."  :unsure:

[Mr. Analog]

 Yes, yes, good times ahead...  

[Shayne]

 Engadget is such a good website.  Ive been reading it for a year.  I started listening to their podcasts, good stuff.

Here's the thing.  PCs are becoming PCs once again.  Used for work.

Digital media is moving into the living room.  With the Xbox360 and PS3 becoming media work horses in the entertainment area, it leaves little for the PC to actually do on that front.

We can argue the point all we want, but in the end, most of these DRMs and such are to stop people from doing illegal stuff.  Or "expanding the fucntionality" i suppose.  While i can agree that my $0.99 song from apple should be playable everywhere on ever device, it seems that i dont actually own the song, im more or less renting the song.

...you as a consumer do have a choice Darren.  Dont buy the product.  Its a simple choice to make.

[Mr. Analog]

 I'm just thowing this out there...

All this money and effort is spent on the selling and buying of anti-piracy / digital rights garbage, it's a freakin' cottage industry already.

Where is the money being lost? It's not the music industry (another record year in 2004), the movie industry? That's kind of fuzzy as it is since they've been doing their best trying to stop people from watching movies (high prices, annoying ads / product placement, cheap DVDs, not to mention enough crapahol laden scripts it would make Ed Wood puke). Who is paying the price for all this "protection"?

I guess the biggest beef I have with this is that pirates will always find a way around things like DRM, granted your average consumer won't know anything about that but are they then the prime targets of DRM violation "protection"? How is this helping?