Microsoft/HP to Market Crippled Entertainment PCs

gustywinds writes "CNet is reporting that Microsoft and HP recently announced the details on their Media Center PCs that will be coming out this Christmas season (this used to be called 'Freestyle'). The big story is that these PCs will have anti-copying mechanisms built-in to them -- ie can't burn recorded TV shows to DVD, or even copy and play them back on other PCs. And they are going to be expensive... $1500 for the starter box. Sounds like this thing is going to be DOA. Lots of other PC-based TV recording products that aren't restrictive when it comes to copying stuff goes... Snapstream, WinDVR... And, of course, Hauppauge, nVidia and ATi have products too but their software is pretty lacking..."

Comments

Probably a stalking horse

[sphealey]

I would guess that this product is intended to fail. When no one buys it, the RIAA and MPAA will go to Congress and plead that such technology must be required on all audio/video devices, since the feckless consumer won't agree to handcuff himself to the viewing chair.

sPh

Re:Probably a stalking horse

[The_Rook]

or, alternatively, the computer makers could use this to show that drm technologies just don't sell and that forcing them to include the technology will ruin their business.

Re:Probably a stalking horse

[Slowping]

Kinda off-topic to the parent post, but I wanted to share this tidbit.

I used to be an intern at a research lab of a large technology company. Approximately six months ago, we hosted a large meeting between representatives of this company, and the technical advisors to congress-people regarding digital rights.

Anyways, I can't say much about the details, just in case I step over some confidentiality restrictions. But I will say this...

This group of advisors think that the V-Chip was a great success.

Several of them were excited about the idea of putting watermark signals in video, that camcorders would recognize and refuse to record. ... to plug the "analog hole".

The tech company representative argued that there are existing laws to handle theft, and that theft is a social and educational problem, not a technological problem. But, judging from the faces of the advisors, I would guess that all of them dismissed the idea.

Think about that. Discuss.

Oh cool!

[MAXOMENOS]

Another great idea from Microsoft! I want it to run on my Linux box. Anyone want to write the driver for a remote control receiver? I'll provide the SWIG wrappers and hook it up to my CD-ROM...

This could be fun!

not just the price, but the market

[Lxy]

The article states a price of $1,500-$2,000. Then it talks about marketing them to COLLEGE STUDENTS. Think about that... the college students are the ones most opposed to DRM technologies! For less than $1,000 I can put together a machine with an ATI All in Wonder Pro DVR and a massive disk without the DRM inhibitions. Funny thing is, college students are the ones to figure this out first.

Re:not just the price, but the market

[Ralph Wiggam]

And your typical college student surely has $1500 to toss around on a new computer.

**from the twisted dreams of MS's marketing dept**
Salesguy: And it's a lot like your current computer, but it does less and costs more.
College kid: And it's new and hip, right?
Salesguy: Absolutely.
College kid: Do you take cash?
*************

If I had ever had $1500 at one time while I was at college, I would have changed it into 20's and rolled around in it naked.

-B

MS shooting themselves in the foot?

[gillbates]

Microsoft generally believes that digital entertainment, digital media, is the thing that's going to drive the next cycle of PC upgrades," he said. "There's not that much more new you can do with your PC that you're not already doing."

Problem is, if the user cannot transfer their digital content, be it original work, copyrighted audio or video, to their next PC, they aren't likely to upgrade. What will Microsoft do in two years when their current customers will want to upgrade their PC, but won't for fear of losing their digital content? If Microsoft is indeed right in saying that digital media will drive PC upgrade cycles, they are being quite shortsighted by releasing an OS which ties all of a consumer's digital media to their current machine.

Re:MS shooting themselves in the foot?

[crawling_chaos]

they are being quite shortsighted by releasing an OS which ties all of a consumer's digital media to their current machine.

Of course, by moving to a subscription model for the OS, which ties your media to your subscription fee, they can make sure that Joe Consumer forks over however much they want to ask for in subscription fees. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I think this is where MS is headed with this.

It is POC for RIAA and MPAA

[Kefaa]

That strategy might make sense as Microsoft attempts to attract Hollywood movie studios with its digital rights management and anti-copying technologies.

This is NOT DOA, because it is not about PCs or PVRs or multimedia control. It is a Proof of Concept to sell the Digital Rights Management of MS to the MPAA and RIAA. Then the MPAA and RIAA will then use their money to ensure that ALL PCs have a DRM built into them.

While we can whine and cry that "no machine we buy will!!!", It is a non-issue. Dell, Gateway, Compac/HP, etc. will continue to sell their millions of boxes to the various businesses, and Mom & Dad like always. Legislation will pass that requires DRM and those that do not have it will be marginalized as criminals.

This is not the war, this is just the start of the battle. MPAA/RIAA make be seeing they will never get another DMCA, so they need to control "just content". MS sees the opportunity to manage every piece of electronic data on the web. 95% of the OS market is child's play by comparison.

The way these things fail is if someone manages to circumvent it in the first few months in a way that every 12 year with a 56k connection can bypass it.

MS Windows PCs Really Are Crippled by Default

[FreeUser]

Easy use of your computer.

I am no MS lover, but your comment was definitly over-rated.

Their statement was actually quite apropos, though it should have contained a little detail.

As an anectdote, a friend of mine used Microsoft Windows Media Player to rip his music collection, and wondered why he couldn't play some of his music (he'd upgraded his video card IIRC). I showed him where to turn off 'digital rights management' and explained to him why DRM was newspeak for 'digital rights denial' and how the default settings of his OS were designed, deliberately, by Microsoft, to fuck him.

He was quite angry, and while he isn't ready to switch to GNU/Linux yet, he did download a free ripper and started reripping the music he could no longer listen to into OggVorbis format.

So yes, Microsoft is deliberately selling extraordinarilly crippled PCs to the average consumer, not only crippled by the limitations, bugs, and design flaws of their software, but deliberately crippled and broken in addition to all of that.

Customer satisfaction is irrelevant to Microsoft

[GuyMannDude]

I would guess that this product is intended to fail.

That was the impression I got from reading the article, too. Consider this snipit:

Matt Rosoff, a Directions on Microsoft analyst, sees another motivation at work and one that has more to do with future business prospects than concerns about customer dissatisfaction or potential legal problems.

"Microsoft generally believes that digital entertainment, digital media, is the thing that's going to drive the next cycle of PC upgrades," he said. "There's not that much more new you can do with your PC that you're not already doing."

Microsoft hopes to sell Hollywood its digital rights management technology. At the same time, the company doesn't want Hollywood to use its marketing or legal muscle to shut the PC out of digital entertainment.

"If the content owners look at the PC as this Wild West where the content and intellectual property is stolen, the content owners will try to get around the PC," Rosoff said. "That's something Microsoft wouldn't want to see happen."

This makes it sound very much like the primary motivation for creating this system is to make friends with the RIAA & MPAA. I think customer satisfaction is secondary to them. And remember, this is Microsoft we're talking about here. They have a monopoly on OSs. They can pretty much do what they want and the customers will be stuck with it. And Apple-heads and Linux-fans, please don't start screaming at me. I hear you. The problem is mainstream America doesn't.

GMD

Re:Are they taking stupid pills?

[Lemmy Caution]

Microsoft alone is sitting on enough cash that they could pretty much hand these out to everyone and still have cash left in the bank. Also, the content owners (the Sonys, Disneys, Warners et. al.) of the world have a strong vested interest in making sure that only strong-DRM hardware gets into the public's hands.

So we have a bunch of people who are willing to shell out a lot of money to make sure that no one could really make a living building and selling weak-DRM hardware. Any would-be competitors will find themselves completely underpriced, as content owners subsidize the hardware that protects their "property." I think strong-DRM hardware is pretty much inevitable, considering the cash clout of its backers - they can pretty much control the market.

Doesn't Anyone Use Computers to Compute Any More?

[reallocate]

I dunno...buying an overpriced, shackled, computer to watch and record music and (God help us) TV programs makes about as much sense as buying an overpriced TV to run your spreadsheets. Did the people running MS, HP, AOL, and all the rest have childhood fantasies about being movie moguls? This all smacks of a hangover from the late and unlamented flash-in-the-pan known as "convergence".

Re:To be fair...

[Erasmus Darwin]

"My TiVo was a lot less expensive and offers the same functionality as far as video is concerned."

Doh! You beat me to the punch on pointing out that it has the same restrictions as a TiVo.

Anyway, while a TiVo is cheaper, you're leaving out the PC functionality. If we go with the price of a comparable TiVo as being $300 (leaving out the subscription fees, though it's possible that Microsoft might include TV listings in their purchase price), that leaves an extra $1200. For a consumer PC sans monitor, that just doesn't seem that bad. Allocate some of the money toward the "integration/convenience factor", and you'll got a deal that I think some people will go for.

I think the major deciding factor will be whether or not people actually like having a PC near their TV. The price and the television capture restrictions are secondary.

A better idea!

[nolife]

While browsing around, I found what appears to be a standalone unit that you can use to browse and record broadcast television, includes no DRM controls, includes a 19inch screen, a remote control unit, speakers, and is contained in ONE unit. It does not record the broadcast digitally but the medium it uses appears to be compatible with 1000's of other units and is cheaper then any memory stick or other removeable device I've ever seen. I imagine a device like this sitting next to your computer would be a more logical choice for only $169.

$1500? Twice what it's worth!

[steevo.com]

I recently put together a box to do the same thing, ut $1500 it was not.

Shuttle S50 - $300
Celeron 1.8 - $100
256MB DDR - $75
80 GB HDD - $85
DVD (w/WinDVD) $50
Hauppage FM-TV tuner w/ remote - $100
SnapSteam SW - $40
--------------------
$750

It outputs to my TV, records what I want, and I can watch DVD, DIVX, VCD, MP3, CD, etc. PLUS I can watch any recorded show on any moachine on my network. What do I get for the other $750

Better acronym expansion

[The Pim]

explained to him why DRM was newspeak for 'digital rights denial'

"Digital Restrictions Management" is more accurate, and has the right letters at the beginnings of the words. :-)

I didn't coin this; it's been floating around for a while, I think. But we would do well to push this term into the mainstream.

Tsk tsk tsk, peoples....

[LittleGuy]

They're not "crippled PC's"...

They're "differently abled operating systems"...

Freevo

[SubtleNuance]

Have a look at this project @ SourceForge; Freevo

There are others, like DVR, MythTV, HomeDVR

And there are here and here

Really, we dont need another device - a PC will work for this...

You can shove your Convergence up your ....

[imadork]

All the people who are whining about how overpriced this is should note that MS intends for this not to be a set-top box, but a full-fledged computer that you watch TV on.

So, lets assume that you'll get close to $2000 worth of computer for your money. My only question is: why?

DVRs, which are sold as companion products for TVs by TiVo and Sonicblue's ReplayTV, are expected to become standard equipment on PCs over the next few years, say analysts. ... Don Simon, a Windows user from Seattle, Wash., recently bought a Vaio RX780G PC. The avid TiVo user has networked other PCs to the Vaio, so he can "seamlessly watch TV on any PC in my house.

Do I have to turn in my geek credentials because I don't find TV on the PC all that compelling? I love DVDs on my laptop, and streaming audio and video, but we already have devices that are perfect to watch TV on... they're called televisions!. They have a simple UI and crash far less often than Windows does. We've had a box under the TV recording shows for years... Why does this box have to turn into a full-fledged computer just because we want to record these shows digitally now?

I have a TiVo and love using it, precisely because it doesn't feel like a computer when I'm using it! (Of course, it is -- the fact that I can upgrade the HD and add ethernet myself doesn't hurt, either.) When I want to rot my brain watching TV, I want it to just work, and I don't want to have to feel like I'm using a computer.

I always thought that Convergence meant that all of your dedicated media devices (which may actually be computers, but with a simpler UI) could talk to each other and exchange information, kind of like what Apple is trying to do with its iPod. Microsoft thinks Convergence means that all of your dedicated media devices become computers, running the latest MS OS, and with all of the problems and complications inherent in that. Of course, we know who's most likely to win this one...

Of course, the sad thing is that by making dedicated media devices more like computers and stuffing them chock-full of DRM badness, we'll end up making the actual computers more like dedicated media serving devices, since the same OS will run on both. :(

Re:$1500? Twice what it's worth!

[martissimo]

What do I get for the other $750

ehh looking at the description of the HP version, the answer appears to be:

DVD +R/RW drive, twice the RAM, a better processor, a 200 watt Klipsch sound system, a Ge Force4... and a whole bunch of annoying DRM crap ;)