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Nvidia Drivers Enforce Macrovision's Rules
Ant writes "According to 'Nvidia Macrovision DVD-TV rules forced on consumers', Nvidia drivers 41.09 and onwards include 'stringent checks' to comply with Macrovision requirements. That could mean if you have a TV encoder that does not support Macrovision, you may well get an error message depending on what DVD software player you are using, the company has said."
Time for thanks for the DRI team, methinks.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
The Content Trust(tm) has decreed that "the analog hole must be plugged." They must somehow enjoy this quixotic quest, chasing all over the countryside playing whack-a-mole with the work of so many individuals (and the products of so many companies so much bigger than they). And they've even showed up at nvidia's doorstep. "Look, you want to be in the video card business, not the lawsuit business. Are you sure you want to endanger your relationship with Mr. Capone?"
Meet our friend Mr. Macrovision. Phew, another glorious victory for the Content Trust(tm) over the Stupid/Evil Consumer(tm)!
What's positively hilarious about this is that no one gives a shit about copying content back to analog. Hello - it's 2004, people. This perfectly exemplifies the stuck-in-the-distantly-receeding-past mentality these guys have. Analog hole? What about the gaping digital hole? People who bother are copying straight to their computer! Fully 3/4 of the people reading this probably haven't used their VCRs since they last dusted off the video store's copy of Capricorn One.
Yet the Trust still races around showing everyone who's boss. That Macrovision protection is important! Ignore it at your peril! Hah.
All this will accomplish is that more people who use their computer with their TV are going to have a problem.
And those people will get angry. Who wouldn't? What an insult! They will soon learn about the foreign, boring field of intellectual property law - it's neither so foreign nor so boring anymore. They'll also learn about the messy campaign the Content Trust(tm) is running to hijack it.
They will find that, to watch their own videos, they need to go into the back alley, to meet the Dread Pirates(tm)... only, look how friendly and helpful they are. "I think I'll remember them - I'll probably be back again soon."
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
thankfully you can use DVD Idle to get around this.
Yes, thankfully we can spend money on software to re-enable functionality that was purposefully broken.
I am really just so thankful.
That sounds like the excuse people get when they protest about Bush taking away their freedoms. Nobody's forcing you to live here you know, you could move to Canada hippie. The fact of the matter is, in the desktop graphics world Nvidia and ATI cards are the only viable options. The rest of the stuff out there is crap hardware-wise. Unfortunately both of these platforms are encumbered with binary-only drivers.
Sure, there was a day when Matrox ruled the roost, but the days of 2D-only use are long gone by most people. Anyone hoping to play games will need to purchase an Nvidia or ATI card. Matrox is only good for spreadsheets, word processing, and CAD.
I was not aware that nvidia cards forced you to install every driver update.
This isn't insightful, just dickish. Driver updates do a lot more than just add copy protection - they increase performance and fix bugs, too.
Yes, you could keep running your detonator 40s without upgrading, and that's probably a great solution for people running old, integrated chipset or underpowered cards. But for the majority of nvidia driver users it's not useful advice at all. Good luck playing Far Cry, or any other new game on pre-41.09 drivers. Hamstringing a video card that costs twice as much or more than your average game console, so that it can't ably play games anymore, is not an acceptable solution.
There's no reason to play apologist here or to tell people to stop complaining. The complaint is just, and the situation fixable. If you don't have anything useful to contribute... don't contribute at all.