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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."
Does this only apply to using some sort of MPEG decoding hardware on the NVIDIA card? If you're decoding in software them there's no way the driver would know that you are playing a DVD, is there?
Unfortunately it seems there are no free drivers that support 3D acceleration for anything but the lowest end and older graphics cards. The "nv" driver for nvidia cards only supports 2d, and the "radeon" driver (from DRI) only supports 3d acceleration in the Radeon 9200 and below - not 9500/9600/9700/9800.
What this means is if you want to play 3D games in Linux, you have to use non-free drivers. I *wish* there was some hardware out there that was mid-range and had free drivers!
Having said all that, I believe the article is about Windows, rather than Linux, though the restrictions might also exist on the Linux binary-only nvidia drivers.
I guess DRM is being enforced by the large manufactors bit by bit, I guess that in 5 years all the software/hardware from the large vendors will have DRM build in and will be enforcing it!
And in the long run this will mean you can't even decide for your self what you can do with your computer/software, no this decision will be made by your vendor!
>The "nv" driver for nvidia cards only supports >2d, and the "radeon" driver (from DRI) only >supports 3d acceleration in the Radeon 9200 and >below - not 9500/9600/9700/9800. This is true. The nv dirver is currently *very* limited. I know that the 9200 will run UT2004 fine though - what more do you need on a Linux box? Much as I wish it were otherwise, the only thing on the scene that may stretch this is Doom 3, and if you want that I would reccomend waiting till launch date to buy as I have heard rumours that specs may eventually come out of ATI for the higher end chipsets.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
It is much funnier to watch people get all wound up over this like it actually impacts their petty, misinformed existences.
Copied from here:
I was just reading about the DVD player included with the ATI Radeon All In Wonder series. It says that screen captures and other things I might want to do will not function if the DVD is copy protected. Here is the quote from the ATI document -
Recording from a Source Encoded with Analog Copy Protection
The ATI ALL-IN-WONDER? products detect analog copy protection on the input source and will refuse to capture video from such sources. The record button automatically becomes disabled. Further, TV-ON-DEMAND is not possible with an analog copy protected source.
Since for all practical purposes there are only two video-card manufacturers and both of them enforce Macrovision DRM, I have no other choice than avoid buying DVDs, at least the legit ones. So it's DivX or DVD-R from P2P or a pirated DVD.
P.S. I wish there was a digital freedom fighters group with a PayPal account.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
for fear of reprisal towards them/him, but TVTool works just fine for disabling Macrovision with NVIDIA cards. At least with the GF3 in my HTPC machine I get no complaints from any DVD player software with TVTool's Macrovision disable option turned on. And I've been updating its drivers with every official release up until 53.03, just got lazy with the post-53.03 releases cuz everything works.
I tend to use a lot of odd/eclectic combinations of hardware. Once, I had an old Apple II RGB monitor (with an RCA-style plug in the back) which I used to display DVD video output from an old Creative Labs DxR2 decoder. Until I disabled Macrovision, I could not watch the movies I legally paid for (<sarcasm>from Wal-Mart, like a Good American(TM)</sarcasm>). So I had to break the law to watch what I legally paid for. (For the record, I was also using a Linux box to play the DVD, so <sarcasm>obviously I'm some sort of evil hacker criminal</sarcasm>).
,<sarcasm>'Consumers' have no right to open up products they paid for</sarcasm>) and rebuilt it into a generalized RCA-to-coax adaptor suitable for use on the DVD player, I couldn't play my (again legally paid for at a Good American Retail Outlet(TM)) DVDs.
At another point, I had a set-top DVD player, and was trying to use it with an old TV player which had only a coaxial RF input. So at first I passed the signal through a VCR, which of course made Macrovision wreck the signal (image fading in and out, just like in the previous example). Until I scrapped an old Nintendo RF adaptor (which is probably DMCA-illegal for some convoluted reason also-- I mean, hell
So, let's review. Macrovision has made it more difficult for me to play legally-owned DVDs. And it's pissed me off even more at the MPAA for getting in bed with those fucktards. So... what, again, does Macrovision do to decrease piracy? I can testify that it makes me more interested in disobeying the MPAA cartel's stupid rules, since all it seems to do is annoy people and force them to buy (or build) more equipment...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
slightly off-topic rant but since i did some upgrading i havnt been able to got my (ati all-in-wonder very old pro) tv card to work dual screen so i just took it out, my computer doesnt have a dvd drive so i use my PS2 as a dvd player connected up to the tv-card, but now i cant! so off i go to the tv (which is also very old) and find it only has RF-in, no problem, connect the PS2 to video-machine to TV to watch a DVD and hey ho, fucking macrovision kicks in, what am i supposed to do? now im not making this up why would i? i love bit-torrent as much as anyone else, but why the fuck should i suffer and not be able to use the stated features of something ive paid for when it did not say clearly on the box "WILL NOT PLAY DVDs UNLESS CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO YOUR TV" and it obviously does not adhere to any video specifications, as far as im concerned video equipment that uses macrovision is _not_ standard and should either carry a very clear warning or should not be able to even have composite/scart/s-video connectors on it! anything else is mis-representation and a lie to the consumer - i think most people would choose non-cripled hardware if given an educated choice.
btw clear warning doesnt mean pt.6 font next to "all rights reserved"
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I never play from the source disc. None of my backups have Macrovision, so I never have to worry about it!
...and for the people using open-source drivers
Let's see how the "nvidia are great, we trust their binary drivers" fanboys react to this one...
This makes me wonder how much NVidia got bribed to enforce this stuff.
I mean, why would a company like NV bother with this unless there was a financial incentive?
It seems rather silly, overall. Why would anyone want to copy a DVD to a VHS tape? It pretty much kills the picture quality and destroys any special features the DVD might have had. Especially when you can just copy the raw MPEG stream from the disc!
On the PC connected exclusively to a TV for DVD watching, I can't watch DVDs... because a TV is connected.
My first reaction is, "why the hell do I even buy DVDs in the first place when I can download this shit from usenet or IRC and view it with all of the quality and none of the hassle?", not "gee where's my standard DVD player to watch this?".
As a gullible idiot who legitimately buys software and entertainment media I envy the warez doodz more and more every day. With every "insert original CD to play" and "playback disabled" message I question my purchases. Every time I am forced to apply a crack to achieve the same level of playability pirates have, my sympathy expands.
Not sure if this story is a repeat or not, but didn't any of you notice this story is a year old. Some of us with Nvidia cards knew about this a while ago. The date on the article is 2003, not 2004. And the date of the drivers should have given you a clue also as the drivers mentioned are 41 series... Nvidia is on 56.xx now... just something to think about
Don't take it personally, I 'm like this all the time.
The problem with current hardware is that it became very complex, so one needs much more time per single session of coding to achieve something useful. Long stretches of spare time are hard to come by.
Also, I want to correct you - it was Weather Channel that funded development of 3d DRI driver for radeon 8500 and 9200 cards, not ATI. (see Tungsten Graphics)
Also ATI does provide sample cards to developers which is big help (hard to find bugs in drivers without testing on real hardware).
I've had this for a while, some dvds refusing to play with PowerDVD, simply because my GF2 MX400 PCI has a TV-OUT I've never used. That TV-OUT is on by default, NVidia provides no way to disable it or turn it off, so they simply took my choice from me.
That is the last NVidia product I will ever buy, even if it means I have to live with sub-par (which isn't the case currently) hardware.
Back to the point, VideoLAN had come to the rescue. Plays all my dvds, to their full extent, it's free, practical and light.
Oh. Cross platform too...
/. Where the truth
I agree 100%. But the problem you and I both have here lies with the DMCA, not DRM. Thus it is the government that is in the wrong here. And yes I know that content providers pushed for the DMCA, and they were wrong in doing so.
I personally believe that the DMCA ought to be completely and utterly repealed. And content providers simply should be allowed to decide for themselves what level of DRM is sufficient to allow them to make sufficient profit; and we as consumers simply should be allowed to decide for ourselves if we will put up with it. It is the content provider's duty to insure that the DRM is secure enough for their purposes; and if we consumers crack it, tough luck. The government ought to stay out of it.
This makes me wonder how much NVidia got bribed to enforce this stuff.
The real question is if it was a bribe, or a threat? Certainly, Macrovision and the DVD-forum wouldn't be too happy about a product not supporting Macrovision, so how likely would it be that they could/would attack Nvidia over their cards not supporting Macrovision? There's certainly a decent case for claiming that non-compliant cards are copyright removal device, setting Nvidia up for a DMCA suit.
No, Matrox cards are also used in the digital video and film industry, with their Parhelia cards ruling the roost. Their stuff works great with Final Cut Pro, AfterEffects, and Shake, but then you would be paying a lot more for your video card ($800 and up) than for any 'gaming' card.
Which brings up the question, are there any such DVD players for windows that won't require such macrovision crap?
Actually, I didn't have much choice. I bought a laptop that I otherwise liked and only later found out it had an Nvidia chip. Next time I'll check the chip more closely, but for a laptop you have fewer choices than if you roll your own desktop machine.
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -- William Butler Yeats
... we are simply not going to see the major card makers open source their drivers because too much of their proprietary hardware's inner workings are exposed by the driver.
This statement is a common mistake made by a lot of people. Now, you can ignore this comment because I'm an AC, or you can listen to what an ASIC designer have to say about this.
I spend every day designing proprietary hardware and writing the interface specs for that hardware. I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that giving away interface specs for your hardware, will not divulge any proprietary hardware secrets. We are talking about a bunch of register addresses, their size and their function. These are just facts, no secrets are revealed.
OTOH, opensourcing your already proprietary driver, is a bad idea. The driver does contain secrets (mainly optimization/algorithm tricks, but may contain secrets of the dirty kind too) and 3rd party licensed software that you don't want to/can't give away. So opening up the driver is not a choice.
So where does that leave us? With publically available interface specs, but no ready-made FOSS driver from the manufacturer. I think this is acceptable for the FOSS community. Unfortunately, a few manufacturers of hardware doesn't seem to agree on this issue (Nvidia and ATI in this case. And no, specs under NDA is completely useless). Don't worry, HW manufacturers that don't release specs, will eventually die. This has been proven in the HW industry in the past (What, you thought this was a new phenomenon?)
Now, some of the more clever people will realize that there is one more component that is not discusses above, and that is firmware. So what is the solution about the firmware. Giving away the specs for the HW the firmware runs on, might give away HW secrets. And since we can't give away the specs, it makes no sense opensourcing the firmware. So, for the time being at least, making the firmware a binay-only release is the only option.
No, it's not called piracy at all. In fact, you couldn't find a single person ever getting in trouble for doing it.
In fact, the only law it MIGHT run afoul of is the DMCA, but that's never been tested in court. So, it's legal until a judge says otherwise.
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