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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."
For those of us with older nvidia cards, this means we can't watch dvds anymore! thankfully you can use DVD Idle to get around this.
...for ATI.
Time for thanks for the DRI team, methinks.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Somebody will keep hacking the reference drivers and put them online.
Right now I'm using a different tool to circumvent various dvd protections.
DVDIdle, no regions, no Macrovision, no nothing and it even lets me skip those annoying warnings "Thou shalt not reproduce this disc"
This is the sig that says NI (again)
The article is over an year old. (March 20, *2003*)
Current nVidia drivers are 56.xx series.
'News' indeed...
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.
How about the good old EFF? They claim to be "defending freedom in the digital world" which is exactly what you wished for. You can join or just donate and choose paypal as payment method.
I have heard, that ATI somehow "supports" opensource communities - or at least gives them more information, than NVidia team.
Used to support the open source communities would be more like it. I've been using ATI cards for as long as I can remember.
There was a time when ATI did things for us like funding Precision Insight to develop the open source Radeon driver in the first place. They used to be very good about providing specifications, although under an NDA which for some bizarre reason they require developers to sign, but allow them to publish drivers based on their contents. At the time they were the underdog in the 3D graphics market though.
Now a days though, they don't fund any OSS development, and provide a binary driver instead. They will not give you specifications for any cards until they are close to their end-of-life. DRI and Gatos have done great work despite this, but ATI shouldn't be congratulated on today's treatment of the open source community.
They still do have specs available from the developer relations page under NDA. But I doubt you'll get anything from them that would be considered current hardware.
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
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!
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.