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Some 'Next-Gen' DVDs May Not Work With Vista
schnikies79 wrote to mention an article on the Times Online site, where they report that a 'substantial number' of Vista PCs will be unable to play HD-DVDs or Blu-ray discs, as a result of DRM requirements made by the operating system. From the article: "Dave Marsh, the lead program manager for video at Microsoft, said that if the PC used a digital connection to link with the monitor or television, then it would require the highest level of content protection, known as HDCP, to play the discs. If it did not have such protection, Vista would shut down the signal, he said."
For anyone who's been following the recent debates about Vista, this is already old news. But now the mainstream seems to be picking up on it.
What the article doesn't mention is that, probably precisely for this reason, there seems to be an agreement between Sony and Microsoft that HDCP protection won't actually be required by Blu-Ray discs until at least 2010, maybe even 2012. Remember, it's the disc that actually needs to require it, the operating system only provides this as an option.
That doesn't make the system anymore pleasing though. I wonder how far Microsoft will actually get with it. Customers do seem to get upset with this, and it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has had to make "concessions" because of public criticism.
Peter Gutmann's paper on Vista's content protection is really recommended reading, even if it's a bit polemic. And nothing beats Microsoft's own document, written by the same guy that was interviewed for Times Online.
"Dave Marsh, the lead program manager for video at Microsoft, said that if the PC used a digital connection to link with the monitor or television, then it would require the highest level of content protection, known as HDCP, to play the discs. If it did not have such protection, Vista would shut down the signal, he said. "
The next-gen DVD's will work with Vista, but you need to have HDCP compatible hardware if the HD DVD has the HDCP flag.
Plus, AFAIK, there are 0 HD DVD's that have this flag enabled. Rumored it will not be activated on any disc before 2010, if at all.
Slashdotters gloat over this, while Linux can't play such discs at all.
Oh, and Mac OSX will have the same DRM support as Vista wrt such discs, so Apple fanboys don't have much leg to stand on wrt gloating either.
Seriously, does anyone actually take the computer/DVD player output (s-video or whatever) and capture it with something else? I thought that went out along with dubbing VHS's as soon as we could get DVD drives for PCs. I realize that this is just trying to close the analog hole, but NOBODY copies DVDs this way, why do they think people will do that with high def DVDs?
The future of media cracking isn't signal capture, its firmware hacking DVD drives (if that much effort will even be required).
Without the Image Constraint Token (which is not yet implemented), you can get full resolution output over analog (e.g. VGA or component).
However, even if the disc doesn't have this set, you still can't get unencrypted digital output (such as DVI without HDCP). Unencrypted digital output is simply not one of the allowed output formats of AACS encrypted media.
Thus, you will be able to currently play discs at full resolution over VGA, but (without new HDCP capable hardware) it simply won't work over DVI.
Your example of irony is not irony at all, rather the fact that you claim to possess the quality of being able to discern irony when none exists, and vise versa, is a case for irony.
Lets's review:
* Tragic (or dramatic) irony occurs when a character onstage is ignorant, but the audience watching knows his or her eventual fate, as in Sophocles' play Oedipus the King.
This is you, minus the eventual outcome (unless everyone knows you'll get modded down
* Socratic irony takes place when someone (classically a teacher) pretends to be foolish or ignorant, but is not (and the teaching-audience, but not the student-victim, realizes the teacher's ploy).This would be me in my original post
* Cosmic irony is a sharp incongruity between our expectation of an outcome and what actually occurs.My comparison between DHCP and HDCP
So I think I've demonstrated fairly well that I understand the concept of irony, while you have a wildly distorted perspective of literary terms.
Wrong: Some 'Next-Gen' DVDs May Not Work With Vista Right: Some PCs May Not Play 'Next-Gen' DVDs The problem is on the hardware side, you need an HDCP capable video card and monitor, and this has been known for a long time.
Also, people are understandably confusing two different DRM components: HDCP and ICT. ICT (Image Constraint Token) is the DRM that downgrades the video if played over analog connections. ICT hasn't been implemented yet and most studios have agreed not to implement it until around 2010 at the earliest.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
READ THE GODDAMN SPECIFICATION BEFORE YOU SPOUT OUT BOLLOCKS!
Link 2.4.1.1 DVI (Digital) DVI is a high-speed, high-quality, digital pixel interface, developed by the PC industry. It is used in place of analog VGA to connect to PC monitors. It can provide very high resolutions by paralleling separate channels. Intel's HDCP protection is available for DVI, but is not always implemented by hardware manufacturers. HDCP is approved by the content industry, so DVI with HDCP is a great output solution for protected content. In contrast, DVI without HDCP is definitely not liked by content owners, because it provides a pristine digital interface that can be captured cleanly. When playing premium content such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD, PVP-OPM will be required to turn off or constrict the quality of unprotected DVI. As a result, a regular DVI monitor will either get slightly fuzzy or go black, with a polite message explaining that it doesn't meet security requirements. So, to correct:
- HD will output flawlessly on any output when HDCP is not requested by the content producer
- If HDCP is requested, the content can either be degraded to standard definition or blocked completely
- It will be degraded, not blocked. Content providers are greedy but not stupid
That times article is retarded, and makes it sound as though you can't watch HD on a digital monitor at all but "huuuuuuuurrrr it'll be just fine on analog." To reiterate, content providers might be greedy but they're not stupid. Given the option of degrading or blocking, they will go for degrading so that you can be enticed to think how much better it would be in HD if you go buy their fancy kit, and also to reduce all the complaints of "my disc is broken!"Seriously, seeing as half the people responding above don't know what they're talking about,how is the average consumer supposed to know that their disc isn't playing because they need a better TV?
The amount of FUD surrounding this is really pissing me off, especially when supposedly reputable sources like the times end up shitting out absolute nonsense.
It has a hard disk. You can stream to the HD and play locally once the transfer completes.
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