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High-Quality HD Content Can't Easily Be Played by Vista
DaMan1970 writes "Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system performance. Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say 'graphics OPM resolution too high'. There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec. These codecs are quite common on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups."
So is this saying that pirating the movie will yield a higher quality then buying it?
Say what you want, but these are much requested features from Microsoft's customer base. What is causing the confusion is that these wanting-to-see-HD-content people mistakenly think that they are Microsoft customers. They are Microsoft's consumers, all of whom have accepted the Windows EULA, and so might as well stop complaining.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Once the enemy is the user and not the attacker, standard security thinking falls apart.
I remember when XP came out, many MS apologists said "yes, XP sucks, but Win2K is really not bad."
Now that Vista is out I'm hearing things like "yes, Vista sucks, but XP is really not too bad."
Now, windows 2K was the last version I used much (praise the Lord), but from what I've seen of XP and Vista, Windows, while maybe becoming prettier (and having a better UI) now treats the user with absolute contempt.
Why do people (especially Slashdotters) put up with it, when there are other options that are so much better?
Is the article really saying that ALL HD content, regardless of if it is indicated to be copyrighted or not, is degrade? IE if I take a video with my HD camera, I can't play it on Vista? It sounds like the article is saying that...but...wow
Vista harms system performance.
Vista is supposed to be a very feature-rich OS. This hinders performance greatly if you wanted to watch some HD-DVDs. You now cannot even encode your own videos in WMV (HD) unless you don't mind the down-scaling. I still don't have Vista myself, but this would be another reason, albeit a small one currently, to not get it. The x264 codec is kick-ass codec for viewing high-res videos. I am betting Microsoft will release a patch or update early 2008 to remove this said "feature".
As long as the wallets get something for their money, it's win..win [both MS and the MPAA win]. And if the wallets don't get to see what they paid extra for [namely HD], it's their own damn fault for buying such a cheap computer system.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Once again, excellent examples of simple English grammar/spelling errors that should have been fixed by the editor.
"A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection":
c ost.html
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
LOL the "Executive Executive Summary"
Better known by it's the Executive Executive Summary:
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history [Note A].
This should be required reading for people wanting to use Windows Vista for their media center
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
I know a guy online who claims Vista stopped him from being able to produce his own video of some biking event he went to. After trying for a while he decided it was ridiculous and actually went back to XP.
That's the real damage that DRM is doing - it's creating a huge DIS-incentive for being creative. Everything from GPS software that's crippled so they can sell you more maps (that you can't afford or refuse to fork out for) to printers with extortionately priced consumables, to camera software that changes with each couple of models, to music players that suddenly stop file sharing (legal or not! think about free postcasts).
I use to love buying gadgets but now every time I buy one I wince because I know I'm going to spend more time with the product working around limitations that have been added, or general poor quality. The most idiotic thing is that what this ultimately means is that after a few sales to desperate consumers, many decide they don't have the time, or money or that its just not worth the grey hairs to get into a hobby, especially in a world where you're expected to work half your life or more away.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Alright. I load in HDV camera footage via CineForm, and edit in Vegas. I output WMV files and also MPEG HDV m2t files for output back to tape. I view the WMV files on the PC. Does Vista affect any of this? HDV is 1440X1080, and I occasionally render 1920X1080. This is all original content from my HDV tapes.
On a related note, has anyone successfully dual booted Vista and XP? (the only reason I can see using Vista is for DX10 and games)
...but this is f**k'ed up! Although, I think we should blame the MPAA. I mean, they are so powerful that they alter laws in their own benefit, who is Microsoft to stand against them? This is however a good reason NOT to use Microsoft's video format for encoding the videos. I don't think they killed themselves but I think they are killing their own format... atleast for now.
It'll be interesting to see how things will turn in the comming months, either way, I think 2008 will be an interesting year.
Since these things are required for them to be able to play blu-ray or hd-dvd content, what did you expect?
Did we honestly expect the largest OS vendor to create their OS to ignore the built in controls with the HD disk formats?
Get a proper hdmi supporting card and a proper hdmi monitor and you won't get down sampled output.
I think the whole thing is stupid as well, but this is an integral part of the hd formats. Reporting that Vista respects what is required to play these DRM laden formats "legally" is just pointless. What did you think they would do? Can you imagine the lawsuits? If your DRM'ed HD content is sent through a non-encrypted channel it gets downsampled. Gee whiz, who would have thought that... It's not like this has been common knowledge for years. Oh wait... Yes it has.
It's not like it will downsample non-drm'ed HD content.
(I have taken the slashdot approach and repeated the same thing many times in this post)
I'm trying to reply to other posts but /. isn't letting me. The article states that any HD mvie/song/whatever that relies on (Intel's) HD Content Protection in hardware will be degraded by the system when that hardware feature is not present. The article mentions video card, but I'm guessing probably sound card and maybe the optical drive itself have to support HDCP. I have problems now when I try to play some DVDs I bought through my computer. Windows pops up some kind of error message about being unable to determine copyright something or other. This is more of the same. Or think of it like the old Macrovision method that made it harder to dub VHS tapes.
It's actually worse than that macrovision method. In that case you could still watch it on your TV, just any copy you made was crappy. In this case, Vista degrades the image at the DVI output. My monitor right now is connected by DVI. Do Microsoft and "Hollywood" expect that we'll be playing things other than physical HD media on our computers? Because I think a lot of that will be handled by external players or set top boxes of some kind for your TV. Streaming or net-delivered movies and TV? I guess that's growing.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
(summary) "There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes Kb>then Windows own WMV codec."
I normally let these slide, but the than/then confusion gets to me more than the their/there/they're mix ups. Mabye it is the fact that I pronounce their/there/they're the same, but than/then differently? I hit the word when reading and my brain pukes and I have to re-read the sentence to see what I may have missed. Why is this so confusing and hard to get right?
Maybe I'll have to get all my stories read to me so I can just chalk it up to accent/pronunciation. Offtopic, but some of the samples on that site are hillarious...
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/ 10/1236207
Chinese pirates HAVE started making copies of things that are of better quality than the ones of the source. That is of course, assuming that the companies claims are true... Chinese companies are becoming very good at reverse engineering and cloning a product. There are even clones of car brands in china that are such close copies that the door of the cloned car will fit on the actual name brand car. Crash tests come out much differently though...
The article somehow reminds me of early 2006.
/ 519180.aspx
So here's a nice and tidy list that summarizes most of it:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/archive/2007/01/25
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
HDCP can go fuck itself, and so can anyone that supports it. My $7000 JVC hd tv has a hdmi port that's busted PURELY due to a HDCP bug. i've been waiting MONTHS for the fix.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Not all HD content is degraded, only specific protected content. At the moment this is only Blu-ray + HD discs, Some TV cable cards (I believe). In theory DRM'd downloaded WMV's could also use it but they currently don't. All other HD files, including your WMVs mentioned, are not affected, and do not have to have an encrypted path / downgraded resolution. That is not to say you may still have issues playing them, but in this case they would probably be driver related, not content protection related. For the second question, yes I've dual booted. I used an OEM version of home premium, and on installation it gave me the option of installing onto a different partition / disk.
Even the more technical among us. It's fine to be idealistic and all but there comes a point when it's simply impractical to pretend an operating system you don't like doesn't carry important weight in the real world.
Personally I like Linux for a lot of things. I've used it for maybe 8 or 9 years now? I'm a senior systems administrator and run deployments mainly focused on Linux based operating systems. That's not to say when I go to my office I fire up Ubuntu. Or when our CEO has laptop problems I curse Microsoft and implore him to adopt OS du jour.
Frankly XP was simply a better version of 2000. Yes, prettier. More user friendly. I won't say the same for Vista. At least in it's current incarnation it is not a slightly improved/prettier version of XP. It's sluggish and annoying. It's one step forward and 2 steps back. More like an improved 3.1. Maybe after SP1 comes out we will see something shine. I wouldn't give up. I just wouldn't recommend businesses upgrade right now.
Anyway, harping on Microsoft always seems a little silly. As a corporation they do some annoying things. Lots of corporations do. But they also hire some talented programmers and have actually helped do some good (you do like the PC platform, right?). Even helped set some high-water marks (not that I'm a fan of the most recent version of Office, but you get my meaning).
In the end using the wrong OS for the wrong task sucks. That's not being an apologist, that my friend, is being a realist. Something I think we can forget to do in all the mellow-dramatic politicking.
Personally (sorry I'm being a bit long-winded) my biggest disappointment with Vista is that it doesn't feel like an incremental upgrade to XP. I think XP was some of their best work to date. Aside from a few quirks I really enjoy using it. As I enjoy using Ubuntu on my laptop sitting in my bedroom and I enjoy the mindless reliability of the MythTV server I have sitting quietly and quite functionally in the closet to the left of me.
Their tools. Not personal credos.
Quack, quack.
and full of errors and misleading statements. This guy put it better than I can.
*MD*
Gutmann has made valuable contributions to the IT security field, but fergawdsake, I wish he would keep his personal vendetta against MS/Vista to himself. He's missing the point, and it's making him look like a fool.
.dll files) and what do you get? The same thing as any other OS: Non-DRM content works, DRM content won't play. You're not going to magically get DRM-infested content to play at full-rez by NOT SUPPORTING DRM. Don't say "but $OTHER_OS can play it..." because with the very rare exception that will involve breaking DRM in unauthorized ways. You can do the same thing on Vista if you like: it's all fair-use, but it's not DRM support.
Vista does NOT downrez or restrict HD content that is not protected! I can record and play 720p/1080i HD digital cable (clear-QAM via HDHomeRun) on a 1920x1200 DVI monitor that is NOT HDCP-CAPABLE and see every pixel. Now, if it was HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, protected WMV, from a CableCARD system, etc... it would downrez or refuse to play.
I personally couldn't give a flying frog about that part. Guess what? DRM sucks in every way. The answer is not "don't use Vista", the answer is "don't bother with DRM"
Rip the DRM support out of Vista, (It can be done, just kill the right
The point is, and what Gutmann fails to grok, is that Vista doesn't LACK the capability to play HD video at full rez, rather it HAS the capability to play protected HD at full rez on a compliant system. No other OS is going even play that content, even downrezzed, unless you break the DRM.
Microsoft has bought a 50mm cannon to blow both feet off.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Yes. I used XP-64 and Vista-64 Business on the same WS. No problems apart from re-installing all user SW for Vista.
... to confront a Churchill speech.
c ost.html
c ost.html#response
And here is the original Churchillian speech:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
"Not specific to Microsoft" -- something that's repeated continually like a mantra in the MSMVPS link -- is a the "answer" of a weasel. Microsoft is the only operating system distributor that builds this kind of crap into the OS.
Gutmann dealt with the response of the weasels very effectively here:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
As usual this is information being spun in to anti-MS FUD. Here's the deal: As some content providers are paranoid, particularly big media, new HD systems are coming with the ability to "close the analogue hole" they always like ot talk about. The method is to downsample information over non-encrypted outputs. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray can both do this, though as far as I know none of the discs set the flag to have them do it yet. If they do, what happens is you get HD out over HDMI or DVI, but only if your display supports HDCP. If it doesn't, or if you use the component outputs, you get something that is right around SD.
Ok well Vista supports the same thing. It's MS's bid to get content providers to use and support their stuff. They can have Vista check and if the output isn't encrypted, downsample the output (or refuse to play as well I believe).
Now is that mandatory? Of course not. It is only if the format is one that supports it, and if the content itself has the flag set to do that. So your own HD content is fine, and anyone else's unprotected HD content is fine. This is just for the media companies, who are paranoid.
So same kind of deal with HD-DVD and what not. If this bothers you, simply refuse to buy and use media that is so protected. It doesn't stop unprotected media from working fine. The DRM support they added certainly isn't what I'd call useful, but it doesn't affect you unless you want to play DRM'd media. Now while you might think that it makes it worse, consider that what is going to happen is that they just won't release it for platforms that don't support this. So it isn't a situation of Vista having DRM on the media and other platforms not, it is a situation of the media only playing on platforms with proper DRM.
My advice is just to refuse to purchase the protected media. Eventually they'll either sell unprotected media or just go out of business.
Your public betas of Microsoft Vista gave me an excellent change to try out your new OS and it made me sure that I should upgrade from Windows XP, which I promptly did in January. What you probably didn't know though was that my upgrade path took me to OS X instead of Vista. The beta showed me just how horrible Vista is, just by trying to set a few things up after installing it. The dialogs / wizards were horrible, unusable, and almost worse than randomly created text file formats. It seems, by this article, that my buying decision was the correct one, and I urge all my fellow slashdotters to run an OS, of your choice, that caters to you, the user, and not enterprisy entity with the sole purpose of ripping you off.
For you stuck with Vista, enjoy your games.
That's all for me.
Because it seems you have extreme difficulty in learning the fucking difference between then and than!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Vista Retarded is here
Sung by the V.C.P.s
[voiceover] The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
Vista "Retarded", is here...
And content not playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not
playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...
In this context,Vista disrespects, so when I click to play, the display disconnects.
We got find methods for us to reconnect to new codecs by the network effect.
Bout to lose your fair use. Microsoft's institution. Infect your computer with D.R.M. pollution.
Cause when we click on, the sound is gonna be down. You won't believe how we ow shout out.
Burn can't cause we locked out, Sample can't cause we locked out, act up from north,west, east south.
[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.
Lose control, of privacy and goals.
Won't run too fast cause, bloat makes it slow.
Won't get away, your locked into it.
Y'all hear about it, Gutmann'll do it.
Get Vista, be stoopid.
Don't worry 'bout it, Ballmer'll walk you though it,
Step by step, you'll be restricted
Patch by patch with the new solution.
Transmit bits, with D.R.M. pollution
Claim the contents irresistible and that's how they move it.
[Chorus:]
Everybody (ye-a!), everybody (ye-a!), let's get into it (Yea!).
Get stoopid (click on!).
Vista retarded (click on!), Vista retarded (click on!), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Yeah.
Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin', not...
C'mon y'all, let's get Do-do! (uh huh)-- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
Right now get Do-do! (uh huh)-- Let's get Do-do! (in here)
Right now get Do-do! (uh huh)-- Let's get Do-do! (in here) Ow, ow, ow!
Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...
Let's get ill, that's the deal .
At the gate, Microsoft restricts your will. (Just)
Lose your mind this is the time,
Y'all test this will, Just and download still. (Just)
Rob the resolution, from your monitor or to your speakers.
Get pixel-ated and suck.
Yo' movies past slow-mo' in another head trip.(So)
Locked in now cannot correct it, so be ig'nant and left apoplectic
[Chorus:]
(yeah)Everybody, (yeah) everybody, (yeah) get locked into it.
(yeah) Get stupid.
(click on) Get retarded,(click on) get retarded (yeah), get retarded.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Vista retarded (ha), Vista retarded is here.
Whoaoa
Yeah.
You Cukoo! (A-ha!) -- It's Po-Po! (is here)
Be a Fool! (A-ha!)-- M.S. Tool! (be their)
Like Voodoo! (A-ha!) --You cukoo! (out here)
Ow, ow! -- Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...
Playin' playin', not playin' playin',not playin' playin',not playin' playin'
[fade]
What TFA is yammering about, is that users cannot play their own home movies properly. It seems that a user would need permission from Hollywood to play their own stuff. Oh, well, people can always buy a Mac or use Linux...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I was gifted with an early generation MiniDisc recorder back in the day that only required a specific resistor to be jammed into the remote control connecter to enter "debug mode" and turn off the "do not copy" bit to enable digital transfers. Are you suggesting a similar case here (not sarcastic)?
MS is an interested party, however, as selling a "copy proof" solution allows better access to media providers for exclusive content and codec sales. IMHO. MS is diverse. Surely they see this as a means to drive sales.
VistaME is the best description of Vista.
... when I am an Admin user.
It really is just half baked.
It feels like something that they shipped due to an arbitrary date, not when it was done.
Things just don't work right.
For example, I have 2 (count 'em 2) Documents directories in my C:\Users\abc\ directory. F'ed if I know how the 2nd one got there. It is a regular folder, not the fancy Vista special folder.
The Command Line only sees the 2nd directory. The "My Documents" junction/symlink falls through to the 2nd directory too.
"Application Data" is another winner. Sometimes I can get there using AppData sometimes I have to resort to environment variables (attempts to Explore to AppData give me access errors).
I am not too demanding, but I do like to wheel around my own hard drive
Not necessarily with quality -- I admit, some of the pirated stuff is pretty bad. But in terms of overall experience, piracy wins almost every time.
Let's take a few examples...
Movies (standard-def)
Buying a DVD outright is too expensive. I watch a movie once, maybe twice, then I'm done. It's also not convenient -- either I have to drive to a store, or I order online and wait days for it to be shipped.
Renting is too inconvenient, for the same reasons as above. Netflix comes close, but lacks instant gratification.
Both of the above deal with physical discs, which can scratch, break, etc. If it's a rental, it might come that way, and I have to wait for another one to ship. Also, many discs feature copy protection above and beyond CSS, most of which is designed to make the disc look corrupted to a ripping program -- but that can prevent me from playing it properly, even in a dedicated DVD player.
There are some other half-assed attempts, like the iTunes Music Store and Amazon Unbox, all of which require me to run proprietary, Windows-only software to make the purchase, and usually gives me a DRM'd file, which I must play on proprietary, Windows-only software. Ok, iTunes works on a Mac -- except I'm on Linux, so that's no help.
So, piracy wins on almost all counts -- I can get near-instant gratification, it's convenient, I can do it entirely with open source software (KTorrent to download, mplayer to watch), and it's cheap enough that I often download things I'm not sure I'd want to spend money on -- and sometimes I enjoy them, and sometimes I don't.
The only thing piracy loses on, currently, is that rentals give me full DVD quality in the time it takes to drive to the store. It can take several days to download an ISO at that quality, with all the extra features. But that's only a matter of time and bandwidth -- and even when I do rent a physical disc, I often rip it immediately, so that I can take the movie back and watch it whenever I have the time.
There is actually one other thing -- the movie theater itself. I do actually pay to see good movies in the theater, when they come out, even though I could probably download them a few days before they come out.
Movies (high-def)
This is a no-brainer: I currently can neither rent nor buy, because my monitor doesn't support HDCP, I don't have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD drive, and neither is sufficiently cracked for me to just pop in a disc and play it on Linux, on the monitor I currently own.
The best bet would be something like iTunes or Amazon Unbox, which suffers from all the same proprietary issues -- assuming they even have high-def content -- plus I may run into the HDCP issue.
However, my Internet connection and my hard disk can both handle a 5 gig or so download of an h.264-encoded 720p movie -- which still looks damned good.
This is a case where I do actually want to be a good consumer, but can't. I'd like to buy the Serenity HD-DVD, but that would require me to buy either an HDTV and an HD-DVD player or a new monitor, new video card, and an HD-DVD drive, all of which is prohibitively expensive -- especially considering my current monitor is somewhere between 720p and 1080p (it's 1600x1200) and works fine, so I'd be buying a new monitor for no good reason.
TV shows
Well, TV itself (cable, satellite, etc) just sucks. It's not enough to interrupt you every 5-10 minutes with ads, they have now started pushing an ad into the middle of a show -- taking over a full quarter of your screen with an animated ad, with a little bit of sound to go with it. You're also required to buy channels in bundles, which limits choice -- if you pick and choose the channels you want, it may cost more than just buying one bundle that has them all -- but it will cost even more if your channels don't happen to all be in the same bundle.
Renting them sort of works. The frustrating thing there is, it makes sense to rent them one DVD at a time, so you can wa
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This "feature" was identified by Peter Gutmann, among others, months ago, in fact it was even reported on /. so how is this news only today?
Yet another misleading summary brought to you by slashdot.
Vista supports HDCP over DVI - I should know, I'm using it. The claims of HD content degredation on DVI are bullshit; it works so long as your graphics card and monitor support HDCP over DVI.
It would be nice if submitters (and editors!) took the time to check facts before posting incorrect scaremongering to the front page.
Another article on what Vista doesn't do.... While I don't use any MS "operating system" products, if you feel you 'need to', perhaps MPlayer from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ is your answer. The Windoz pre-compiled port is incomplete but people I know, that use Windows, pick MPlayer. (In Europe, the media player is not normally bundled as its seen as an anti-trust issue.) If the 'DRM' is only in the media player, this should work and its "free". It might be a hack to get Vista to accept it though. Please send them a few bucks if you use a pre-compiled version, but they'd probably prefer someone to complete the port over money. The entire source tree and API is also available from the MP site and mirrors.
BillSF
PS: I use a EUR 30,-- ATI Radeon RV370 X550 which should be all the video card you need. $1000 is more than I pay for an entire dual-core amd64/3000MHz (2800MHz in 64bit mode) system with 4G of RAM and two 500G hard drives!
You know, if you're going to make such wild claims about something you at least should have the ability to back them up. How can this guy be considered a big shot if he puts out blithering bullshit such as this?
For the record, I assure you of the following:
1. You can play HD content on Windows Vista w/o DRM in full HD resolution. This includes:
a. AVI/DIVX/XVID/X264/VC-1/WMV/QT 720P/720I/1080P/1080I videos
2. You can record your own HD videos from various utilities and have them play in Vista fine. With my tests I have done Fraps, and I assure you the resolution is *never* downscaled. (Keep in mind, PCs have been doing HD resolution for years)
3. The only downscaling that could occur is if you attempt to play legally purchased, legally licensed content obtained with all of the proper reasons but one of your devices does not meet the HDCP standard. This includes:
a. Blu-ray/HD-DVD movies that you legally purchase in the store that have the downscaling bit enabled.
Now, yes--I agree, the stuff is assenine. The downscaling or non-playback or whatever it does is only affecting the non-pirates. There are more than enough movies on the internet to download in all sorts of resolutions and formats for playback. Matroska containers seem to be the dominant format at the moment.
What I'm trying to point out here is that this man's assertion is a load of rubbish. I think people should at least USE the product they are criticizing before doing so.
Somebody saw it fit to tag this article with 'getamac', but this Ars Technica article explains that it won't be long before Apple goes the same way.
The only way this can be stopped is for consumers to NEVER buy HD content. That said, I find DVD to be high quality enough. I can still enjoy a movie even if it's being played from a crappy VHS recorder.
But if first graders are bashing Microsoft, they, at the very least, have an image problem...
"it works so long as your graphics card and monitor support HDCP over DVI."
So unless you have their special feature on your graphics card and monitor it doesn't work. And if your monitor supported that special feature it would have HDMI anyway, so chances are you're screwed.
And given MS's constant raising of the bar on DRM, as soon as your graphics card is cracked, they'll disable support in your card with the next update. So even if you can get it to work today, it likely won't work tomorrow.
Perhaps you should check your facts. Vista cannot be relied upon to play HD content.
In the case of MS, how would the crash tests rate? (vs. the clone)?
Yet again MPAA makes criminals out of its paying customers. People who own these movies have to circumvent HDCP just to be able to view them which is a completely unreasonable proposition.
In the mean time we all pay for HDCP in our players, computers and HDTVs and of course even your LCD display soon.
As it is my own HDTV is useless just like the other "early adopters" (I wasn't that early, HDCP was *REALLY* late to the party). We're all getting completely screwed and the only people who know it are a few informed geeks who follow this stuff.
Maybe I'll look into a class action for everyone who has to trash an expensive widescreen HDTV for this bullshit, but that's the tip of the iceberg. Never before in the history of the human race has such a massive windfall (like digital video in all forms) ever befallen an industry, only for them to turn around like greedy fools and demand more, More, MORE!!! criminalize their customers and do their best to strangle the golden goose.
It's a typewriter, people. If you want to watch movies, get a movie player.
AppleTV is $300 and HD DVD is $500, and you can get a PS3 if you want Blu-Ray for not much more than that. A year from now the comparison will be even more ridiculous. Microsoft has nothing to offer you in consumer video, they don't know what it is, they don't know how to build it, and finally, they will always fuck it up intentionally to be more MS-centric, as well as unintentionally with their legendary lack of quality.
Honestly, this article would be more newsworthy if it turned out Vista really was a good movie player. That would be surprising. As it is, this is just more dog bites man. Yawn.
Why are we talking about windows ? We already know that it is a shitty operating system. We already know that the victims are not going to know what is going on, in fact, they wont see a difference. They are victims, born to be for the rest of their lives, so get over it !
come on give them some credit... they are releasing the super duper deluxe premium ultimate edition soon that will rectify this issue. of course it wont be available till SP2
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
It _is_ a "make it suck" flag, or rather "make it suck if any component along the chain isn't DRM'ed and encrypted." The MPAA and RIAA are so caught in the whole "auugh, evil pirates are copying our content and causing us billions!" hysteria, that, well, they'd rather shoot themselves in the foot than let the spec have any place where someone could record/rip their precious content.
The difference between plain DVI and encrypted DVI (a.k.a., HDMI) is largely one created by the DMCA:
1. with DVI, you could, at least theoretically, make a video capture card with a DVI _input_ connector, and just rip the digital content that way. Basically the computer would think you're outputting to a TFT monitor, when in fact you're getting to record the digital output stream in all its quality.
2. with HDMI, well, you could do the exact same, you just have to fake the authentication and include the decryption. Which isn't impossible by any reckoning.
However,
1. Since DVI it doesn't include any copy protection, it doesn't count as circumventing it under the DMCA.
2. Since HDMI does, it does. So they could raid anyone selling such cards or adapters, and demonize anyone who bought one.
However the bottomline at the moment is that
A) I don't know of any actual such devices at the moment, and
B) If you're going to decrypt it anyway, you might as well decrypt the DVD, but
C) most people have DVI or VGA connectors on their monitors, while virtually noone has a HDMI monitor or graphics card.
So for the sake of protecting against a theoretical threat, they are making it suck for a bunch of legitimate customers. Better yet, it makes it actually more rewarding to download a ripped copy than to buy a legit one.
Actually, AFAIK it's even more funny than that. They try to detect fluctuations too, so you can't snoop on the stream in transit. So all it takes is a wobbly monitor to get your stream downgraded even if you _do_ have HDMI.
At any rate, much as I don't like MS, I dunno if I'd blame MS here, other than for bending over. If the MPAA demands that kind of stupidity, either you comply, or you get to play no HD videos on that computer. So MS likely faced the lose-lose choice of either they implement that idiocy, or they get to tell some hundreds of millions of potential customers that Vista doesn't play HD media at all. You can probably see how the latter is a faster suicide.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista..."
The two best ones being:
1. Stick to XP, or
2. Install Linux
"Vista w/o DRM" why did you shorten that word?
That's exactly the point, the only HD that Vista can play is the one without the DRM.
"but one of your devices does not meet the HDCP standard"
Or that one or more of your devices has had their DRM cracked since you bought it, and so has been flagged as unacceptable.
Thanks, that is a great read.
I'm not to sure what this codec nonsense is about but I can play and encode 1080P videos using in WMV format all day long. Playback uses about 10%-30% CPU on my 6600 core deuce 2.4. People over at lame ass stardoc are encoding 1080P without a hitch, MS also has their HD showcase site with dozens of 1080P movies. I'm exclusively using my Westinghouse 37" 1080P via DVI in it's native resolution. Actually it's a DVI>30'HDMI>DVI cable, but still digital. I watch 1080i on my moxi via DIV on the same screen and I can see a difference, the WMVs look way better, it could be the compression on the HDTV but It's at least as good as the broadcast HDTV, I'm not sure I would expect a whole lot better from a downloaded movie. If anyone wants to see a good example of HDTV check out Discovery's Planet Earth series. It's only available on craptastic DVD so you've got to catch it when it airs or through some narfarious means and then it's like 7gb per episode. I digress, unless this 'bad codec' is some horrible tyrannical update that destroys the existing WMV codec all this excitement is over nothing, it is working right now.
Not sarcasm -> Perhaps I may be missing the point of the article, I can only profess ignorance to the issue as I'm sure the person who posted this must have tested Vista's HD playback capability and found it lacking.
"Microsoft acknowledged that quality of premium content would be lowered if requested by copyright holders"
and I love this one.....
"...you could say Windows Vista causes global warming" - Peter Gutmann
Well, that's certainly a reason I've not heard in favour of avoiding Vista.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Yeah, but with those two, at least you actually get what you pay for.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
I find it odd, the people who would most be interested in HD technology are also the people who get screwed over most by DRM.
I'm sorry, I can't sell you this bagel. You might eat it and enjoy it. Now if you were an Anorexic supermodel who could care less...
Whatever happened to Microsoft's embrace and extend policy. They should have embraced the HDCP spec and extended to include non-conformant devices so that we could use our computers the way we want to.
Look, I'm no DRM lover and Microsoft isn't my fave but WTF is with this guy? Take an HD-DVD, decode it, play it back. Wow, surprise it PLAYS! In fact it plays at full resolution. According to this guy it won't and if it does it will look like it's being played on an old tube TV - except it doesn't. The very first guy to break HD-DVD did it because his system wasn't DRM compliant and refused to play his legally purchased media - as documented on Doom9 months ago. Gee, remove the DRM and it worked fine and still this guy keeps insisting that Vista won't play back high quality video. I call Bullshit! $100 dollar video cards outperforming $900 video cards? Is no one fact checking this guy? Odd, I know folks who have been running Vista, 64bit at that, who haven't seen ANY of the issues that this guy bitches and moans about. These folks DL HD content and play it with zero issues but to hear this guy that's simply not possible - what's he smoking?
8 8747
Has anyone who's shot HD video with a camcorder seen the errors he's claiming? Tracked them down? What consumer camcorder supports ICT? Why in this world would it support ICT? ICT is what tells Vista and other devices to protect apparently and if it's not turned on Vista doesn't do anything. Where this guy got the idea that Vista would arbitrarily protect video just because it's a high rez is beyond me. If that were the case wouldn't it also try to protect all of the other various CODECS out there?
Some discussions on AVS about this -> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=8
BTW how come when I search this mystery error message about OPM resolution being too high I get a zillion hits on his paper but nothing from users screaming from the rooftops? Does it strike anyone else as weird that he seems to be the ONLY one complaining about this? If it's such an issue then finding users screaming shouldn't be a problem. Seems like every other bizarre error I've entered into Google has found others with the problem so why not this error?
As much as it is fun to bash Microsoft this guy doesn't even pass the giggle test....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Last time I saw, Microsoft was still getting their money from people buying Windows, not media companies.
Of course, Windows has no warranty of doing whatever the salesman told you it would do (where that is legal, by the way). But confusion about who is really one's customers always leads to problems, even if you don't have to give their money back.
Rethinking email
Take an HD-DVD, decode it, play it back.
However if you live in the US, you are now a criminal if you did that. Courtesy Microsoft. "How much time do you want to serve today? (tm)"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No one is buying Vista anyway.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Windows is still dominant, and that dominance makes it harder to choose an alternative.
At work, people deal a lot with office documents, expect you to use exchange calendar and develop new systems that interact with MS Office or DirectX. At home you'll have problems with new devices and games.
Rethinking email
Google the error message he claims is such an issue. Hits will include his paper and.... wow mostly just his paper. Must be a huge issue with the handycam folks huh? His first paper was equally laughable too IMO.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
If I have a video card that is HDCP Enabled (nVidia GeForce 8800GTS) and a monitor that is HDCP Enabled (Dell 2407wfp) should I expect to never run into this problem?
Huh? How exactly did Microsoft cause this? Blame the "content providers" if you want to blame someone. Microsoft followed the specs handed to them by the content providers to play back their stuff. Cablecard is a good example too - Microsoft wanted this working on XP and were denied, told it wasn't secure enough. So they loaded up Vista to comply.
Argue all you want that Microsoft shouldn't have done these things but as a company they wanted the sales that would result from being capable of playing these formats.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
You mean the part where Microsoft replied to this article with the usual corporate/marketing-speak and then got utterly slaughtered (in the comments and in other media subsequently reporting about that), not just in some random blog, but on their own Vista blog (which they fully control)?
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
"It's a typewriter, people."
Slashdot: news for nerds until the last nail hit the coffin on 8/13/07.
Sing it with me now: "Bye, bye Ms. American Pie..."
Developers essentially have to put copy protection in games to get them published. Publishers are waaaay too paranoid to publish a game with no protection, so the only ones you see like that are self-published, like Galactic Civilizations 2. However, the critical time for sales is the first few months with most games. After that it tends to ramp off. Same deal as pretty much every other kind of entertainment. Once that decline has happened, sometimes they can convince the publishers to let them patch out the copy protection. It's not only nice for their consumers, but actually can get some more sales since essentially every protection on the market today is so aggressive it is incompatible with at least some systems.
Unfortunately it is still the minority that do this, but it is a little more common than it used to be. While I'd really rather for publishers to wise up and eliminate copy protection, I'll take this if I can get it.
"Duhhh, Microsoft made it illegal to bypass DRM, durrrr! Micro$haft, where did you want to go with 640K of memory yesterday, durrrrr, hehe haha hoho!".
The Tilt bits are more like the Slot machine ones then the pinball.
In the old mechanical days, slot machines had tilt switches. While modern machines no longer have tilt switches, any kind of mechanical failure (door switch in the wrong state, reel motor failure, etc) is still called a "tilt".
Now days a slot can get a tilt for things like paper out in the ticket printer, cpu board errors, data link errors, even minor glitches, and other things. That can trigger a tilt like Vista's protection system and it does not mean the player did something wrong .
In pinball games minor glitches are not called tilts.
How about making lots of money? Does Bill Gates actually have anything to gain by telling MPAA to fuck off? Sometimes the world isn't about fighting idealistic crusades and righting wrongs. Certainly not at the top of a corporation.
No, actually that's not quite true any way you want to slice it. Not in this case. NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX are actually paid per estimated user who saw those ads. I don't think MS is paid by the MPAA per movie you watch on that computer.
MS's primary interest is in gaining market domination for their own media formats, not in selling MPAA's movies to you, or your eyeballs to MPAA. It could perhaps be comparing to selling both to both, but even that is stretching it. It's really selling their formats to both, with the slight added complexity that it's selling it to both sides of a single market rather than two independent markets. It's more like a plain old grab for market share and mind share, with the minor distinction that now it's for data formats instead of the more classical squeezing other products or shops out. That's really all there is to it.
It's really no different than, say, PayPal trying to sell their service to both online buyers and online sellers. It doesn't mean that it's selling either the buyers to the sellers, or viceversa, it's just trying to sell one service to both.
Briefly, eh, no need to paint the whole world with the same brush. The "they're selling you to the advertisers" explanation is right on for some market segments, but not quite for a lot of others. No need to see the whole world through those glasses now.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm always impressed by the enthusaism of Slashdot that leads to people composing the lyrics to mocking songs before actually trying the stuff :). But for the rest of us nerds who like to try stuff, I've got a couple of Creative Commons licensed HD WMV clips I've made that play back nicely in Vista over VGA at full resolution. This should be a clear refutation of the FA.
p --2-mbps/p le/
720p @ 2 Mbps: http://on10.net/Blogs/benwagg/elephants-dream-720
1080p @ 10 Mbps: http://on10.net/Blogs/benwagg/elephants-dream-sam
Note that the 1080p clip was designed for Xbox 360 playback, so it'll need a pretty beefy PC for playback.
Also, note the current VLC release doesn't play these back correctly, alas (I think a problem with DQuant or B-frames). They're fully VC-1 spec compliant; maybe they can use these clips for debugging.
My video compression blog
"almost forgot Software, but it's late (3 AM) and it's also pretty much irrelevant -- any software that's not a game is almost always something I can get an open source version of, and apt-get is more convenient than any warez system I've seen, so here, legit (but free) wins."
Yeah, but you're not stealing software by using an open source alternative. If you download a movie or music, you're not getting a free alternative, you're ripping off a lot of peoples hard work. If you want a free alternative, go to You-tube and watch some of the fan films. You wonder why there are no games for Linux, look in the mirror, cheapskate.
I I I I I? You must be an only child.
However, captain nacho and his crew don't seem to listen.
HDCP is required to play HD content. Regular content such as DVDs won't even play over the component or S-Video outputs on video cards.
This is a huge crippling "feature" that MS has thrown in just to appease big media.
They're using their grammar skills there.
...........NOT.
Apologies to Borat.
you had me at #!
Pirate copies usually get you to new and recent releases. When you suddenly think of something less popular that you would like to get, in most case, you won't be able to find it.
"Then what must a consumer do to view his content when the very laws he has sworn to protect force him to do nothing?"
"It is not a question of what a consumer should do. Instead ask yourself, what should a free man do?"
If you consider superior to consider only availability
I won't consider availability to be everything, but I can't watch a DVD that hasn't been released yet, so the effective quality of said DVD is zero until I can get my hands on it.
Meanwhile, the cam-videos, though sucky, are available.
It's not like quality can't be a sliding scale. A modern Honda civic would steamroll a model-t, for example. But if you go back to 1925, you're not going to be able to get a Honda Civic, the Model T would be the best economy car you could get.
I don't read AC A human right
Who continue to sell Vista without informing consumers that their computers won't be able to play all of that HD content that the OEMs continue to flout as the reason why they need new a shiny new Vista system now!
Every single computer and Monitor sold today that doesn't fully support all of that bullshit HD DRM should have a big warning on it saying "WARNING THIS PRODUCT IS OBSOLETE AND WILL BE UNABLE PREMIUM HD CONTENT!". Yep that Vista turned out to be a real boon for multimedia enthusiasts. Trojan horse is more like it.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Say what? DivX isn't effective at anything. WMV9/VC-1 is a state-of-art video codec and easily beats DivX and XviD (which is a hell of a lot better than DivX). It can be directly compared to H.264. As much as I hate DRM, posting FUD and lies doesn't help anything.
Microsoft's big mistake here was to modify the relationship between user and computer. In their new design, the computer no longer does solely what you want it to do. Sometimes it does what Microsoft wants it to do, sometimes it does what some un-named third party company wants it to do. And if you ask it to do what you want instead, it will REFUSE TO DO SO.
It's not a "save the children!" situation and it's not a "stop piracy!" situation. It's a situation where your personal computer isn't yours anymore - it belongs to Microsoft and you can only use it for things that they'll allow you to use it for. All it takes for you to give up your control over your PC is to buy and install Vista. Read that EULA carefully - it's all bad news.
Right now it's "only" high quality (whatever that means) audio and video files that can only be played under terms negotiated between Microsoft and some other corporation. You weren't involved in those negotiations - but if your audio and video files come out looking like crap then it's because those corporate folks decided that you shouldn't be allowed to see / hear them in their normal quality. Some people here seem to think that this is an anti-piracy feature - while it could be used in that way it's really a more general purpose system. The media corporations can "push the button" on any file they create for any reason they want; how about a special "plays on your PC" version for a slight additional charge?
Microsoft has installed all the "plumbing" to provide custom designed file access restrictions. Combine that with the media corporations and Microsoft itself being dedicated to making more and more profit every year - abuse of Vista's access controls isn't something that might happen - the only question is when and how badly it'll be abused.
Grrr, by copyright protected, I meant DRM protected.
The television will not be revolutionized.
The parent is right. I don't think it has gone unnoticed to Hollywood (or the music industry) that somebody in their bedroom with
The dumb thing is that Microsoft fell for it. With a 90% stranglehold on PCs and HD video slow to take hold, they could have taken a stand against Hollywood if they had wanted to. After all, Vista doesn't play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray anyway, so what's the difference?
Oops, with the VC1 codec based on WMV, the HD-DVD drive on the XBox 360 and the Zune, I guess they couldn't have. They are firmly in bed with them.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
And what happens when in 10 years you can only purchase media through some Microsoft site, because they have the industry so locked into there content protection scheme? COME on wake up and smell the coffee, MS did not do it for the Media companies, they did it for their own bottom line. Do you seriously think they would go through all this trouble if it did not help them some way?! -- Not touching vista or any future MS operating system with a 10 foot pole.
Microsoft is an American company, you know. Their products must conform to the (local) laws. If they had some way of guaranteeing that some copies of their software would be used only in those countries where it is legal to have certain features, they might include those features... but odds are, they still wouldn't. Why should MS complicate their testing, licensing, and distribution systems, not to mention risk lawsuits if such a copy ever did find its way into the US or the US ever managed to get legal action brought against somebody in your country (such things have happened)? Do you REALLY think you're important enough that MS should go through the hassle of providing a special version for you?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
How exactly did Microsoft cause this?
:)
(looking at the URL in my Firefox browser) Yep. This is slashdot.
WHO ELSE is to blame other than Microsoft?
Of course it seems like I ticked off a paid shill. Tough.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
even if you bought the game, the no-cd crack is right there at gamecopyworld.com. You already know you purchased the game legally, and you have a valid key (if that game requires one). Just use a fixed-exe (or a fixed image if you don't want to modify the game's executables).. Of course I'm pretty sure you were doing this already and were using the laptop example to make a point. Game companies are retarded if they want you to insert the disc to play. Let them be retarded, and play the game your own way. Maybe someday they will learn.
Bill Gates: "All your base are belong to us"
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
Here are some fun numbers to add in: (CDs from my own collection, ripped and then stored. Why did I go flac/lossless? So I could go to mp3 or ogg and not have to worry about loosing any more quality than necessary)
I also use the 2:1 ratio, seems to be fairly decent. 65 albums, average flac -9 album size about 340 MB. 1048 songs, average size 20.6 MB, average length(as reported by amarok when I loaded them all in, it said 2 days, 9 hours = 57 hours): 3:16/song. (Sorry, I don't know any quick easy way to give a better average length).
If we assume 1048 songs are evenly split among the 65 albums, we get a little over 16 an album. 16.123*3:16 = ~52:37 album.
(The 3:16 was something like 3.263 from 57*60/1048 )
So some quick album lengths and sizes
all flacs in list are -9 for compression.
lame (IIRC, some of them I ripped a long time ago when I did the mp3s and didn't make new mp3s when I reripped for flacs) are -v --preset CD -b 32 -B 320
Apollo 13 Soundtrack CD, ~72 minutes, flac: 348 MB, lame: 80 MB
Chef Aid-South Park Album, ~77 minutes, flac: 558 MB, lame: 108 MB. (Went from largest flac to 3rd largest mp3)
Gorillaz-Gorillaz, ~72 minutes, flac: 426 MB, lame: 83 MB
Gorillaz-Demon Days, ~51 minutes, flac: 327 MB, lame: 82 MB
Sum 41-Half Hour Of Power, ~30 minutes, flac: 202 MB, lame: 39 MB
Interesting, that for the 2 Gorillaz's discs are 20 minutes in length difference, the flacs are 100 MB in size, and the mp3s are only 1 MB.
Does suggest that it isn't a 10:1 between lossy and lossless. I don't see any of the albums having a 10:1 difference. 3.5-6 seems to be a more general range.
Don't know exactly what I am saying, just that 60 mp3 albums (I missed them last time I reripped.) is about 4.2 GB.
Flac: 65 albums ~ 22GB.
Total difference in size: about 5:1
So a 500GB should be able to hold at least 1420 albums(65 = 22GB, so 650 = 220, 1420= 480 GB), which if they keep the average at average, would give me almost 52 days of music.
(Math on how I got it: (57*60/1048)*(1048/65)*(1420)/60/24. minutes/song * average # songs/album = average album length. * 1420 then divided to go minutes to hours to days.)
OK, misc random numbers done.
You're comparing 320kbps MP3s to FLAC. I was comparing 128kbps AAC to FLAC. Are you asserting that a 128kbps AAC file and a 320kbps MP3 file are the same size?
Paid shill? Need to loosen that tinfoil there bud and perhaps engage a little common sense. GL with that...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Why use 128kbps AAC, imagine if you used 20kbps AAC, it would be even 5x smaller then the 128kbps? You are wasting your money and Apple is wasting bandwidth using 128kbps AAC. Oh, you are happy with 128 AAC? You assume since you are happy that it should now be the standard and anything other then that is a waste or sounds like crap? Like stated before, unless every music player you own or every listen to music on is capable of playing 128AAC, you are probably doing transcoding or ripping to raw audio somewhere along the line anyway. Transcoding makes the quality even worse then a 128 AAC already is and burning to audio CD now leaves you with a "compressed audio file in CD audio format. 128AAC should not be even remotely considered as a source for music, it is only an intermediate step for convienence.
I do agree that large files will incur some excess bandwidth and space requirements in many circumstances but to me that very minimal cost is well worth the convienece and the quality for the small price difference. For reference, I have about 100 full albums or cds in FLAC format, they take up 35GB. If I had several thousand then maybe the extra few 500GB drives would impact me but until then, I'll stick with FLAC. another note, the price of an iPod that you buy to listen to your 128 AAC files probably cost twice as much as a 500GB drive and I'd bet you'd buy replacement iPods more then I'd by extra drives.