Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
Sounds so, it's a pity, but predictable, that DRM is, in this case as well as many others, producing worse original products than the pirated. Imagine if Chinese copies of brands were of better quality than the ones from the source... I'd want a Lolls Loyce then, despite the bad spelling. A scenario that deserves some concern.
If I was as pragmatic and objective as I claim to be, would I be commenting?
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
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)
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...
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.
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.
That has been the case in the music industry for about 5-6 years now, ever since we figured out how to burn/play 4.1+ channel audio CDs. You can upmix any stereo CD into a 5.1 album right on your own P4. The best part is that home made upmixes have, time and again, proven to sound better than what the studios put out.
They are still selling their mono/stereo 50 year old music albums for $20+, why would they care to put any work into promoting any higher quality?
It will be interesting how the movie companies are going to fight the laws of economics. I have been boycotting HD technology, and I will for a long time, until they abandon DRM. To the average consumer, HD isn't really much of an improvement over DVD, so I don't see how they can possibly think that they can ram HD down our throats, especially with all the shenanigans that the customer has to go through just to watch a movie.
Look, I feel about as sorry for these people as I do for people who complain that their Hummers get shitty gas mileage. All it would take is a few minutes research, and they couldn't even be bothered to do that.
I'm not a baby sitter. In any case, what exactly do you want people to do? I know! Maybe the geeks of the world can start going house to house, knocking on people's doors and telling them about the evils of DRM?
Seriously, the information was out there, all they had to do was spend 30 seconds on a search engine. There's really not much more anyone can do for these people.
The whole "Oh gee! Computers and technology are so complicated! LOLZ!!1! I'm such an idiot about computers!" thing is getting old. You're technologically incompetent. Wonderful. Either start learning, or stop complaining when it bites you in the ass.
Maybe not
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.
So is this saying that pirating the movie will yield a higher quality then buying it?
No, it's saying that if you buy DRM-encumbered media, it's likely that it won't deliver as good an "experience" as media without DRM.
This being Slashdot, there will undoubtedly be dozens of posts blaming Vista and Microsoft, despite the article summary itself demonstrating that not to be the case.
DRM is an attribute of the media. The solution is simple - if you don't want DRM to impact your life, don't buy DRM-encumbered media.