Battleangel

Microsoft makes up a load of bs (via Slashdot) to justify the blocking of RPC1 DVD-ROM drives from playing encrypted / region coded DVDs in Windows Vista. Good news for MS, the pirated scene version may ship without these nuisances. And if it doesn’t there are plenty of tools and likely hacks that will pick your fancy operating system apart and allow for RPC1 playback. But the best part is that MS claims not to be doing this to please the media industry but because they didn’t have the hardware around to test compatibility. Real transparent.

Vista is looking less appealing by the month. The DRM measures that have been added may in the end render much of current hardware obsolete. Much like MS is now dictating that DVD-ROMs only last three years anyway so why bother? People can just as well buy new hardware every three years. Welcome to the corporate society. Perhaps most controversial is the support for HDMI with High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) which effectively crippled the HDTV dream for most (informed) people. Given the hardware decoding requirements, the low definition televisions and the DRM to soon pester commercial high definition products, HDTV remains one of the most superfluous and hyped technologies of the decade. One that invades our living rooms like a trojan horse, bearing gifts but destroying our lives in the process. However, that line of reasoning would only be valid if you actually buy movies. Still, I fear that the next generation scene releases will be burdensome to the measly broadband connections that most of us are on, while not delivering quality of audio and video that is on par with the bandwidth costs. Sorry for being so averse to invention. I just don’t believe in market driven economies but rather consumer centered systems.