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gsxr750r
Joined: 29 Jan 2007
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 Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:41 pm Post subject: Paper explains Microsoft Vista copy protection |
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This is quite an extensive Vista overview paper, detailing the copy protection tactics of the new OS. It's an excellent read.:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
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Executive Summary
Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called �premium content�, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry...
Say you've just bought Pink Floyd's �The Dark Side of the Moon�, released as a Super Audio CD (SACD) in its 30th anniversary edition in 2003, and you want to play it under Vista (I'm just using SACD as a representative example of protected audio content because it's a well-known technology, in practice Sony has refused to license it for playback on PCs). Since the S/PDIF link to your amplifier/speakers is regarded as insecure for playing the SA content, Vista would disable it, and you'd end up hearing a performance by Marcel Marceau instead of Pink Floyd...
Alongside the all-or-nothing approach of disabling output, Vista requires that any interface that provides high-quality output degrade the signal quality that passes through it if premium content is present. This is done through a �constrictor� that downgrades the signal to a much lower-quality one, then up-scales it again back to the original spec, but with a significant loss in quality. So if you're using an expensive new LCD display fed from a high-quality DVI signal on your video card and there's protected content present, the picture you're going to see will be, as the spec puts it, �slightly fuzzy�, a bit like a 10-year-old CRT monitor that you picked up for $2 at a yard sale.... |
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gsxr750r
Joined: 29 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:50 pm Post subject: |
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| This is so bad, it makes me want to run out and buy another licensed OEM copy of XP for a future computer. |
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eamo
Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 3:14 am Post subject: |
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That is bad.
I have a natural reaction against any copy protection system after going through so many headaches with Sony's Openmg software for their MD players a few years back.
I don't think degrading the quality of a product or hamstringing it in any way will win Vista many enthusiasist users. But I guess the mainstream user won't notice anything amiss. |
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Demophobe
Joined: 17 May 2004
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 3:54 am Post subject: |
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I'm very happy I bought a legit copy of XP. Seriously, what is this Vista thing? I cannot for the life of me understand why someone would buy this product.
Someone once referred to Vista as an Alpha release at best. I quite seriously think that this beast isn't ready for prime-time in any way; a beta at most. |
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