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Microsoft Vista means you need new monitors

2K views 33 replies 22 participants last post by  F-3582 
#1 ·
Microsoft Vista means you need new monitors
EVERYTIME Microsoft releases a new version of its operating system, someone points out that it will involve the wholesale scrapping of existing hardware. Going through the specs of Vista it looks like you will not only probably need a new PC, but it will be time to splash out on a new monitor too.

According to a US tech consultant Stephen Speicher, Vista will make protected digital content all fuzzy unless it is viewed on high bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) compatible monitor.

He said that the number of people whose display is equipped with HDCP are so rare that it would take a special distributed screen saver to find them.

The missing technology is Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management and while it is a de facto standard for display copy-protection in televisions, so far it has not made much of an impact in the computer display market.

Amongst those that will not have it are the people who spent shedloads impressing their friends with their new Dell UltraSharp super sexy 2405FPW widescreen display.
This is getting rediculous, what next? will you need special EYES with copyprotection tech that makes everyone else who didn't buy the movie see nothing and not letting you see any movie that someone else bought built into them to watch a simple movie?
 
#4 ·
Luckily, most users are not stuck with this - I suspect the harder they push, the less of the market they will have a chokehold on.

I note that I can now play 30-40% of my windows only games on Linux as a good sign, though that number is hardly sufficient at the moment to do a total switchover.

Honestly, though - I suspect this article is false, surely Microsoft hasn't gone quite so far yet. If they did... well, I don't intend to pick one of these up, so I may be out the loop for a week until it's cracked.
 
#6 ·
im with boltzman. like everything windows related, they will always have workarounds. windows vista really dosent look that great.
 
#9 ·
I never believe anything on the Inquirer...they are as bad as FOX News :p But I am not suprised about something like this...expecially coming from microsoft

Even if this is true, it probably only applies to the standard codecs that Vista will come with. Something tells me that there will be a 3rd party codec that bypasses the protected media check and plays the video normally

I really wish I didn't have to use Windows..... :/
 
#11 ·
I smell a BS article.
 
#14 ·
It has about a 99% chance that this article is BS. Afterall it is coming from The Inquirer which isnt exactly the most reputable. Lets wait for microsoft to say this themselves ;)
 
#17 · (Edited)
Well, this is not crap. In no aspect. In fact MS really puts efforts into those protected paths, because they (and MPAA) want to prevent a disaster similar to the DVD encryption. There has been a good article about it in a computer magazine giving a nice overview about how the technology will work (get some M$ footage here). They are planning to make those HD videos only hi-res playable on DVI devices with a TPM chip. Normal VGA and TV devices will only get a downsampled picture, unprotected DVI devices won't see anything. AGP cards won't be supported, because the en/decryption has to happen in real-time making PCIexpress cards necessary.

Fortunately a small company got their hands on a bunch of those TPM chips and sells (pretty expensive) "adaptors" for your unprotected viewing pleasure :D
 
#19 ·
I know this may be a little inaccurate but the original rumor says that future copyprotected DVDs will need special software and "secure" monitors or "secure" TV screens with a "secure DVD player" to watch it at full resolution, I doubt that microsoft will build that into windows vista but the MPAA may do that to thier movies and prehaps the RIAA will do that to thier music CDs
 
#21 ·
dpence said:
hmmmm..Funny, I can watch HD videos on my APG card at the moment...even those that are Encrypted with protections, and it all decodes in realtime with only umm...5%-10% cpu usage....wow...
Well, using Longhorn the video data gets encrypted after leaving the disc entering that protected path and decrypted before leaving the gfx card into the monitor. Because all that has to happen in real-time, massive chunks of data need to be sent through the gfx card interface which AGP isn't capable of.

Since your computer surely doesn't run Longhorn, this additional encryption process doesn't happen at all.

Player-X said:
I know this may be a little inaccurate but the original rumor says that future copyprotected DVDs will need special software and "secure" monitors or "secure" TV screens with a "secure DVD player" to watch it at full resolution, I doubt that microsoft will build that into windows vista but the MPAA may do that to thier movies and prehaps the RIAA will do that to thier music CDs
You didn't seem to have read the presentation M$ showed at the last WinHEC. Just follow the link in my previous post and be enlightened.
 
#22 ·
Perhaps the EU will sue Microsoft once again if they would pull off such a trick :evil:
 
#23 ·
You sound as if MS should care if they did...
 
#24 ·
Well half a billion dollars seems like a significant amount to me, even to a company as large as Microsoft.
 
#25 ·
F-3582 said:
Well, using Longhorn the video data gets encrypted after leaving the disc entering that protected path and decrypted before leaving the gfx card into the monitor. Because all that has to happen in real-time, massive chunks of data need to be sent through the gfx card interface which AGP isn't capable of.

Since your computer surely doesn't run Longhorn, this additional encryption process doesn't happen at all.



You didn't seem to have read the presentation M$ showed at the last WinHEC. Just follow the link in my previous post and be enlightened.
No I am not runnign longhorn, but there are Encrypted HD signals out there that Need to be decrypted in realtime... My PC can do that just fine...In fact that decryption is probably harder on a PC than anything longhorn could do...
 
#26 ·
Microsoft doesn't want Blue Ray, they want HD-DVD so it wouldn't suprise me if windows vista will have problems playing blue-ray ( of course MS will say they have no idea why and that it's sonys faullt :D ). As for the monitor, you won't need a new monitor to watch the content but it'll be in higher resolution if it has HDCP... at least that's what the MS spokesperson said.
 
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