If CES has left you salivating over Vista’s upcoming support for CableCARD, pay attention, because important details are emerging—and they could well affect your purchasing decision. For those not in the know, CableCARD is a PCMCIA type II card that handles the decryption of digital cable signals.
First of all, you will need some new equipment, including Vista and a new monitor. Vista will only display high definition content in its full resolution on a monitor that supports link encryption such as HDCP. If you’ve been following this issue, this doesn’t come as news. But what might surprise you is that upgrading your current rig with a copy of Vista and a brand-spanking-new monitor won’t actually do the trick.
“Although as a platform Vista has been approved by CableLabs at this point, an important step that will still be necessary for the PC/CableCARD reality is CableLab’s approval for finshed individual OEM PCs as well. Although Vista has been approved, OEMs will in fact still need to get their individual machines certified by CableLabs as well. Central to this certification according to Jim is the idea of a ‘protective path.'”
This will certainly be a blow for MythTV and other DVR projects aimed at the DIY crowd, since there won’t be any more “doing it yourself.”
John has praised MythTV before.
Another nail in the coffin for the already hurting HTPC fad.
It seems to me the only money maker for this is if you can provide a box that does everything customers want, including DVD, Tivo, and Internet content, with custom graphics, for less than $1200.
Anything less means multiple boxes and competing standards, which is what we already have.
Once the industry has all their restrictions in place some of us are going to have a lot of money to spend on things other than digital entertainment.
Because we certainly won’t be spending a time on their crippled offerings.
It is depressing to see how these issues are being decided at the International level.
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=211&res=1024&print=0
Quote:
“Michael Geist, University of Ottawa law professor, highlighted in his blog after the event that it is the content industry view that interoperability among electronic gadgets is the problem with DRMs. This, he said, runs contrary to the consumer or user view that DRMs get in the way of their use of technologies.”
and
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=179&res=1024&print=0
Quotes:
“The 270 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers and regulatory bodies who make up DVB’s membership work on global standards for the delivery of digital television and data services.”
“A preliminary look into the three draft documents recently published as a “bluebook” (available to registered users) shows that the authors of the DVB CPCM system aim at creating an all encompassing digital rights management (DRM) architecture for all digital media.”
Much ado about nothing. This whole thing will be cracked before Vista ever hits the streets.
Mike T
This whole thing will be cracked before Vista ever hits the streets.
I hope you’re right.
“they” learned from the DVD fiasco – where once the universal key was discovered, all future discs were cracked.
And they were limited in how much they could muck with the disc format – to make ripping harder – because the discs still needed to play on regular DVD players. i.e Sony’s ARCooS [already cracked/updated/cracked again].
I’m leary of the “convergence” of content providers, broadcasters, and electronics manufacturers into a unified front – producing multiple layers of updateable protections, to replace the single-layer of static protection on DVDs.
Even if people can crack it, it will be a pain to keep-up with the “arms race” between cracks and fixes.
And as a Mac user, the old “rip, mix, burn” slogan got tossed REAL fast when Apple started being a middle-man for music sales, and Steve had to start worrying about people ripping Pixar discs. 🙂
I doubt that cracked is going to matter.
Can the software be cracked? Sure. Can that then be used with any of this hardware to make it work? Doubtful.
I doubt that cracked is going to matter.
I don’t think it will either, but not necessarily because of hardware protections (HDCP, etc).
I don’t think they believe they can make anything “un-crackable”, they just want to make it more difficult than it is now i.e. On my Mac I can buy DVD2oneX, or “donate” to MactheRipper, or get HandBrake for free – if I want to rip a DVD.
So simple even I could do it. 🙂
I don’t expect that to be the case for any of the new technologies [broadcast, download, Blu-ray, HD DVD, etc].
They don’t need to make it un-crackable, they just need to keep it a “moving target” – so it is a pain-in-the-ass to keep up with the changes.
Lazy slugs like me won’t bother. The rest of you – good luck, and good hunting!
For we must not forget that what is passed on by the parent to the child is not just this or that peculiarity, a hooked nose, short fingers, a tendency to rheumatism, haemophilia, dichromasy, etc. ,