Vista degrades your HD video

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135814-pg,1/article.html

Not just copyrighted stuff, but even your own home movies are quality-reduced by Vista if you used a HD camcorder to record them.

"Vista requires premium content like high-definition movies to be degraded in quality when sent to high-quality outputs"

"Separately, all the extra encryption required to meet Vista's content protection standards means some computer components can never enter power-saving mode, he said. Thus, when you play a movie your CPU keeps running at full steam, he said. The extra power demands make it hard to reduce electricity usage."

 

Known issues.

 

Wrong. Not an "issue". It is by design - this is how they intended it to work.

A BSOD is an issue. This is a "feature".

 

Known to whom? The masses who can't/don't know how to find a laptop w/out Vista? Some how, I doubt it.

 

Sorry, I just meant that Microsoft's DRM, ridiculous as it is, is a widely-known addition to Windows Vista.

 

Well-known among tech circles, but not likely among regular consumers. Then again, Microsoft's business model has always been built on the gullibility of regular consumers.

This is just one of the many reasons Vista runs slower than XP on the same hardware. Cycles and RAM are continually wasted on DRM-enforcement services. They built an operating system to treat each user as a media pirate.

Answer # 364,789 for why I'm sticking with XP. At least here, my computer isn't being hijacked to prevent me from "stealing" media I have no interest in watching.

 

Read the full content of this Article: http://www.dev.notebookreview.com/news/ces-2013-lenovo-erazer-x700-gives-alienware-a-run-for-its-money/

 

I (and a few others) posted Gutman's original paper several times over 6 months ago and people just scoffed at it. Funny how things turn around with PC World mentions it. Here is that article again.

Anyway, yes, this is a well known part of Vista among people who know what they're talking about. A bigger problem is that "premium" content doesn't just mean HD content; it's really any media at all that Vista thinks could be commercial. Which is why home-made media is now being affected.

Furthermore, Vista requires certified drivers to play "premium" content. If a driver isn't signed and cleared by Microsoft (remember those little pop-up screens in XP you were always instructed to just ignore?), then the hardware isn't allowed to play premium content (or work correctly at all for that matter). That's quite a problem for old hardware that manufacturers don't really care about anymore. But hey, all that matters is that it works, right?

 

That's precisely my complaint - an Operating System should not exert ANY control over content. An OS is there to facilitate the user, to allow the user to do whatever the hardware is physically capable of doing - not to hinder, impede, and control the user. Apparently - Microsoft didn't get that memo.

I tell my computer what to do - not the other way around. Once the computer starts telling me what I can and cannot do - then we have a problem.

Imagine if your OS only allowed you to print your Masters Thesis in 100 dpi B&W, even though your printer supports 600 or 1200 dpi color.

Or if your OS throttled your internet connection to 128k when you used an "unapproved" web browser or internet application.

Or if your OS prevented you from saving a file to disk, when it thinks that file is "pirated" material.

That day those "features" arrive is sooner than you think. The framework has been laid with Windows Vista. It starts with audio/video quality and media copy restrictions in the current level of DRM, but it's only going to get more restrictive.

"1984" is here, now, but Big Brother isn't the government, it's your software vendor.

 

Has the crack been released publicly?

 

Sounds like someone's got an alpha of Windows 7!

 

Good luck in the days ahead filled with screams, crashes, spontaneous reboots, compatibility and broken promises and delayed technologies.


Just kidding

 

do you have any proof to this, or are you just prattling on for the hell of it? Vista's copy protection/DRM, while a bit of a nuisance, only activates if the original content provider sets it that way on disc. in NO WAY does that factor in with homemade movies shot on an HD recorder. seriously, there are other ways to show Vista's pitfalls than just making **** up.

otherwise, yes, the heavy-handed DRM is quite a bit of a nuisance, although thankfully no major studio has yet to activate the downgrade/DRM bit on their blu-ray/hddvd releases. while i'm sure there's a tiny bit of overhead related to the new DRM, i've never experienced a pronounced spike on my processor during DVD/MP3/HD playback. at all.

 

It's in the article.

 

the whole article is an exercise in FUD, especially this quote 'Vista requires premium content like high-definition movies to be degraded in quality when sent to high-quality outputs'. does it have some points/truths? sure, but he extrapolates so much bull from them that it's hard to take as a whole seriously.

i have zero problem playing back 720p movies on my Vista machine. i'd also expect a HUGE uproar from video camera manufacturers and end-users if they weren't allowed to play back their own home made HD movies. seriously, it's all conjecture from this one source at this point. as has been pointed out earlier, there are zero studios and movies which degrade HD video outputted to non-HDCP devices, and it looks like studios won't be doing so for a few more years.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/2069
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/w...-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx

 

There is a difference between a software vendor and government. A vendor sells his product and you have a choice to either use or not use their product without moving out of the country. If you don't like the government the only choice you have is put up with it or MOVE to another country.

 

Do you have any problems sending HD from your computer to your HDTV? It's not a problem when watching on one's computer, the problem occurs (from what the article says) when one sends the HD signals to HD monitors or HDTVs.

 

my monitor, HDTV (hooked up through a DVI-to-HDMI cable), and videocard are not HDCP-compliant. as said before, there is no problem unless the content provider decides to enable the protection, and so far none have. any other self made, high-resolution video you have can not and will not be affected by the DRM since it doesn't have any.

so to spin the truth back into the OP's title - Vista degrades HD movies on non-HDCP compliant hardware only if content providers activate it. it does not, nor will it affect the playback and/or resolution of non-DRM files.