Zipnor,
In the end nobody likes DRM and everybody wants to play HD-DVD on any PC with any player (opensource or not)
Sadly this is (legally) not possible. The copyright holders (producers, movie industry) want to protect their core assets in every way possible.
This is especially true for HD stuff. A HD-DVD movie is a 1-1 copy of the original movie they shoot. They will do anything to prevent the situation that in a few years HD-DVD's are copied just as easy as every now does with warez and software
Offcourse nobody likes this DRM. And yes its sad that many people won't be able to play HD-DVD (since their entire system is not HD-DVD compliant) even if they have expensive HD tv's
Is Microsoft/Vista to blame for this? i think not.. When other operating systems (like linux/macosx) are going to support HD-DVD playback they will need to add the exact same DRM functionality to their platform since its a requirement from the movie industry.
Should/Could Microsoft popose to this? I dont think they stand any chance
The number of (standalone) HD-DVD players is perhaps 1000x higher then the number of pc's used to watch HD-DVD. Even today most people watch DVDs on a standalone player instead of using Windows (or linux or macosx)
This means that microsoft, although a very big company, is not going to impress the movie industry if they would have opposed to the DRM stuff.
DRM is here and its going to stay, whether we, microsoft or anybody else likes it.
But who knows... perhaps some genius guy comes along and hacks the HD-DVD DRM so everyone can playback their HD-DVD's on any machine..
Frodo
In the end nobody likes DRM and everybody wants to play HD-DVD on any PC with any player (opensource or not)
Sadly this is (legally) not possible. The copyright holders (producers, movie industry) want to protect their core assets in every way possible.
This is especially true for HD stuff. A HD-DVD movie is a 1-1 copy of the original movie they shoot. They will do anything to prevent the situation that in a few years HD-DVD's are copied just as easy as every now does with warez and software
Offcourse nobody likes this DRM. And yes its sad that many people won't be able to play HD-DVD (since their entire system is not HD-DVD compliant) even if they have expensive HD tv's
Is Microsoft/Vista to blame for this? i think not.. When other operating systems (like linux/macosx) are going to support HD-DVD playback they will need to add the exact same DRM functionality to their platform since its a requirement from the movie industry.
Should/Could Microsoft popose to this? I dont think they stand any chance
The number of (standalone) HD-DVD players is perhaps 1000x higher then the number of pc's used to watch HD-DVD. Even today most people watch DVDs on a standalone player instead of using Windows (or linux or macosx)
This means that microsoft, although a very big company, is not going to impress the movie industry if they would have opposed to the DRM stuff.
DRM is here and its going to stay, whether we, microsoft or anybody else likes it.
But who knows... perhaps some genius guy comes along and hacks the HD-DVD DRM so everyone can playback their HD-DVD's on any machine..
Frodo