Originally Posted by Blitzen 
But that is where Creative have dropped the ball surely.
I have had graphics cards where i have bought the cheaper version then unlocked extra pipes to make the faster version. Flash the firmware afterwards and away you go.
The nVidia 6800 cards were a very good example of this. On most GT's you could unlock the pipes then flash the card to Ultra settings.
Surely this is the same thing and nVidia didnt cry about it.
Starting with the last, if your neighbour got burgled and didn't report it, does that mean you shouldn't be able to?
Even if nVidia didn't object, that's their call. Creative have the right to make their own call.
Taking it a step further (and back up the thread), a lot would depend on
how features were unlocked. If you buy a card, and write a driver that enables features, I'd sy that's entirely your right. If, on the other hand, you buy a "budget" card and then modify and adapt someone else's drivers to enable those features, don't be too surprised if they object. In the same way, if I write an article an sell it to a magazine (in the UK, with UK rights only), I'd be
very miffed if that magazine then sold that article (with or without modification) in Australia. They bought what they bought, which was UK rights, not the right to sell it elsewhere. And yes, that did happen.
So flashing the firmware to enable extra features seems, to me, to be just fine providing you're not infringing other people's legal rights by doing it.
As for whether Creative dropped the ball, well, it seems to me there's three issues :-
1) Do they have a legal right to take the stance they have?
In all likelihood, the answer is that they do.
2) Do they have a moral right?
I don't know, as the actual detailed seems a bit blurred. But it's very possible.
3) Have they handled it well?
There, you got me. It seems to me that it's been diabolically bollixed.
I don't know the rights and wrongs of what Creative did, and I certainly am not going to defend them. My initial post was really getting at one thing. There seems to be a huge amount of rage, worldwide, but a lot of the bile on Creative'sd forums seems to me to be because people object to Creative saying things that they don't seem to have actually said.
Sorting out bugs, or getting the same feature set under Vista that the buyer of a card had under XP seems to me to be legitimate, and if Creative can't or won't do a decent job of that, then these contentious drivers can. Users have a right to expect a decent level of support - and don't seem to be getting it.
That, in my view, is an entirely legit grievance.
But when you buy a card with a given specification and feature set, you can't be too surprised if the manufacturer objects to someone allowing you to turn on features that weren't included on that spec, and especially when they infringe that manufacturer's IP (or third-party IP) to do it.
It may well, for instance, be that Creative have to pay a licence fee to Dolby Labs for every card shipped that has DTS enabled, so they build that licence fee into the retail price. And turn it off on lower-end cards, that they then sell without that feature. But if someone comes along and starts turning it back on, using software licenced from Dolby via Creative, it could well be that that then means Creative are liable to Dolby for licence fees on those cards. This whole mess could well have put Creative in a very awkward legal position with their suppliers. It could put those relationships in jeopardy, and it could mean that in future, they have to physically engineer cards to disable stuff so that this can't be done in future, thereby driving up the cost of those cards to all users.
We don't know what the backdrop to Creative's stance is. I certainly think it's been a PR cockup, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have good reason for their objections.
Of course,their position would be rather stronger if they provided decent, full-feature and bug-free Vista support for their hardware. But again, there's more than one way to look at that. If I bought a card five years ago that made no mention of Vista support, am I entitled to expect Vista support for it now? After all, writing that software and/or drivers costs time and money, and takes resources away from on-going projects and future developments, and it provides no revenue stream to provide features (such as Vista support) that weren't covered in the purchase price. Creative would certainly, in my view, be justified in charging for drivers or software to support any card for which Vista compatibility wasn't included when the customer bought it.