Originally Posted by hrlslcbr More DRM crap? No thanks.
Then you had better forget about the Theater 650 Pro since it undoubtedly has intrinsic DRM built in. All Vista logo tuners must respect and observe the “protected path” and are thus subject to DRM in hardware.
As far as I know, the Theater 650 Pro chip and subsequent cards had DRM at its inception,….again as far a I know DRM is nothing new for the Theater 650 Pro.
BTW, many DVD+/-R/RW drives have BIOS which will supposedly prevent certain digital media from playing properly or at all on a PC once its been burned.
Unfortunately, this is the direction the industry is going in. We can demonize ATI for this but they don’t set the industry standards but rather simply follow them. You can go to another company but they too will soon follow the same route if the don't already. The culprit here is the entertainment industry and the companies that gave the entertainment industry a viable DRM system/infrastructure. Individual governments are also to blame.
The entertainment industry created the need, the software companies provided the vehicle (Microsoft and the like) and the government granted permission and or full autonomy to do as they whished in this respect.
ATI is just a squirrel trying to get a nut,..a leaf in a hurricane,..they are just not a big player here and in this respect.
Do take note of one statement I made earlier:
Originally Posted by Octavean One minor point, since Vista hasn’t been released or finalized, technically the specifications that presumably the Theater 650 Pro follows to qualify it as a Vista logo part could change.
If such a change were to occur ATI would have to make some tough choices:
1) Delay Theater 650 Pro chips/cards until the new Vista specification is ratified (hard to do if manufacturers already have the chips)
2) Release Theater 650 Pro cards that don’t comply with the already advertised Vista logo support and somehow fix it later (1.0 cards non logo and 1.2 cards logo supported trade up program or the like)
I just don’t see how a company can expect their product to have full compliance with an unfinished OS,…that keeps getting delayed and presumably altered.
I can say this though, each day that Theater 650 Pro cards are not available is a day I lose a little more interest in the product and another day that competing products catch my eye.