Microsoft Vista: Dare The Upgrade
When Microsoft announced that Vista was reaching beta status, we rejoiced. Windows XP is a decent system (if you ignore the security problems), but it’s getting dated. Vista will have the new slick, the new polish, the new sheen - and new digital rights management?
The world I know, where I can use my computer as a PMR, is coming to an abrupt end. Hollywood has it’s fingers in my machine and is twiddling the dials without my permission. Join me now, in this world where the rights I already have are suddenly being monetized.
I’ve just spent an ungodly amount of money on a new computer system. I’ve got a GeForce 8800 GTX which spits out HDMI to my new 50-inch Panasonic wide-screen plasma (with HDMI blade installed), an Athlon64 X2 5000+ processor, 2GB of memory, a pair of 500GB hard drives, and the best cables you can buy. I’ve even sprung for the Blu-Ray drive and an external HD-DVD player. To top it all off, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum connects with my home theatre via a S/PDIF digital audio connector - eight speakers never sounded so clear!
Of course, as this is obviously going to be more of a media/gaming rig than a work machine, I’ve got my wireless joystick, Logitech webcam, wireless keyboard & mouse, and Canopus AVC110 video capture box attached as well.
Let the entertainments begin!
The first thing I noticed while playing some of my games was the horrible sound quality I was getting. The old machine had no problem with 3D sound, but EAX and DirectSound 3D don’t seem to work anymore. Unreal Tournament seemed fine using OpenAL though, and messing around in Reason seemed good with the ASIO drivers too. Oddly, plugging the old speakers in and unplugging the digital audio line brought my surround sound back to the DS 3D games. I love the 3D sound, but I love my big speakers more, so I guess most of these games are just going to have to be stuck in stereo mode.
Secondly, the video quality with movies wasn’t very good. I expected this to be a rocking system for watching movies on, and frankly, my old DVD player looks better! What gives? I’m using HDMI to go from my video card to the TV, everything is labeled “HD Ready” and whatnot… hmm. Further, if I was playing a Blu-Ray disc (and often even a normal DVD or video file), the audio would stop working completely! No sound, just crappy picture!
It took a while, but I finally found the problems. First, even though my video card says it’s HDCP compliant, the review sites say it’s really not. Even though my television uses HDMI, it doesn’t use HDCP at all, so there’s no way I can watch high-definition movies on it. As an added bonus, it turns out that there are currently no video cards or televisions of any kind that support HDCP properly (according to Microsoft) - so I can’t watch my Blu-Ray movies at anything but DVD quality (if I don’t mind the lack of all audio!) until I purchase another $5000 worth of gear in six months when it becomes available. The second problem is that because S/PDIF is considered an insecure audio channel, Vista disables it while protected content is being played. Does this make sense?
Who’s frigging idea was this?!
At the same time, even if I was just watching captured footage from my video camera, the CPU meter was hitting 50%, even 60%! What the hell? Even my old Athlon64 3200 could play these files at only around 5% of the CPU.
You know, at first I was excited at the excuse to upgrade my hardware - ooo, big fancy media rig with the fat video card and 50-inch screen and nifty black case. Wow, look at the shitty video. Say, that’s some nice stereo sound in that brand new $70 game that stupidly supports DirectSound 3D. Nice Blu-Ray collection - too bad, eh?
Ultimately, I’ve spent close to $6000 putting this thing together - I wanted a high-definition home theatre PC, but what I got was a big, nifty-lookin’ paperweight that does exactly what my old system did at about the same speeds (except, to be honest, the video card really does rock). I can’t count how many times I’ve experienced audio dropouts and video corruption or even big chunks of dropped frames - none of that used to happen on my old machine. And what’s with this message I see on the TV occasionally about content being blocked? It’s my content! I recorded it with my own two hands!
***
This is one of those “What If” scenarios. Believe me, I’m not foolish enough to buy a copy of Vista, much less attempt to use it for entertainment. But the average person with an eye on the Joneses - well, he just might do it. And this is what can happen.
Vista is essentially being written not by Microsoft, but by the media cartels who have Hollywood’s best interests at heart - not end users or consumers. Not customers.
Here’s a quick point-list of things that are scary or stupid about Vista:
- Vista disables audio and video outputs that it considers insecure when protected content is detected
- Insecure outputs include:
- S/PDIF audio
- Component (YPbPr) video
- RCA audio and video
- Microsoft can revoke permission for a device to be in your system, rendering it unusable without your permission, thus forcing you to replace it
- Huge processor overhead during media playback, thanks to Vista’s content protection mechanisms, causing the entire system to noticeably and constantly slow down
- Most of these architecture decisions were not made to protect the user from the hundreds of thousands of viruses and trojans and worms that infect Windows every single day, but to prevent movie and music consumers from using their purchased content in ways that the content industry (not Microsoft, not the government, but Hollywood) doesn’t like
For me, that’s more than enough reason to be scared of moving to Vista. If I buy a new computer system and buy an operating system to put on it, I want to be the one in control of that system. Nobody is going to make decisions like that for me. If I want to use my computer as my DVD player and watch those movies on a 50-inch HDTV, I’d better be allowed to. If I want to watch my own captured home movies on that 50-inch HDTV, I’d better be allowed to. If I want to hear 3D sound from games that support it, I’d better be able to. If I expect Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies to look and sound better than their DVD counterparts, then they’d better be!
Unfortunately, with Microsoft Vista, you get none of those things.
Filed under: What If
I have the same type of system running Vista64 and have had no problems, but I didn’t try to use any high def on my system.I do have a problem with my Microsoft finger print scanner still has no driver for Vista64 and that makes me mad. I also think they are nuts I payed good money and they make me look like I steal from them! They give me a hard time. I want to use HD DVD I also have blue ray but I don’t like the PS3 remote no power off button? So I got the HD DVD player and when I go try and buy a new movie it’s not available they say until they know if it’s a big seller then it might come out on HD DVD or Blue Ray. I also must pay much more for the disk and when I bought 2 HD DVD movies it cost over $70.Can one cost over $30. because it had DVD on the flip side that I didn’t want but had to pay for. I’m just thinking that’s too much money for 2 movies I will only watch maybe twice if I’m lucky. I’m starting to think this HD DVD and Blue Ray is too expensive to buy. I even must pay extra for HD movies on my Rogers cable if I rent one. I think this is just another customer rip off I see very little change in the way government and companies take money from people my high speed internet is to high in price and so is my cable bill and last year after not charging me for years charge me rental fee for my high speed modem. How would they give me high speed with out it? It’s their modem and they need it to run my internet so why should I pay? Same with their PVR it works like crap and if you buy one same price as a PS3 that’s crazy I had to open mine and put a bigger hard drive and found out it was freezing because of the old hard drive because after changing the drive it stopped freezing.I must also pay rental fees for that another cash grab and very few HD channels and they don’t work very well. I like most normal people don’t want a copy of a movie I would just like good TV and that would make me happy why all this worry about copy right protection? Try dropping the price and that problem will go away! I only buy CD music and not mp3’s better quality and I have a backup. I also find since all this copy protection problem the price has dropped so I don’t mined paying a fair price for CD’s. I also pay for my software and pc games but I’m not buying from the store as the price for a game is just to high! I did make a mistake and bought Bioshock started playing it and found it to be just a plain game that I got board with in one hour and then found out they put some copy protection files on my computer so I can’t install it more than 3 times? I think I will never buy a game like this in the future and do my home before buying.I didn’t give them permission to put those files on my system.I also find it strange all these web sites saying it’s perfect 10 game? This games was also going to bring my system to it’s knees did nothing of the kind and was maybe a 6 out of 10 and all this junk slowing down my system to protect Hollywood they have been taking my money for years and this is how they treat me? I just want to put it all in a pile and have a nice fire but why should I give up so for now I just use it to do my web surfing and email I do like some games that don’t treat me like a criminal!