These days, people talk a lot about kicking butt (or synonym).
Whether this is good or bad, I’m sure everyone would agree that if you’re going to kick butt, it is best to kick the right one.
That’s why letters like the ones the Inquirer got the other day are so depressing.
They want to kick the wrong butt.
It is not Microsoft’s idea to implement HDCP in Vista; it is the content providers’ baby. They established the standard a while back in the consumer electronics field, and if PCs want to play HDTV-standard DVDs, they have to follow that standard. Period.
That applies to ALL OSs, yes, even Linux. You say, “Well, I’ll take that out,” fine. Then you’ll get no signal or a degraded one. Again, period.
Mind you, HDCP will not interfere in the least with regular computer screen viewing. If you don’t watch HDTV-standard video, you’ll be perfectly free to use a non-HDCP monitor with Vista.
If you think any legal Linux distributor is going to come up with a version that breaks HDCP one way or the other out of the box, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.
That doesn’t mean such a thing is impossible, for any OS, but rest assured it will be quite illegal, and if it occurs, a Windows Vista version of the crack/hack will be around.
In the meantimes, if you’re going to get mad, at least get mad at the right people!
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