Longhorn to Require Monitor-Based DRM

[Gwarsbane]

http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/07/15/155216....tid=158&tid=155

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 15, @11:24AM
from the it's-everywhere-it's-everywhere dept.
Mr_Silver writes "Engadget has an interesting article regarding a new feature in Longhorn entitled PVP-OPM (Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management) which detects the capabilities of the display devices you are using and manages how (and if at all) content is sent to it. In short, this means that if Longhorn detects that your monitor is not "secure" enough, then your premium video content won't play on it until you buy one that is. Who gets to decide? The content providers of course." From the article: "So what will happen when you try to play premium content on your incompatible monitor? If you're "lucky", the content will go through a resolution constrictor. The purpose of this constrictor is to down-sample high-resolution content to below a certain number of pixels. The newly down-sampled content is then blown back up to match the resolution of your monitor. This is much like when you shrink a JPEG and then zoom into it. Much of the clarity is lost. The result is a picture far fuzzier than it need be."

Man Microsoft and others are REALLY trying to force this DRM crap on us. They might as well just start telling us "You will watch the content we allow and only that content." cause thats what its moving towards.

I won't be buying longhorn. I'll stick with XP and if I want to use stuff that requires a newer OS I will move to some other OS like linux or something. I will not have DRM forced on me. I will use what ever content I want when I want.