News, Analysis, and Opinion on Microsoft Digital Media Technologies
A sitdown with Microsoft's Joe Belfiore (Part I) | Joe Belfiore chats with Stephen Speicher clarifying a few issues with CableCARD and HD DVD.
"If you look at standard DVDs today there’s no market forces really in play -- aside from completely bypassing all the copy-protection -- where studios can experiment with different pricing approaches, can offer subscription models, etc. The really nice thing about this, although this may have (in the short-term) the flaw that you point out and might be very expensive in some cases, it will create competition." He's got to be kidding. He is directing this answer to Hollywood, not his Media Center customers. Yes, the really nice thing about managed copy is that studios can now get paid anytime a DVD is ripped to a hard drive. But who is that a really nice thing for?? It most definitely is a FLAW(!!!) for his customers, a very expensive flaw. So maybe the best thing to do is rent the HD-DVD from Netflix, and rip and pay for a managed copy on the HDD. That way you can still pay just once (plus a rental fee) for an HD video. But does Joe guarantee his e-Home team won't be sending out a Vista patch in 2007 that resets all of your expensive DRM keys and makes your entire HDD of videos useless?
He is directing that answer at Hollywood. The more I think about it, why shouldn't he? Microsoft has more to gain than the content owners from all these "protection" mechanisms. Why? Because it makes them the platform of choice for all this anti-consumer crap ... The content owners lose, because they make it so difficult to purchase the content legally that people just don't, or keep buying DVDs, which most of the world (outside the enthusiast market) is perfectly happy with. And who are they locking out? Yup, said enthusiast market. Nice. Microsoft, on the other hand, wins because it pushes their platforms, formats, etc. Legitimate consumers lose big here, but who's on their side any more?