Brian's Brain

Greetings from the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle, WA. This morning, during his following-Bill-Gates keynote, Will Poole (Microsoft's senior VP for Windows Client Business) proudly pointed out to the developer community in attendance the 200 million estimated Vista-upgrade-ready PCs already in users' hands. Reflective of that statement, last Thursday Microsoft unveiled the "Get Ready" section of its website, intended first and foremost to educate consumers on the benefits of the upcoming Vista O/S.

"Get Ready" also communicates the system specifications necessary for a successful Vista upgrade (which, even after applying the historically accurate 1.5x memory-and-CPU-horsepower multiplier between what Microsoft says you need and what you really need, is fairly reasonable, even for the Aero Glass-capable 'Premium' variant). There's even an Upgrade Advisor utility available for download that'll automate the analysis-and-reporting process. And, reflective of Vista's anticipated January 2007 general availability, Microsoft today released Vista Beta 2 (along with Beta 2 of the 'Longhorn' server O/S and Office 2007).

So far, so good, it seems. What's the deal with my negative post title, then? As I previously alerted you last August, Vista supports DRM-defined display control (PVP-OPM, aka Protected Video Path – Output Protection Management) for high-definition video content. A content provider can, when presented with an unprotected analog (i.e. RGB) or digital (i.e. HDCP-deficient DVI) link between a graphics subsystem and display, instruct the O/S to do any of the following:

• Pass the content to the display unchanged
• Pass the content unchanged through the graphics subsystem's analog output (since, after all, the fundamental concern from a copy-protection standpoint is the pristine digital stream) but downscale or block transmission via the graphics subsystem's digital output (even though HDCP has been proven vulnerable to concentrated cracking attempts).
• Downscale or block transmission via either the analog (which can, after all, be re-digitized with little-to-no noticeable degradation from the source) or digital output

Guess which of these scenarios I think is most likely to play out?

The problem? Well, actually there are several. With the exception of a few Nvidia cards embedded within Sony Media Center PCs, none of today's DVI-inclusive graphics chips and cards implement HDCP content protection (more from Ars Technica). This is the case even though ATI has long claimed that its products were HDCP-ready and, after its deception was unveiled, tried to cover its tracks by revamping its website content (a history-rewriting maneuver that it's not alone in attempting). ATI is being sued and, frankly, I believe they deserve whatever punishment they're dealt.

So of those 200 million "Vista-ready" PCs, virtually none contain DRM-friendly graphics chips and boards. And even if they did, that'd only cover half of the video link. Yes, you guessed it, virtually no DVI-inclusive PC displays exist that support HDCP. You could connect the PC to a HDMI-inclusive TV monitor via a DVI-to-HDMI transformation dongle (although HDMI isn't required to implement HDCP, I'm not personally aware of a HDMI-equipped display that doesn't support copy protection), but that's no solution for the office.

And perhaps the biggest problem of all is that nowhere in the Vista Ready documentation can I find even a footnote that discusses the HDCP deficiency issue. So....folks are going to upgrade their PCs to Vista, only to discover that that they can't view protected content and, to fix the problem, will also need to drop many hundreds of additional dollars on new graphics cards and displays? That's a consumer-friendly approach....not.

I suspect Microsoft's counting on two factors to minimize the backlash:

• The vast majority of PCs tether to displays via analog links, and
• A rumoured unofficial agreement between movie studios and consumer electronics companies (more by Ars Technica) will delay (note the careful choice of words) implementation of the Image Constraint Token on Blu-ray and HD DVD media, thereby temporarily (again, carefully chosen words) enabling full-resolution analog links, until the beginning of the next decade when, presumably, most consumers will have upgraded to HDCP-inclusive PCs and displays.

Unfortunately, Blu-ray and HD DVD don't cover all possible sources of high-definition video content. What about CableCard receivers? What about DiretTV and Dish Networks? What about IPTV? What about movies Net-delivered via Cinemalink, Movielink, and other content distributors? Etc....

I'm planning on attending a technical session tomorrow morning on 'How To Implement Windows Vista Content Output Protection', where I hope Microsoft will address the issue (and if they don't, I'll bring it up during the Q&A). But even if they do, it won't be enough. Until Microsoft comes clean with consumers on Vista's content protection support and its potential impacts on their hardware, I'll view the company's stance as a highly deceptive sales pitch. Buyer beware.