Amigas turn to play catch up - new intel cpu

[vidarh]

It has DRM for HD streaming from certain content providers.
If we can take our tin-foil hats off for a moment....
As far as I can tell it isn't watching what you do....

The DRM crap is bad enough. Personally I refuse to touch technology that encourages more DRM, I'm not going to be part of the problem by giving money on any product that creates revenue for these cartels.

[vidarh]

It _can_ do DRM certified decoding, but that is not what the tech is for. ATI and NVidia GPUs can also be used with protected path (DRM) content. ALL modern video processing including ALL of the IGP used in laptops etc are capable in exactly the same way that this tech is.

That's no excuse for not avoiding it when/where you can - the problem is that the more widespread the capability is, the more likely content producers are to mandate its use, and thus reducing access to content for those of us who refuse to buy products that are effectively intentionally damaged.

It's a paradox that the movie industry, for example, wants us to pay lots of money for access to products that are usually *inferior* to the pirated versions (tons of trailers and obnoxious anti-piracy ads coupled with DRM making it harder to copy the movie to a media server etc.). They do their best to make it less attractive to give them money vs. breaking laws most people have little respect for (based on the amount of piracy).

They live in the past, and I have no intention of encouraging them. I spend far in excess than average on movies for example (500+ DVD's, all legally bought), but refuse to switch to Blu-ray until I can be 100% sure that I can easily continue to rip all the movies to my file server and play them on the various TV's and computers in my house.

It's not that I categorically refuse all DRM, but I do avoid products with functionality intended to support DRM whenever there are choices that don't support it, and aim to pick products with the weakest DRM/DRM support when I don't want to sacrifice too much (e.g. DVD over Blu-ray, because the protections on DVD are so weak they are useless)

[vidarh]

If you are so against DRM then I guess you never bought an XBox, Playstation or iPhone either then.

I haven't, and I have no desire to, though for the XBox and Playstation that has nothing to do with DRM, rather that the games don't appeal to me. For the iPhone on the other hand it *does* have everything to do with the closed environment - I've no interest in ever getting an iPhone as long as it remains that way, I'll pick an Android phone any day.

Heck, you better not have bought cable TV either..
I'm not saying I'm in love with the technology...but the horse has already bolted.

I have no reason to avoid cable TV, as my cable provider lets me record and keep shows as long as I want.

The purpose of avoiding products with DRM is to prevent people from restricting how I use content I've paid for access to, and/or to reduce the acceptance of that DRM. Whenever DRM is used in a way that *only* prevents access by people who have not paid for it, I have no problems with it, what I have a problem with is DRM that restricts what I, as a paying customer, can do.

Thankfully most DRM on the market has already been cracked, but I'm still not going to throw money to the ones using it if I can avoid it without too big sacrifices (yeah, I'm not principled enough to avoid it at any cost, so sue me )

[vidarh]

I think I can kinda see your argument but I'm not sure that it applies fairly here. How could Intel make a modern -useful- video encode/decode engine that didn't support allow for DRM signed media? It'd be completely useless since it's purpose is too play back common media like, DVD/Blu-ray/etc that are all DRM'd up the wazoo.

If Intel wasn't making it, and customer aren't buying it, then publishers would face a far harder choice. The only way of fighting this type of DRM is to direct your cash away from the DRM'd solution whenever available. If picking a certain type of DRM reduces their market even 5%, they'll think twice, or get trounced by any competitor that catches on, because losing even 5% of their sales will gut their margins.

That changes are possible is clear: Witness iTunes move towards offering most content without DRM.

I agree that DRM itself on movie and music is rubbish to the point of being offensive but it's a stupid reason for people (not necessarily yourself) to lambast Intel for adding a bunch of really cool and useful features to their hardware.

I don't particularly care - I just won't buy any CPU's with this functionality built in if I have any choice at all. Judging from reaction elsewhere, such as on Reddit, there are plenty others who are prepared to vote with their wallets and buy something else as long as they have reasonable choices.

I don't see this as important enough to make any really huge sacrifices for, but it is important enough that I'll happily avoid any content I can't get access to without it for the time being. There's enough good content out there that's not encumbered so badly that I can keep myself occupied for several lifetimes anyway.