The anti-DRM stance

The anti-DRM stance

Posted Jan 28, 2006 2:18 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: The anti-DRM stance by jpick
Parent article: Stallman leads the GPL off a cliff (ZDNet)

It's already happenning with more technical minded folks.

For isntance Mythtv versus Windows XP Media Center...

Now mind you most people will buy the media center because it's 'newer' or 'more' then Windows XP, but doesn't cost extra.

But with people making a decision to go 'I want to do Tivo with my computer' they can generally choose between Mythtv and MCE. If they haven't made up their mind previously and have a bit of existing experiance in Linux they'll ask about it..

So I'll say:
MCE works with more hardware encoding cards.. Linux your restricted to using WinPVR or the external USB2 Plextor stuff, but with Linux you can use your existing just-capturing card with software encoding as long as it's not a ATI all-in-wonder combo card.

They are like 'hrmmm'.

Then I'll say:
Windows MCE is limited in scope.. With Mythtv you can many multiple capture cards with different inputs from media sources. You can have many multiple front ends (displays) and many multiple backends for storage and capture. If your running Linux on the desktop you can display a front end in a window. With MCE you can use certain media extenders or a xbox to show output on your tv or on a seperate device, but your going to be limited to one or two capture cards pretty much.

They are like 'hrmmm'.. (don't generally plan on running more then 2 cards)

Then the final bit;
With Mythtv you can play front end for Xmame and other emulators. You can rip cds, manage song libraries, rip dvds, transcode and use other Linux utilities to prepare media for use on other devices. You can then use something like vlc to stream or all sorts of other stuff.

With MCE you have to deal with DRM.

then they are like 'bingo!'

(then after that I tell them how difficult it is to install sometimes)

But you get the point.

As time goes on I notice more and more of this sort of thing happenning.

Nobody WANTS to deal with DRM as a end user, but people are going to put up with a certain amount if they desire the content. I don't think I'll ever see it go away, but it'll end up being pretty mild.

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