You can’t make consumers jump through hoops like this. This is where people fight back.

Now I normally believe in buying good products. The stipulations and the legal hassles that have been associated with product are a turn off and one I am not willing to agree with. Heck most of the software stuff have EULAs you can’t read and determine if they are acceptable to you and under the intended use you are planning to use it for until you have already opened the box and installed it. In almost all cases, opening the box ends refunds if you are not happy with it. Since I am never sure about such software, it is better to avoid spending money only to find that yet again you as the customer have been ripped off.

It extends farther than that into other items as well. For instance, digital cameras. I bought a still frame camera for my own personal use. Included in the camera was software intended to be used with the transferring of the images to the computer. What did I find? It’s eat up with spyware. Not only that but the software they have supplied is not necessary at all to make the transfer. Yet they imply it is. The instruction manual “recommends” the use of the software. Since that day, I refuse to use any and all such software supplied with any camera and will trash it upon finding it, unopened.

Everyone is so interested in your data. They don’t want to pay you for it, they want to rip you off for both your bandwidth as well as your privacy.

Again another practice that I have fallen out with, is the idea of being an early adopter. Being an early adopter to new techs and new products usually means you are the guinea pig. If it’s a flop, it’s your money being wasted. Take a look at the first blurays that came out. They were expensive and they were outdated within just a few months as a newer software, increasing the capabilities came out. The older blurays were not upgradable. So if you bought one, within a very short while you were left regretting the purchase. To gain the newer capability meant you were going to have to buy it again and either junk the older one or pawn it off on someone unsuspecting. Nice reward for being an early adopter eh?

None of the DRM has withstood the test of time. Mostly that time has been measured in at best weeks. Yet the industry is playing ostrich and the only one paying the price (similar to the early adopters) is the paying customer. Pirates aren’t having a problem with DRM. Downloaders aren’t having a problem with it. Only people having a problem with DRM is the ones paying. That’s not a very good way to treat customers you depend on for resale. Don’t think the customer will never catch on.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081117-fake-blu-ray-discs-hatched-in-china-industry-is-concerned.html

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2006/12/26/hd-disk-format-wars-are-over

Basically, what we have is a series of anti-consumer DRM infections masquerading as nothing in particular. They bring only net negatives to anyone dumb enough to pay money for them, and everything is better than these offerings. They sell in spite of the features they tout, not because of them. The manufacturers still have the balls to look you in the eye and say that they are selling because of the programs/features/DRM. Marketers, what a laugh riot.

In the end, every step in this chain of consumer woe that is Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Live, VIIV, HDCP, MCE and Vista is flopping. And that is where the better choice comes in. The consumers have voted with their dollars, and are staying away in droves. All the walls of the walled gardens are being built higher and higher, with the occasional brick landing on the head of someone who pulls out a credit card. Buy now, there is a brick with your name on it whistling down, operators are standing by.

…

If you try and purchase any of this content, you descend into a DRM nightmare of incompatibility and legal mires. Your monitor will not work with your Blu-Ray drive because your PC decided that a wobble bit was set wrong. You just pissed away $6K on a player, media center PC and HD TV for nothing, you lose. The Warner CEOs kids have a nice new car to play their pirated CDs in though.

On the other hand, if you downloaded that content, in HD no less, you save the $1000 on the Blu-Ray player, $30 on the movie, and it works seamlessly out of the box. The available content is much higher with piracy, and it is quite on-demand. You don’t need to sign up, give them your details to be sold to marketers who call during dinner and spam you, you just get the content you want, when you want, how you want. There is no iTunes/Plays for (not) Sure incompatibility, it just works. Piracy, the better choice(tm).

….

What do we end up with? A year or more where the CE industry pushed, pulled, legislated and litigated their way to obscurity. Along the way, they killed yet another promising consumer technology, well 5 or 6 actually, and made Intel and AMD their bitches. We all were on the verge of losing this format and DRM infection war until a dark horse champion emerged to snatch victory from the jaws of evil. Piracy, the better choice(tm). µ

These manufacturers of hardware did not learn that they should have stand for their own interest.

Have a monitor that is displaying a resolution above 1920×1200 that’s connected by DVI or HDMI? Too bad, no HDCP for you. All current dual-link devices will only support HDCP in single-link mode. Meaning that Blu-Ray you just bought wont play, nor will that $2000 monitor you have support it at its native resolution. Only options as a consumer are to crack the DRM with Any-DVD or *gasp*, lower your monitor to a non-native resolution.

The many 30″ Monitors from Dell, Apple, HP, LG, Samsung, etc all support this lovely “feature”, as do many graphics cards that don’t support HDMI protocol 1.3. What good is HDMI 1.3 when the majority of monitors don’t support it.

Another solution that’s said to work is DisplayPort, which we all know has yet to take a foothold in the market, aside from Apple devices and some big Dell monitors (3008WFP), but looks like that didn’t save Apple from HDCP hell neither.