Vista and Blu-ray

[Peter]

Hi. Sorry if this has been raised before, but I only just got a new Notebook
with Vista Home Premium on board, so after years of familiarity with XP, I'm
now struggling to come to grips with the slightly different feel of the new
OS.

The question I have concerns playing a Blu-ray disc on the Notebook. It uses
an enhanced version of WinDVD to play HD discs, and there is no problem
watching on the Notebook's own screen. However, it comes with both SVHS and
HDMI ports/sockets, and it seemed reasonable to try playing back the Blu-ray
movie I had borrowed (as I haven't seen one before) on the main TV, 40-inch
screen and all that.

But the minute I plugged in the HDMI cable the movie stopped playing and
there was a brief note about the 'environment' being 'protected'. Obviously,
it makes no sense at all to be unable to play a DVD whether SD or HD through
the appropriate ports, so I had a little trawl round the internet today and
discovered that the problem might lie with Vista itself.

Can anyone here shed any light on this for me, please.

P

 

[peter]

here is a brief explanation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP

peter

 

[Peter]

Peter - thank you for the link.

I'm still wondering why it's okay for a Blu-ray disc player to output a
movie in HD via its HDMI port to a similarly-equipped television (and, I
gather from my son, the same goes for PlayStations), but a computer equipped
with a Blu-ray disc player and appropriate s/w, with the Vista OS, can't.

It seems illogical to me.

I wonder if people running Macs have the same problem - in other words, is
it an illogicality in the OS philosophy, or perhaps even in the laws or
agreements governing this aspect of OS functionality, or is it a shortcoming
of the hardware [computer] manufacturer for not ensuring that an
HDCP-crippled system will funtion in the way one might reasonably expect?

Seems to me (getting rather off topic, I'm afraid) that rather than worry
about copy protection, copying being a fact of life for certain people,
every movie supplied on portable media, such as DVD discs, should have a
Pay-per-view function, which requires the input of a randomly-changing PIN
or code before allowing a sesion to open. That way, the original discs could
be almost given away, and the more copies, the merrier - until, of course,
somebody works out how to crack the system ;-)

P

 

[Paul Smith]

Peter - thank you for the link.

I'm still wondering why it's okay for a Blu-ray disc player to output a
movie in HD via its HDMI port to a similarly-equipped television (and, I
gather from my son, the same goes for PlayStations), but a computer
equipped with a Blu-ray disc player and appropriate s/w, with the Vista
OS, can't.

It's down to the software you're using - for whatever reason. It's deciding
not to send the content over. It seems all the big software companies have
gone overboard on locking things down as much as possible, there's no
technical reason why they're doing this, and certainly Windows plays no part
in making the decision.

You could use something like AnyDVD HD which would strip the protection off
the disc before the player will see it. I use it to play back HD DVD and
Blu-ray when using PowerDVD, which wants me to have an HDCP monitor.

I wonder if people running Macs have the same problem

No they don't. They have whole new problems, like HD DVD and Blu-ray discs
not playing at all.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

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