MICROSOFT HAS DECIDED that its new super soar-away operating system Vista will not support the first generation of DVD drives.
Apparently when PC DVD drives first came out in 1998, the drives did not have support for region codes and needed the operating system to enforce region coding. The idea at the time was that by January 1, 2000 all new drives would support region coding in hardware rather than relying on software enforcement.
I have a feeling this is going to be an ongoing trend for hardware devices with Vista. We have yet to see how gay this is going to get.
I am willing to bet that it will be non-stop. Microsoft will make everything this way because it will generate more money for them making their stuff non-backwards compatable.
… Honestly, you dont want Vista that badly anyways if you have an older computer. Its larger, more demanding, it invilves a new learning curve, and yeah. I was running it on my laptop for awhile until I realized there was no huge advantage to having it.
It’s not on a money making side of things completely. I mean sure, that is part of it, but I think more of it is pressure from Hollywood. Hollywood is so pissed at the amount of theft of movies and whatnot over the internet as well as DVD copying that they are going right to the source rather than the RIAA method. If the OS won’t allow you to do naughty things, it doesn’t matter about policing the internet or anything.
Microsoft if all about the mighty dollar but I have a feeling the majority of this business with Vista is Hollywood pressure.
Hell, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. My 1st gen Toshiba region-free drive doesn’t even work right in Windows 2000. Probably because my DVD-R is region locked and Windows doesn’t know what to do about it.
Oh well, more and more DRM BS… Vote with your wallets people, don’t buy crap with DRM… cough ipods, itunes, Vista