Intel Insider DRM Risks Monopoly Investigations 217
Blacklaw writes "Intel's Sandy Bridge line of processors is impressing the tech community with its power, but a sneaky little feature designed to appease Hollywood has some concerned about Intel's intentions: Intel Insider. If a major video streaming service, such as Lovefilm or the US-based Hulu, were to implement Intel Insider technology on their movie streams — as a way of convincing Hollywood to release films sooner and in high definition without worrying about piracy — it would mean that only those who use Intel's very latest Sandy Bridge CPUs would be able to stream movies. Not only would those using older Intel chips that don't support the technology be cut off from the service, but those on systems featuring CPUs from rival manufacturers such as AMD and low-power specialist VIA would also be excluded."
In a blog post about this new feature, Intel denies that it is DRM.
not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
Intel doesn't exactly have a history of being open and honest, but then again, what major corporation does?
This is going to be scenario where I vote with my dollars. Once Intel solved their heat problem and stopped adding latency layers, and thus began beating the pants off of AMD in benchmarks, I switched to Intel processors in my builds. And if Hulu, Amazon, Netflix et. al. join in on the fun, I'll abandon them as well.
I'm switching back, benchmarks be damned. I'll have plenty of processing power regardless.
Re:Umm.... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh? Of course if you are using a CPU that doesn't implement the technology that the service is based on you wouldn't be able to use it. This is like saying that "Intel Faces Monopoly Investigation" because x86 code only runs on... x86 processors.
Congratulations, you just proved the point. Intel DID face monopoly investigations for x86 instruction sets. That's why AMD exists, because Intel was forced to license the i386 instruction set.
If Intel doesn't license out this technology, and it becomes the dominant media distribution platform, they'll likely face the same problems again. However, Intel has learned, and these days AMD and Intel cross-license quite a bit. x86_64, for example, is AMD tech that Intel has licensed.
Not DRM! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's "Content Protection"
Which of course is, entirely different.
Re:Umm.... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
The bigger joke is, pretty soon this DRM-crap will be in just about every new processor. So it'll only be people with older CPU's (read: anything not 1-2 years new) that lack.
Sort of the way that people with Windows Vista or Win7 get fucked for video quality hooking a laptop or HTPC up to a TV or projector that happens to have a VGA input rather than DVI or HDMI.
Welcome to "the future", where DRM is fucking everywhere and your rights as a consumer mean precisely Jack and Shit. And if you wonder how we got there, look no further than the two-party system where both sides are bought out by the same businesses [dailyfinance.com].
Re:not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Once Intel solved their heat problem and stopped adding latency layers, and thus began beating the pants off of AMD in benchmarks,
At what price point? The $900-per-processor range?
I've been extremely happy as an AMD customer. And every time I run price-for-performance, AMD comes out king even today. They haven't won the "fuck it I'm a millionaire money is no object" speed crown in a while, but I can get a much faster AMD CPU for the same price in the $100-200 range every time.
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
It has been said before, but it needs to be repeated by high-profile writers until Hollywood listens.
DRM will always be cracked. You are not stopping pirates. You are punishing paying customers by treating them like criminals. Hollywood is convinced (like the music industry was) that no one would willingly pay for digital content if they have the capability to pirate it. The reality is that iTunes is the #1 seller of music, with Amazon #2. People do actually like paying for legal, digital content.
People will pirate. DRM isn't the solution. Finding ways to reward paying customers and treating them well is the solution.
Re:Astounding Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA "Currently this service does not exist because the movie studios are concerned about protecting their content, and making sure that it cannot be stolen or used illegally."
No, obviously this isn't DRM, it is a technology to protect their rights to their digital content. Completely different. Not related. Nothing to see here, move along. Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey! [wikipedia.org]
Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Just take a look at Sony - they are even more paranoid about piracy as a result of owning a movie studio.
Re:Umm.... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing really wrong with Itanium. It's a perfectly viable 64-bit instruction set. It's only major fallback was that well, it wasn't x86. Technical problems had little to do with it.
That is a load of dingo's kidneys. Intel can not get anything like the promised performance out of Itanium and where they get close it requires massive code changes because they have not managed to get enough magic into the compiler, which is why everyone and their mom is dropping it. Nobody bought Itanium on purpose, it was all crap like being forced to upgrade to it because the old system is on Alpha and the only upgrade path for the software you are running is to go to Itanium. I saw this happen personally at a community college which is now hosting their student info on an 8-way itanium that is maybe using 10% of its capabilities. A two-processor system would have covered their needs nicely for decades.
AMD basically shoe-horned 64-bit instructions into the x86 architecture. A far less creative and less impressive feat,
That's a load of nonsense because "the x86 architecture" is a meaningless phrase. x86 is an instruction set, full stop. amd64 processors bear no resemblance whatsoever to an i386 except that they can handle processing the same code. Everything that makes Hammer look like an x86 is in the LSU and op-decode.