Vista totally controls your content!

By Geek News Central | November 29, 2006

A revelation at a recent Electronics House Expo is making my blood boil. Apparently Microsoft has decided to once again to kick consumers to the curb in restricting your ability to use and distribute content you are paying for.

This issues revolves around the ability of being able to use a CableCard with Vista for those of you that were looking forward to pushing recorded TV content to other PC’s within your homes will not be able to. In an even more shocking development even though Microsoft bowed to the cable industry on this and threw consumers under a bus. They were able to make provisions to be able to send recorded data to a Xbox 360.

It is rumored that those devices that are aka certified as media extenders by Microsoft will be able to be granted download rights as the Xbox 360 does but for now if you want to push videos to other computers in your home you will be restricted from doing this.

This also means pushing that recorded content to a portable media player will be restricted as well. There is no doubt in my mind that Microsoft and all the other big players are so deep in the media industries pockets that consumer rights will continue to be eroded to the point where we will have to ask permission someday to turn a TV on.

With the restrictions CableLabs has placed on vendors, and the cable companies demanding control not to mention how the DMCA has been abused to the loss of consumers it’s surprising that anything even works. [ArsTechnica]

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