Apple TV

And, for the same post, on a related subject.

I suspect that this will not necessarily be quite as successful as the iPod. The main issue is that it does not support the common formats that are used for movies downloaded off the web - i.e. XVid appears to be missing completely.The iPod is useful because it plays the commonly available audio format, MP3.
However, I believe there will increasingly be a market for a TV media server. People want to be able to watch their stuff on their TV. (I'm currently looking for something that solves the problem and will probably build my own.)
For example, there are products such as the TVisto. This is a portable hard drive that can be connected to a TV to play the content.Portable hard drives are quite popular as people swap what they've downloaded. The addition of the media player and remote makes this really useful.
However, personally speaking, I would probably not want the hassle of copying media onto the drive and then physically moving it to the TV to play.
I want wireless!
You could go something like the Digital Media Gateway which will play things from across the network. However - it has no storage! You can always add a portable hard drive or a hard drive on the network but that's a bit too much effort.
So my current thought is to roll my own with MythTV.
We'll see.

DRM in Microsoft Windows Vista

I made this post to the Public Address System and thought it would be interesting to post here. I even think I saw John Fouhy, Steph's boyfriend, post on the same topic...

The Microsoft DRM play in Vista is merely the first shot in a battle that will be extremely interesting to watch; namely, the conflict between the consumer and the content owners over control of the consumer's own hardware and software. It is just this battle that Richard Stallman, the leading anti-DRM advocate, has been pointing out for years.

Music
The iPod is a case in point. Before the iPod there were many competing portable MP3 players. That part of the iPod is not new. Apple added workable DRM to the iPod in order to be able to negotiate with the record companies to sell their content. Apple also applied fantastic hardware and software design along with sophisticated marketing (cool ads) to provide a beautiful and easy to use product.
The iPod is therefore the integration of something that consumers would want, and record companies would be prepared to use, in order to increase the utility for consumers.
It was these features that helped the iPod grab enormous market share, and grow the market incredibly, very quickly.
The music battle is largely over - although there are some moves by various actors to not worry about DRM at all. It does become annoying for consumers and may not be worth it.

Movies
The battle for video is just heating up. The studios are extremely scared that their income stream will be butchered by consumer piracy. This is partly because the economic models are different between music and movies.
A musical artist does not receive a lot of the purchase price for a CD. Typical estimates are around $1. The rest of the price is taken by the record company and is mostly used to offset the losses that are made from artists that are not hugely successful.(i.e. record companies invest highly in recording albums from likely musicians but only one in ten recoup that investment).
The real money in music comes from concerts. I'm not completely sure of the economics but I know that the promoter normally gives the artists around 80% of the ticket price.
Movies, on the other hand, have a different model. The cinema takings are only a small proportion of total revenue according to David Denby of the New Yorker. Most of the income is from selling the movie to television networks, DVD sales and, in some cases, merchandising.
Given this economic model you can see why the studios are scared. If their income stream from DVD sales and TV sales is cannabilised by free digital distribution then how can they fund their multi-million dollar movies?
Microsoft is therefore attempting to to re-create the Apple iTunes supply chain for movies inside Windows Vista.

Technical Aspects
I am a professional programmer with a small side interest in computer security. I read all of Peter Gutman's paper and I'm utterly amazed. The level of protection that is required is unusal and draconian. Microsoft has gone through the entire operating system looking for possible holes and attempted to plug them all.There will be enormous costs in terms of hardware development, software development, CPU cycles, memory, the works.
It will be extremely interesting to see if consumers will actually find this acceptable. The usability of their machine may be reduced and the costs will certainly be high.
Given Microsoft's record on the number of defects currently being found in their products (not unusual in this industry), and the complexity of what they're trying, they will almost certainly have made a mistake in this DRM code. It will be interesting to see what happens then. The threat to prevent previously working hardware from functioning is amazing. Will Microsoft force these updates into the operating system and prevent that from working unless updated?

Fair use
It's worth mentioning that most DRM schemes have no provision for fair use or copyright termination. Fair use is the right to a portion of a copyright work for review, study, criticism, etc. Copyrights have a limited term. This changes based on who created the work, what it is and what country but is generally 50 years.