Charlas,

It is not illegal if the encryption is kept and it is kept in a closed enviroment (like cable card recordings only streaming to extenders)

Hence Kaladescope won and proved this theory.

Does nobody think "Fiji" could actually be TWO things?

May be it will be released as two things - one as a (free) service pack, one as a (paid) feature pack.

The free service pack could have things like QAM, Teletext, etc non-fancy but essential stuff. Yes, teletext is actually essential, at least in the UK, as it is against the law to discriminate deaf people, or anyone with disability for that matter.

The paid feature pack could have all the super dooper stuff like DTV, F-Sat, H264, etc. It would be another revenue stream for Microsoft. But it may be only purchasable through OEM?

I don't know, but I think it would make a lot of sense to me.

It is not illegal, but it is a violation of the agreement to even copy the disc to the Hard drive.

As for Kaleidescape, they got sued, so I'm not sure how good of an example that is. Sure they won after a three years, but since then the agreement has been updated to prevent anyone else from doing it.

There is no doubt in my mind that MS would get sued if they tried it. I also don't blame them for not wanting to get sued.

Agreed Ben, that's the way I saw it as well, after all MS have not exactly got a good record of winning big lawsuits even though they are massive themselves.

PLUCKYHD:

It is not illegal if the encryption is kept and it is kept in a closed enviroment (like cable card recordings only streaming to extenders)

Hence Kaladescope won and proved this theory.

 

Totally agree.  I wish Microsoft had focused on DVD Streaming as the central feature of Fiji.  My reasoning is that it would have universal appeal to virtually every MC customer.  And I'm positive it would drive MC adoption.  Its probably the one thing that Microsoft could do alone and doesn't require additional hardware.  Interestly, Microsoft has some patents out on this already.  I'd like to hear Microsoft's take on the Kaledescope ruling?

How would they get sued for allowing just unecrypted coping like home movies?

I was not aware that something was added after the kaladascope trail?? I know they got sued and won and besides if a small company like kaladascope can win I would think Microsoft could and it wouldn't be the first/last time they got sued.

From my understanding, it's not illegal to make a "fair use" copy of something you own. What is illegal under the DMCA is to break the copy protection on a DVD. Therefore you can't legally copy a DVD because it requires breaking the copy protection. Not sure how you would stream a DVD without breaking the copy protection.

K was sued not because they were breaking the copy protection, but because they had a contract with the DVD folks. The DVD folks thought they were in breach of the contract, so the lawsuit was about breach of contract, not that they were copying DVDs. From memory. I think.

The "fair use" legality is up in the air and to my knowledge has never been tested in court. You don't have to break the encryption to watch a DVD so theoretically you wouldn't have to break it to stream it.

But like you said, it is in the contract that you can't stream or store the movie on an internal hard disk. I'm not sure how many would want DVD streaming if it meant the disc had to be in the VMC.

It's easier than that Ben, I can't see why anyone would want it anyhow? how many people watch the features more than once anyway? and if it's just the movie you want to stream then convert it to a WMV there are plenty of tools out there, and you even get the benefit of saving disk space without loosing quality as well. Never worked out why people think DVD Streaming is such a big thing.

Only real use for it is if you own a jukebox and want to stream from dvd, and even then I cannot see the point in the expense of a robotic disk system for DVD's. At the end of the day HDD space is cheap, robotic disk units are not.

hey ben was wondering if you have seen this....  http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=834609

seems to go against your sources about no mpeg4.  its still hard to figure out what is actually true there but this picture specifically (http://www.flickr.com/photos/freesathd/2635825829/) infers h.264 support.  and then later in the thread he says the mpeg4 stuff wont work on extenders yet but does on the pc.  its in no way confirmation but is interesting that your sources are saying no mpeg4.

The April release did have h.264 support, reportedly it was removed in RC0. Maybe it's possible to add it back using old DLLs, who knows.

You know what would be really cool is a plug-in that when a DVD is interted will ask if you want to import it. Then rip the disc in a format that can be viewed on extenders and added to DVD library.

Seems like all the pieces are there, just need a nice UI to make it easy.

That would be useful, and could probably be done quite easily.

All we need is something that will hook into AutoMKV or something similar. Surprised non of the purchase tools have an MCE hook.

bjdraw:

You know what would be really cool is a plug-in that when a DVD is interted will ask if you want to import it. Then rip the disc in a format that can be viewed on extenders and added to DVD library.

Seems like all the pieces are there, just need a nice UI to make it easy.

Now you are with me Ben :) and thinking like Kaledescope :)

I could care less if it is locked down like cable card recordings just let me copy it uncompressed and stream to extenders without having to transcode everything dang thing.

MyMovies does the first bit (asks if you want to copy the DVD). You just need to either massage the rip or use a script to do the second bit (playback on the Extender)