HDMI Forum to AMD: No, you can’t make an open source HDMI 2.1 driver | Linux users can’t hit the same resolutions and speeds as Windows—or DisplayPort.::Linux users can’t hit the same resolutions and speeds as Windows—or DisplayPort.

  • orclev@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    It is reductive to say that piracy is just a service problem. There are lots of people who will try to save the money. But a lot of those people wouldn’t spend much if any money either way. They would just skip most content, or watch with friends or similar. There is a huge group of people (myself included) that would happily pay a significant amount for content if they provided a good experience. But they are too busy failing to stop piracy to bother giving a good experience.

    Yeah I mean you’ve basically got three district groups at play.

    The first group, either have no money or no interest in your goods or services. They might turn to piracy if it’s available, but even if it isn’t they’re still not buying anything from you. DRM is pointless to this group because it’s not stopping anything.

    The second group are the marginal cases. They potentially have the money to buy your products, but maybe they’re pinching pennies or they aren’t convinced your products are worth the price you’re asking for them. A lot of pirates of Adobe PhotoShop a couple decades back would have fallen into this group. DRM might be effective on this group, but there’s a strong argument to be made that it’s going to cost you just as many sales as it earns you, and ultimately doesn’t actually stop piracy, merely delays it a bit. You’d likely see as many or more sales from this group if you removed the DRM and added more features or cut your prices

    The last group are your paying customers. They’re already happily (or at least grudgingly) giving you money. The only thing DRM is doing for this group is making their experience worse and likely pushing them towards that second group.

    There’s basically no group where DRM is really improving things. At best you’re breaking even, at worst it’s costing you sales, to say nothing of the development costs of implementing the DRM in the first place.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      The best part is DRM really doesn’t lead to any sales of video content, because everything there’s even a shred of demand for is still ripped right away anyways.

      Because it’s a video. Even if you could keep the encoded version from being ripped (which you pretty clearly can’t do), at the end of the day it’s raw pixels and audio.

    • Æsc@lemmy.sdf.org
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      4 months ago

      Last year I could cast episodes of DS9 I get from Paramount+ through Amazon Prime to my parents’ TV. This year I can’t, likely as an anti-piracy measure. So I hooked my device up via HDMI. Still couldn’t watch it on the TV. You know what? I’m gonna go complain to them before I stop subscribing.

    • downhomechunk [chicago]@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      You’ve summed this up very well! I was a group one pirate in my youth. Then I got a job and a girlfriend who liked cable TV. Then my brother and I traded off paying for Netflix. Life was good. I was happily in camp 3. Then we cut the cord and I was even happier with what I was paying for my media experience! Then it all went to shit.

      I feel like I blinked and everyone had their hand in my pocket for $10 - $20 per month, and there was still nothing I wanted to watch. So I dusted off the black flag and am once again very happy with my media experience.

      They pushed me back to group 2. I’m paying for my content, and I feel like I’m paying a fair price. My money just isn’t going to the media conglomerates who ruined everything. I built my own set top box / dvr out of a sbc. I couldn’t be happier.