[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500
Ivan Kowalenko
ivan.kowalenko at gmail.com
Mon Apr 17 15:16:54 UTC 2006
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On Apr 16, 2006, at 23.34, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 04/17/2006 12:11 AM, Joe Votour wrote:
>> Believe me, their competition could learn a great deal
>> from just their drivers, since drivers are an
>> interface to the hardware. As an example, the
>> competition might see in the driver some great way to
>> shrink down a transfer of data implemented in the
>> driver (which exposes how the hardware works), and
>> decide to then add that logic to their next graphics
>> chip.
>
> I really think this argument is like the argument that software
> copy-protection schemes prevent piracy. Generally, they only stop the
> people that aren't the problem (end users) instead of stopping those
> with the time/interest/equipment/money (large-scale pirates, or the
> competition).
Well, it helps partially. If you want to see when piracy hits a large
scale, look at the Dreamcast. True, not everyone could extract the
data themselves, but to play the games, all you needed a CD-R drive.
It helps to curb piracy, but it doesn't eliminate. At this point,
that's the best companies can hope for.
> In other words, good luck trying to convince me that ATI isn't
> paying a
> team of developers to reverse engineer NVIDIA's drivers /and/ hardware
> (and vice versa).
Yes, but there's no reason to make it easy for them! ;)
Of course, I'd love to use an open-source driver.
> After all, look how closely capabilities and even
> designs have been tracking over the years. I don't think that's
> completely the "free market" effect ensuring the people get what
> they want.
Well, we don't have a completely free market economy here. It's
closer to an ogilopoly.
> And, as a matter of fact, binary-only drivers aren't even stopping end
> users from (at least partially) reverse engineering the
> drivers--reference the Windows Omega Drivers (
> http://www.omegadrivers.net/ ) and other similar projects.
Then, in that case, why don't I have native Linux drivers for my
MA111 USB WiFi adapter? Or my XBox's video card?
My point is that the quality (and difficulty) of reverse engineering
these things is a lot harder than it seems.
>
> Mike
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