Home Audio and Windows Vista

Yes. Read everything you can about Vista's DRM (Digital Rights Management) and how it can prevent you from using content you have a perfect right to use. Make sure you know what you're getting in to.

If you really, really want Vista, I'd recommend waiting at least a year to see how things settle out. Or you might take a look at Apple's offerings.

Isaac

That's bullshit. If you're all hung up about DRM look no further than Apple for it. Their iTunes tracks are laden with it, not to mention sound crappy too. No thanks.

As for whole house audio, it'll depend on what sort of setup you're using to distribute the audio throughout the house. If you're planning on multiple zones (each one listening to an independent source) then things get more complicated. That and how you expect to control the sources from within each room. I use a PC running J.River's MediaCenter version12 to distribute both FM and 3 audio streams (mainly mp3, but some FLAC, ogg and wma stuff too). I've got three USB 'sound cards' attached to the PC. I've setup MC12 to treat them as "zones". Each zone gets it's own playlist. They're controlled in-room from Russound Uno keypads. It's been working quite well for a couple years now. It'll make no difference to run MC12 on Vista, XP or even w2k.

-Bill Kearney

Apple will prove no better. Still Vista has a serious flaw in that you cannot playback HDTV as a digital signal because of DRM.

Open source Unix will prove a better option. FreeBSD, Fedora, OpenSusie, even Solaris.

Horror story here:

Here's one kiwi's horror story about Vista's DRM:

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

Executive Summary

"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called ?premium content?, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost."

It's a good read for anyone thinking of buying Vista.

So is:

The Great HDCP Fiasco

-- Bobby G.

This is not entirely true. Yes, signals that deliberately attach DRM flags to them are going to present problems. But not everything will using those flags. I record 1080 signals from OTA and others are recording them from QAM-encoded digital cable and playing them back just fine. Granted, none of those signals is being sent with any DRM restrictions.

No, they won't. If content is delivered with the DRM flags then only tuners capable of decoding them will handle them. And the drivers for said tuners won't be released to linux, et al. At least nowhere near anytime soon. Eventually some enterprising souls will figure a way around it. But Joe Average Customer won't be prepared to make the goat sacrifice necessary to get the damn thing configured (aka mythtv).

Eventually the whole weight of incompatibilities and customer outrage will cause the whole DRM fiasco to fall flat on it's face. But between now and that time do NOT expect to record DRM-flagged content on anything OTHER than Vista anytime soon. That excludes XP, w2k, MacOS as well.

DRM is not a good thing but, if anything, Vista's AHEAD of the game.

-Bill Kearney

Sarah,

The simple answer to your simple question would seem to be "no" -- no one responding has (yet) used Vista with a multi-zone audio system ;-)

With respect to the 'V-word' issue: By the time you get your house built, most new PC's being sold will likely be sold with Vista so the question is largely mute. Home Automation equipment not yet adapted to Vista will, by and large, be ready when you are.

More important for you at this point in the design and construction are decisions as to what sort of wiring to install in the walls, AS I'm sure you appreciate, this part of the system is much more easily and inexpensively done now rather than waiting until after the dry wall goes up (assuming US stick-built construction).

So what are your HA "audio" objectives? Do you also anticipate video distribution?

HA multi-zone 'audio' can include:

1) Voice recognition microphones 2) Intercoms (old fashioned and new-fangled) 3) 'High level' audio output wired directly to speakers 4) Low level audio signals a) Input b) Output c) Control signals

Am I correct in assuming that you want a solution for 3 and 4, not 1 and 2?

If so:

1) How many rooms 2) What is your approximate budget 3) What other HA and AV equipment will you be installing (especially video)? There are some synergies/combinations that might be attractive from financial, performance and flexibility perspectives. 4) What systems have you looked at and considered (if any).

(FWIW, I have two rack-mounted dual-Xeon RAIDed PCs, one of which runs XP Pro and the other Vista Ultimate. I am building the Vista version incrementally as drivers and hardware for Vista become available. It is not yet ready for installation, but when it is, its XP twin will go up for sale in my porch sale.)

HTH ... Marc Marc_F_Hult

I have no problem with the level of DRM that Apple implements; it's the draconian level that Vista uses that bothers me (and a lot of other folks as well).

Here's a world-class security expert on Vista:

And here's a scholarly paper on the same subject:

You and a whole bunch of audio professionals will just have to disagree about the quality of AAC.

Isaac

Me too. What also bothers me is that purchasers (well, more realistically lessors) of Vista don't know how much of the product has been designed at the behest of organizations (RIAA, MPAA, Disney) that didn't contribute a cent to the purchaser's price of the product. It's like paying to get beaten up and robbed! It's as bad as health care in the US where doctors are beholden to the insurers who pay them, not the actual patients they treat.

Buying Vista is like having someone build a house for you and then finding your contract says that they can use half of that house to store their tools and supplies. And if you didn't call in every day to assure them that you hadn't moved any of their tools or supplies nor done any unauthorized work on your house, they can lock you out of it remotely. And you have to let them in to make any changes they want to any hour of the night or day, no matter what *you* wanted to do with your house at the moment. Oh, and after

5 years or so, you'll have to move out and buy a new house, whether you need one or not. People put up with such nonsense because they don't understand.

We can expect more and more limitations on the concepts of fair use and actual product ownership until they both disappear completely. I suspect by the time the general public does understand what's happened, it will be too late to reverse the process.

-- Bobby G.