Creative gets hammered - Vista users might win!

[darth_nevus]

First off this is all my opinion, with related news bits.

Creative, as all current vista users know has nerfed its drivers. ALOT of the functionality from XP to vista has been lost. the only reason is that Creative says that microsoft won't validate its drivers. so they are claiming they are legacy products, in short.

I obtained my X-fi Fatal1ty card for christmas. i was truly overjoyed. until that is i found out after my migration to vista, ALOT of the features were gone, as most folks found out. some of them were quite important and useful in XP.

Apparently, a creative (not to be confused with Creative the company) individual, decided that he was fed up with their crap, and decided to modify the drivers to work with his system. i won't condone or dismiss his efforts. he managed to "re-enable" the missing functions from the X-fi & Live! lineup we had all lost. he enabled some other taboo features, which may in and of itself be wrong, such as "ALchemy" which allowed the software to run on ANY sound card, Creative based or not. And yes, he did accept donations "to buy new sound cards to test".

Instead of initially trying to work with the modder, they posted a sort of cease & desist order on their website. they demanded he remove his drivers, and that EVERYONE stop modding them to work properly with Vista. this caught a fair amount of attention, 270 pages of responses from users at the time, and eventually managed to get some media attention. one user even claimed to have filed a case with the indiana state courts regarding providing a product not used as advertised. this note made ALOT of people upset.

The short of it, the modder was contact by a few online news agencies regarding what was going on. He proceded to show them that creative INTENTIONALLY disabled the features in vista. they did this by an OS check, and disabling parts of the software, which he had enabled. he also found a way to turn just about every soundblaster made card INTO an x-fi card by simply enabling all the features. that effectivly allows one of the cheap card s to become one of the best.

Creative however today did a 180, ( their post was modified ) citing the difficulty m$ places on them to validate drivers. from everything i read, does it not sound like Creative itself was trying to boycot Vista in lieu of XP? should the be able to do that? aside from the DEFINATELY illegal things the modder did to the drivers, was he entirely wrong for simply wanting to provide a FUNCTIONAL driver set for vista since Creative appears to be incapable of? whats do you think about Creative's nerfing of the vista drivers based solely on an OS Flag?

Discuss.




References:
http://www.dailytech.com/Creative+Sa...ticle11297.htm
http://forums.creative.com/creativel...cending&page=1
http://forums.creative.com/creativel...116446#M116446
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14467
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14475
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/0..._k-who-fi.html

[Trooper110]

I'll take a closer look in to this tonight after work, as they have a few of those links blocked for whatever reason. If entirely true though, I think Creative probably owes quite a few people a bit of money. As long as the modified drivers aren't doing things that Microsoft deems "illegal" in the scheme of thier operating system that it would breach security, I don't see why Creative couldn't have done the same thing as the modder and gotten approval from MS. And I'd like to see a low cost, low quality card do as well as an X-fi with onboard RAM and the tuning crystal or whatever the devil it is. And I guess that technically even if MS wouldn't approve the drivers, Creative could have released them unsigned as long as they worked.

[darth_nevus]

its more so a problem of what he enabled by the end. that in and of itself is illegal so is "tampering" withthe drivers per their end user agreement. the problem i have is that they intentionally disabled the functions in vista as part of their business model. What business model? the fight back against vista's validation team by removing functionality for vista and leaving it there offer XP model? maybe i am not seeing all i need to see, but its pretty apparent from both Creative's VP's responses that they intentionally nerfed the cards in Vista, and refused to work on it anymore.

[[TT]BrundleFly]

This is what happens when a company like Creative basically has no real competition. To hell with them...

[Trooper110]

Actually, take a look at the latest MaximumPC. Creative has now started to liscence th X-fi technology out for other companies to use. Could be some decent competition out there soon.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/auz...fi_prelude_7_1

[ThisElfRocksHard]

If I want to use a screwdriver as a hammer, I should be allowed to do so without Craftsman knocking on my door telling me to knock it off. I know I have grossly oversimplified the issue, but ultimately, I think intellectual property has become a bit too overbearing. If Creative disabled functionality in cards instead of actually inventing a lower-cost solution, well, we reap what we sow; Creative has actually encouraged the "X-Fi-ing" of their cards.

That said, their inability to release Vista drivers shows that they might have disgruntled their customers in the short-term, but their hearts were in the right place; they probably took one look at that crapsicle Microsoft calls an OS, and tried to stick Microsoft for bad coding, which the XP-enthusiast in me salutes them for.

[Hammy]

This kind of reminds me of when Nvidia got caught modifying the bios on the clocks of its' cards to output certain metrics on popular performance measurement software tools like 3dMark.

Several things come to mind here without really understanding it and only looking outside in:

Often, companies try to hold a "strike" against Microsoft, which often holds hardward manufacturers hostage unless they pay the bridge toll, which in my opinion is the Developers Access License and Platform Agreement.

What this Modder is doing, is hurting that called strike by making available the products they are holding out on, because they dont want to pay for certification and platform access.

Second thing that comes to mind, is that quite often protects can attain certain variable performance metrics, but may become:

Unstable
Overheat
Fail
Damage inductive (damage the surrounding architecture within the system)
All of the above.

Most of the time the stability factor is unknown or unseen until its' too late.
I'm not going to defend Creative, but I have often wondered if half the hardware were necessary to create value.

I recall a story from the 1970's where there was a war between two manufacturers of high end stereo's. Reverse engineering was involved. One company reverse engineered a top product twice, and then put their own version on the marketplace.

So on the third try, they installed a cone and several other things to the card, and sent it to market. Sure enough, in a short period of time, that competitor had produced a replica product, complete with the cone and other points on the electronic card inside the speaker.

Problem was, all this stuff was useless and did nothing for performance. It just made the competitor look stupid, and force them to pay a huge out of court settlement. Creative may be guilty of the same thing, as could the manufacturers of video cards.

Last thing on my mind is this: Creative, while a great company, has almost died twice in recent memory. That fact makes me feel that there is a crisis inside the walls that has yet to come out.

[-IRC-MIKE]

Maybe my info is completely way off, but someone I talked to told me that creative could not formulate a perfect driverset with full functionality because m$ new security permissions with the idiot lights and whistles, and sirens... would require a more laxed operating system to provide such functionality. Microsoft neglected to work with creative on the issue and continued on with its final release of what we call Vista. Creative is/was stuck between a rock and a hard place and could no longer provide full functionality due to the PoS Os permissions.

.......Thats what I heard. I dunno.

[WalkinTarget]

What I found most interesting was this mod -> P17 to Xtreme Audio .... How is that done ??? Isn't the P17 the Audigy LS/SE card ?? I thought it used a different chip than the Xtreme ?? I have both, so I'm now verrry curious about this one.

Also, reverse engineering a software application isn't illegal in Brazil, so he has broken no laws pertaining to Creative's IP the area in which he lives. They don't have a leg to stand on, and would have done well to offer him a job !!! As it is, they are sealing their fate as the next hardware company to fall by the wayside.

[mapes]

This kind of reminds me of when Nvidia got caught modifying the bios on the clocks of its' cards to output certain metrics on popular performance measurement software tools like 3dMark.

All hardware manufacturers do this to some degree or another.

As for Creative well... Usually they've been very good about drivers in the past. When I worked as IT for Creative a couple of years back they had a few engineers working on the open source drivers and Creative as a whole was doing the right thing for sound in Linux. To be honest why the drivers are nerfed for Vista could be anything from legal agreements with MS to planned obsolesces for hardware which would kinda suck. I have a buddy of mine who is a QA manager at creative. He's hooking me up. I'll see what he has to say about this

I guess technically since he took Creative's driver code and modified it and then released it thats against the law. If he wrote the driver code from the ground up Creative couldn't touch him then...I think

[darth_nevus]

All hardware manufacturers do this to some degree or another.

As for Creative well... Usually they've been very good about drivers in the past. When I worked as IT for Creative a couple of years back they had a few engineers working on the open source drivers and Creative as a whole was doing the right thing for sound in Linux. To be honest why the drivers are nerfed for Vista could be anything from legal agreements with MS to planned obsolesces for hardware which would kinda suck. I have a buddy of mine who is a QA manager at creative. He's hooking me up. I'll see what he has to say about this

I guess technically since he took Creative's driver code and modified it and then released it thats against the law. If he wrote the driver code from the ground up Creative couldn't touch him then...I think

Do tell how this comes out. its one thing to hear it from the press, but someone closer to the issue provides a unique persepective so far not seen.

He altered the drivers, so that in and of itself is illegal.

@ IRC-mike -- IF it was indeed OS privlege problems, how by altering the disable bits in the driver did the modder get the driver to work then?

Agreed on the strike perspective. it would falter their strike, but if M$ does stick by its EOL for XP, does this stance not hurt creative!

Awesome participation. i love seeing everyones views on this. as it is a rather controversial subject thats very multi faceted. Keep it coming!

And mapes is correct. the 6800 series AGP cards by nvidia were just a bios flash or Bit alteration away from the top end model ultras in most cases. for the most part, its how they are binned to recieve the most money from what they have stockwise. not everyone is gonna cough up the $$ for an ultra. selling the remaining models as a GS for instance. my 6800gs is currently seen as an ultra thanks to this mod.

As WT said, it does intrigue me how the LE cards got classed up considering its a "different" chip. or is it?

[WalkinTarget]

From Daniel_K:
What I did wrong
(...)
Reversing ALchemy was also wrong, I know. But I reiterate, what is the point of improving ALchemy and changing for it, when it requires an improved driver? It was my protest against Creative.

Just to clarify a few things. Maybe Daniel doesn't even know that, but reverse engineering is completely legal in Brazil, so he hasn't broken any laws. What he did is completely OK and law abiding.
Actually things run even deeper. Copying stuff for personal use isn't illegal in Brazil, even if you don't have a license. It can be anything, books, movies, software, etc.

He only commented on what he did 'wrong' so that Creative would see he did this to help their product. Damn, he netted $146 from donations, which he used to buy MORE Creative soundcards !! GJ, Creative ... that'll teach him to spend that $$ more wisely in the future !!

[mapes]

From Daniel_K:
GJ, Creative ... that'll teach him to spend that $$ more wisely in the future !!

Don't blame the entire company because the companies attorney's got they're panties in a bunch

[-IRC-MIKE]

I have no idea what is going on and I haven't read up on it much but it seems like a creative employee tried to hack the driver to make it work with vista. I really don't see fault in this. If he was hacking the operating system to accomodate the already current driver, then that is another thing.

[WalkinTarget]

Mike .... lol .. read, then post.

He's not a Creative employee ... he's a forum poster that reverse engineered the driver from his home country of Brazil, then made it available via Filefront with a note that a donation to his effort would allow him to buy more Creative cards and do more modification to the driver set.
so far, he's admitted that he received $146, which he used to buy more Creative soundcards. He will obviously benefit positively from this exposure, and if I were Creative, I'd hire his @ss in a hurry and hope this thing got off the front page of many tech webpages in a hurry.