I just want an outright admission of fault, and explanation of why it didn't work. Moreover, It would be nice if they cleared up all the muddle, and owned up to the fact that it will NEver work on the 6800s. THe thing that rubs me the wrong way more than anything, is just the boldfaced lying, and failure to take accountability. I mean does anybody here question the fact that "PureVideo" was simply a repackaged damage control label for what had been advertised at launch as the On Chip Video Decoder? I mean thats exactly what it was. It was nothing more than a cynical and clever marketing dept ploy to figure out how to best tip toe their way around the fact that the flagship 6800ultra, the 6800GT, and the 6800std, had a non-functioning on chip decoder. So, essentially it was an out and out joke on us consumers. It started with, They simply do not address the issue at all for several months....then when some sites start to say, "Where the hell is the On Chip Encodin/Decoding?" well then finally they start to leak out tidbits of info....and of course all the while they claim that its not broken and the 6800 series WILL get .wmv Hardware ACCEL. Meanwhile some of us here have taken up the cause and question whether it will ever work, and discuss what we can do about it. Of course, there were a number of TOOLS who attacked us for this, because they- either believed unquestionably in Nvidia's ability to deliver, or they were just the sort who get off playing "Nvidia's extra special little messenger Boy." In Rollo's case, I suspect, it was a combination of the two....
So next comes the Pure Video announcement and nda agreements and rumors start to hit the web that a fix is coming for everyone, and that it will be here on Nov 1. Even some Nvidia reps start giving dates like Nov. 20. Of course these come and go, but they serve their purpose.--- they keep the dogs at bay for a little while. Another tactic employed was they released the whitepapers and nda agreements to all the websites, knowing full well tidbits will get out.. and clowns like Rollo "interpret" these whitepapers to mean, "A Fix is coming for the 6800's you'll see, anyone who doubts this, has some sort of anti-Nvidia agenda!!!":roll:
We all know the rest of the story, but one ought to keep in mind, that clearly Nvidia was lying all along. As for Rollo, there could only be two possibilities for the way he unequivicolly concluded that the 6800's would be fixed because "he had the Purevideo whitepapers on his hard drive(that his insider spy gave him), right in front of him but couldn't disclose the info to us, because he was under double- top- secret- Nvidia -super -secret- high security- DNA match- NDA agreement" :thumbsup: , Anyways, to reach his false conclusion, he was either- lying, or else- he doesn't know how to read critically, one or the other. You guys can decide, irregardless, pretty much 100% of what he said about the on chip decoder was either Nvidia Marketing PR garbage, or it was completely WRONG. Correct that, It was both of those actually.
So, anyways, how should Nvidia rectify this non-working PVP now? (hypothetically of course, we all know they won't do a god-damn thing) Obviously, the ethical thing to do would be to either offer some sort of partial value refund like you guys are saying, but better yet, imo, the most ethical and most reputable thing to do would be to recall the malfunctioning units. And to either fix it(which appears impossible) or provide working replacements at their own expense. This is actually standard practice in any industry for a disfunctional product. Obviously, a full or even partial refund would be another viable option.
The reality of this situation though, is that, I just think that Nvidia and other hardware makers know how to play language games, and take advantage of the technical expertise they have over the consumer. Ie: such issues are difficult to prove against them, by virtue of the complex nature of technology in itself, so even the language(not to mention the physical architecture) is arcane to even advanced users of the products, and cannot be nailed down...we all know this is malfunctioning hardware that can be empirically verified(on chip video decoder) that was fixed for later iterations, but Nvidia (or nearly any less than honest hardware company) is slick enough to get around such "sticking points", in other words..."the truth."
The thing that really pisses me off about all this, is that only a few hardware sites really took Nvidia to task for it this time. Case in point, A site which consumers like us normally count on, Anandtech, was M.I.A. in this instance, and spun the pure video thing as positively as it possibly could have been spun for Nvidia. It very nearly completely glossed over the fact that hundreds of thousands of consumers were defrauded out of a major feature set that they had already paid for. It did not even bring up the fact that Nvidia had been trying to cover up this for the past 8 months. And what is most unbelievable, it did not even question Nvidia, or hold them to account for completely changing an advertised feature set after the fact. Nvidia launched the cards advertising this highly touted feature, and this is a fact. Nvidia then changed their feature set, and supported cards after the fact. That is also a fact. I cannot fathom how a consumer hardware site like Anandtech wouldn't hold them accountable....instead using the phrase...Nvidia owners just got a Christmas Present...lol..yeah, 6600 owners maybe :roll: These ommisions were just blatantly obvious, and imo, (and plenty of others it appears) Anand completely missed the Story here. This definately seemed to be a case of not wanting to rock the boat, and knowing where there bread is buttered.