Please excuse the following rant - it made me feel better.

Absolutely typical.

There are CDs which won't play on my 598 because they're not really CDs. I was mis-sold and lied to because they were in the CD section of the shop. Apparently this is to stop people copying them to a hard disc. The irony is that to get the bloody thing to play, you HAVE to make a copy of it to CD-R. What's even more amazing is that the 'protection' appears to do nothing to make the copy harder to perform. Not one extra key press; nothing. Their protection forces users to copy the CD they paid for, just to be able to hear it, and doesn't even hinder them when they do.

It really riles me. I have never pirated a CD/DVD/Software - anything. Not even lent a CD to anyone. But because I'm one of the legitimate customers who pay these idiots' salaries, I'm not allowed to have a music server, can't put my DVD-A's on a network and need an expensive solution to get a proper digital domain signal path for high resolution discs. What is the point of DVD-A being high resolution if you have to convert the bloody thing to analogue then back to digital to handle bass! Absolute idiocy.

And with all these handcuffs and restrictions, it is not one iota more difficult for a genuine pirate to make a copy! We're being told that Osama Bin Laden and Drug barons are the enemy. Can they not afford a modified player for the bazillions of copies they're making to kill our poor underfunded record exec's salaries and ruin the very fabric of our society? Are Simon Cowell's trousers really that expensive?

They won't be around much longer if this is their strategy. Suing your legitimate customers is not a sustainable business model. This act of desperation should be frightening off investors.

What's next - unauthorised public viewing for anyone who has a party? What about if my neighbours can hear through their walls? Do I need to buy a licence for that? At least they'll be going for the Vauxhall Nova drivers with the 20Hz sine generators in their boots.

And now I'll breathe in...........

861v8, DSP5200, DSP5200HC, DSP5000mk2, UHD722, MF10, Prime, Prime PSU