Planetary arbiter Microsoft may now be deciding what its Vista Media Centre users can watch on the box.

According to thegreenbutton.com, Vista-using punters trying to record NBC Universal TV shows American Gladiator and Medium got a little message from Microsoft saying that restrictions had been set by the broadcaster which prohibited recording of the program.

Oddly, the angry viewers did not rush to blame Microsoft for the problem. Indeed, many thought the blame must lie with their telly or cable networks who had stuck the block on to thwart advert-avoiding technology.

At time of going to press, no one had a clue why Vista Media Centre's DRM was blocking the downloading of the shows. Microsoft said it was investigating the matter.

However most who moaned to Thegreenbutton were Vista users recording digital cable with ATI cablecard tuners. Microsoft reports in cases where this has happened before said that the cable provider had set the DRM to 'copy never'.

Story source: theinquirer.net.