Once all the necessary pieces are in place to decisively force it on the consumer, why wouldn't they try again?
If there's a USB port, most people will just plug in and back up to their computer. But if they do it over wireless, they'd just rather use Google / Apple's services, which means they get your data.
And with movies, there's the ridiculous HDCP crap... and I highly believe that the MAFIAA would give manufacturers with a fully protected AV path cheaper licensing.
> it must not transmit high definition protected video to non-HDCP receivers; and DVD-Audio material can be played only at CD-audio quality[7] by non-HDCP digital audio outputs (analog audio outputs have no quality limits)
Analog hole is still analog hole, and the MAFIAA wants to close it.
1) Multi-channel streams are easy to grab in digital, but expensive to grab in analog - simple reason: six channels that have to be captured in exactly the same time, without offset. Most consumer-grade sound cards only carry one line-in, not three of them.
2) Power supplies in computing tend to be NOISY. I mean, REALLY noisy. So basically the PSU adds noise to the output DAC, and then the PSU adds noise at the ADC stage. It most definitely is a quality loss.
3) Naturally, headphone-outs and in a lot of cases line-outs tend to be engineered in a way that their output impedance can drive headphones, too. This can massively distort the signal.
4) Clipping. Hard enough to avoid when using a professional mixing table, next to impossible to avoid when ripping audio via the analog hole.
It's also somewhat poorly-defined, because "CD quality" can mean lousy mid-range performance when rounding 24-bit to 16-bit, or high frequency hiss when noise-shaping 24-bit to 16-bit.
So "CD quality audio" is quite a degradation when you listen in a 100% quiet room with expensive speakers and your full attention.
I, for example, can hear these ultrasonic weasel defenders, which operate between 20 and 30 kHz, again - when I used to work on outside construction works using massive jackhammers, excavators etc. I couldn't because daily stress would fuck up my ears.
It's more likely that the sound produced by those devices, even if ultrasonic, may produce intermodulations in the audible range.
> The commonly stated range of human hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Under ideal laboratory conditions, humans can hear sound as low as 12 Hz and as high as 28 kHz, though the threshold increases sharply at 15 kHz in adults, corresponding to the last auditory channel of the cochlea.
Not having an analogue hole would be a right royal pain in the arse.
[edited to fix my english]
I guess a lot of newer cars have bluetooth pairing, but mine doesn't.
Further, a lot of the anti-piracy impulse is not simply a desire to charge get more money from everyone but a desire for control. Essentially, the music industry is reconciled to most people paying little for their music (or better yet, most people forced to hear advertising mixed with their music) but the industry want to have the ability to sell to people at a variety of levels. Perhaps charge more for just released music or certain artists or music connected to movie sound-tracks or for "audiophile level" audio or whatever.
For a commodity that's infinitely reproducible, the ideal position is being able to separately charge each consumer exactly what they're willing to pay. Maximum utility for the owner, which would imply minimum utility for the buyer.
Once data has to be transmitted wirelessly, there is a much better chance that you will do it in ways that can't be pirated, but can be controlled, monitored, and profited from.