High-Quality HD Content Can't Easily Be Played by Vista

DaMan1970 writes "Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system performance. Vista requires premium content like HD movies to be degraded in quality when it is sent to high-quality outputs, like DVI. Users will see status codes that say 'graphics OPM resolution too high'. There are ways to bypass the Windows Vista protection by encoding the movies using alternative codecs like X264, or DiVX, which are in fact more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec. These codecs are quite common on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups."

Comments

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protectio

[Xiph]

Better known by it's the Executive Executive Summary:
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history [Note A].
This should be required reading for people wanting to use Windows Vista for their media center

Re:Features

[bigstrat2003]

Wow, your argument holds SO MUCH water for John Q. Consumer, who bought a computer with Vista on it. He doesn't read Slashdot, he may not even understand DRM at all. All he knows is that the stuff he wants (possibly, maybe he doesn't care about this either) to play won't play like it's supposed to. That's his fault somehow? Thanks for enlightening me to that fact.

I'm glad we have people like you looking out for other people, dude.

A bunch of garbage

[magamiako1]

You know, if you're going to make such wild claims about something you at least should have the ability to back them up. How can this guy be considered a big shot if he puts out blithering bullshit such as this?

For the record, I assure you of the following:

1. You can play HD content on Windows Vista w/o DRM in full HD resolution. This includes:
a. AVI/DIVX/XVID/X264/VC-1/WMV/QT 720P/720I/1080P/1080I videos

2. You can record your own HD videos from various utilities and have them play in Vista fine. With my tests I have done Fraps, and I assure you the resolution is *never* downscaled. (Keep in mind, PCs have been doing HD resolution for years)

3. The only downscaling that could occur is if you attempt to play legally purchased, legally licensed content obtained with all of the proper reasons but one of your devices does not meet the HDCP standard. This includes:
a. Blu-ray/HD-DVD movies that you legally purchase in the store that have the downscaling bit enabled.

Now, yes--I agree, the stuff is assenine. The downscaling or non-playback or whatever it does is only affecting the non-pirates. There are more than enough movies on the internet to download in all sorts of resolutions and formats for playback. Matroska containers seem to be the dominant format at the moment.

What I'm trying to point out here is that this man's assertion is a load of rubbish. I think people should at least USE the product they are criticizing before doing so.

Re:It IS a "make it suck" flag

[Jeremy Erwin]

The difference between plain DVI and encrypted DVI (a.k.a., HDMI) is largely one created by the DMCA:

You're muddling things again.

DVI-D: A digital interface that may or not be encrypted with HDCP. I once owned a HDTV tuner/scalar that encrypted the output of the scalar. On the other hand, my DVD player doesn't encrypt its DVD output.

HDCP: an encryption scheme that prevents people from hooking up bog standard computer displays to a device that uses HDCP. The video output tends to look like digital snow when viewed on such a monitor. Hook up an HDCP compliant monitor, and it works. The encryption algorithm is breakable, see ed felton's blog

HDMI: A digital interface that combines video and audio. Must support HDCP, though unencrypted signals can be sent. A simple dongle is used to convert a DVI port into an video only HDMI port.

BTW, a number of devices, including the PS3 and the lower end HD-DVD players now expect their users to have both receivers and and televisions with HDMI ports-- those devices lack "5.1" RCA jacks.