Content protection features in Windows Vista from Microsoft are preventing
customers from playing high-quality HD audio/video & harming system
performance.

[url]http://www.hdtvinfo.eu/news/hd-video-formats/high-quality-hd-content-cant-be-played-by-windows-vista.html[/url]

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"

The protections allow copyright holders to prevent video from being played
in HD unless users have equipment that supports the HDCP (High-bandwidth
Digital Content Protection) digital rights management system. If you have a
graphics card with video connections that doesn't support HDCP, you are out
of luck.

Hardware costs will increase because vendors can't provide Vista-approved
security functionality unless Hollywood studios like 20th Century Fox, MGM &
Disney grant written approval saying the content security meets their
standards. Microsoft should have instead focused this effort on security
features that protect users, such as anti-debugging techniques to prevent
rootkit hooking.

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.

Dutch consumer organisation "Consumentbond" is also aware of these kind of
problems with Windows Vista & opened a special section on their site
[url]http://www2.consumentenbond.nl/acties/7351392/?ticket=nietlid[/url] to collect all
consumer complaints.