vista video woes

Microsoft is currently under fire for their "premium content protection" services that are included in their new operating system Vista. Check out an article from the BBC about it here.

The opposition is voicing concerns about automatic video quality reduction, as the operating system will actually prevent certain types of high quality videos from being played via certain devices. The idea behind the quality reduction, according to Microsoft, is that this will enable copyright holders to prevent their "premium content" video and audio from being output from "non-approved" devices. In some cases, it would be downgraded in quality.

What exactly are "non-approved" devices and what is "premium content"? This remains to be seen. Ultimately, the new operating system will rely on the actual content provider to indicate whether or not the content should be protected. Premium content will most likely refer to HD-DVD and blu-ray video sources.

As Peter Gutmann (computer science lecturer) stated, "...if consumers have gone out and paid thousands of dollars on high quality, high resolution, high definition displays and find the content is downscaled or there is no picture at all, they are going to be very unhappy."