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WMP has had the capability to play HD ever since WMP 9
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo...
The problem will not be the player as there are mnay players that will play HD video. The problem will be if the version of DRM is supported or not.
http://news.com.com/2061-10794_3-6109427.html
You have to buy PowerDVD or other in order to playback HDDVD, as we do already on WinXP. What's the deal?
"no version of Windows Vista will make a determination as to whether any given piece of content should play back or not."
So its not going to determine that it won't play some content because I don't happen to have the "digital rights for it?" - Thats What consumers have wanted all along, but I somehow think this guy can't mean what he says.
Edited 2006-08-25 13:52
No.
What MS is saying is that the OS will not prevent playback of protected hd video discs (HD-DVD and BluRay). But the software player must still deal with the DRM of those protected discs. There's no way to decrypt the protected content without implementing the DRM.
But it doesn't matter if you actually have the disc. Posession of the disc (a genuine disc, not some ISO thing) validates the DRM. Also, HD-DVD (and maybe BluRay) support managed copy, which allows you to copy the disc onto a harddrive and play it from there. But if you try to "share" that copy with somebody else's computer, then the DRM will block that other computer from playing the content.
Edited 2006-08-25 16:07
Another case of - what you think you are hearing is not what they are saying.
Only if you have the rights will it play - I mean heck XP does crap like that now with downloaded music.
OR
What I actually think is that it won't be intentionally crippled but the ability won't be included either. I mean ogg wasn't crippled either but support wasn't included with wmp either.
When he says that Windows Vista will not make any determination he is probably quite correct. Windows Vista is the underlying operating system.
That's almost like saying, Windows XP does not prevent you from playing back illegal movies and illegal music. However, a specific application running on the OS may prevent you from doing it.
Windows Vista will provide better hooks in the drivers so that applications can better determine if you are trying to play back media on unsecured hardware. It is quite possible that, on Vista, a media playback application might refuse to play back HD content if it detects that it is running on a 32 bit platform.
Since it is not Vista making the decision whether or not to play the content he is correct.



