Vista prevents users from playing high-def content, researcher says


      Content protection features in Windows Vista are preventing customers from playing high-quality video and audio and harming system performance, even as Microsoft neglects security programs that could protect users, computer researcher Peter Gutmann argued at the USENIX Security Symposium in Boston Wednesday.
      ?If there was any threat modeling at all, it was really badly done,? Gutmann, from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, said while giving a talk on Vista content protection. ?Once the enemy is the user and not the attacker, standard security thinking falls apart.?
      Vista requires premium content like high-definition movies to be degraded in quality when sent to high-quality outputs, so users are seeing status codes that say ?graphics OPM resolution too high.? Gutmann calls this ?probably the most bizarre status code ever.?
      While Microsoft?s intent is to protect commercial content, home movies are increasingly being shot in high definition, Gutmann said. Many users are finding they can?t play any content if it?s considered ?premium.?
      ?This is not commercial HD content being blocked, this is the users? own content,? Gutmann said. ?The more premium content you have, the more output is disabled.? Continue At Source


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