Your rights in Vista

Why is Vista different?
DRM is nothing new, either to computers or to Windows, but this did not stop a lot of attention being paid to the extra DRM restrictions built into Vista.

An article written by an academic at the University of Auckland claimed the extra DRM features in Vista reduced performance and stability, and increased costs.

Most of the new content protection revolved around the added support for the new high-definition video formats, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Because of the risks of films being copied via the video output of the computer, Vista will only play the films at their highest quality if it is connected to a display with an HDMI connector.

This is because HDMI graphics cards and monitors can detect if there is a device connected that might be trying to record the content illegally. Computers with the monitor or television connected with older connectors such as VGA or DVI will never show the films at their best.

At present there are few, if any, HDMI displays for computers, and Computeractive’s take on HD-DVD and Blu-ray is that buying now, before one or other format is clearly established, is a waste of money for all but a tiny minority.

What is surprising about the controversy is that the concept of reducing quality depending on the hardware being used to watch it is nothing new.

Just about any standalone DVD player (such as you might buy from a supermarket) will radically degrade the quality of the film if it is plugged into a video recorder.

Microsoft’s response to the claims in the University of Auckland article, was that this was also true of Windows XP if it was plugged into a video recorder. However, Microsoft’s response did concede that all of the copy protection in Vista does require more of the computer’s power, harming performance.

Does it work?
The crucial question, given the inconvenience caused to Windows users by DRM, is does it prevent people from breaking the law?

Sadly, the answer is no. A lot of DRM protection is simple, although illegal, to get around, especially the protection applied to music files. The protection around DVD movies was broken very quickly and some copy protection on Blu-ray and HD-DVD has also been broken.

Checks are balanced
Vista does include extra restrictions on the way that files, especially media files, can be played or copied. But this is nothing new, as this kind of protection has been included in previous versions of Windows.

There is a benefit to these restrictions as, without them, it would not be possible to play the new high-definition movies on Windows computers.