The “Break it Down” Blog

This is a fantastic little tidbit of information, aparently the “media companies” stepped in and told Microsoft they must limit and or disable HD playback on 32-bit machines as they do not have the ability to enforce copy protection like 64-bit systems do. The full blurb:

Pity the Vista user with a 32-bit CPU. Senior Program Manager Steve Riley announced today at Tech.Ed Australia that full HD content shall only be played at the full resolution where only signed drivers are used — only in the 64-bit version of Vista. From the article: ‘”Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all,” said Riley. “This is a decision that the Media Player folks made because there are just too many ways right now for unsigned kernel mode code [to compromise content protection]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don’t want any of their high definition content to play in x32 at all, because of all of the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection, so we had to do this.”

This single issue doesn’t bother me that much, but what else is in Vista because some strong political group “required” it? What about child pornographers? Terrorists? Or just people that didn’t vote for Bush? This all makes me nervous enough to appreciate the fact that I’ve been loving using Ubuntu, atleast I know what it’s doing.

Update #1: This looks like it was just misinformation, 32-bit users won’t be chopped back.