I’ve been reading up quite a bit for the past few months on Windows Vista: The good, the bad and the ugly. Most of what I found was the ugly.

Turns out Microsoft plans on releasing a completely crippled version of windows this month (Vista) that lowers quality on High definition video, even on high definition equipment, and let’s face it, most monitors today already support “high definition” resolutions. So by HD equipment, I mean over-priced bricks that say HD-ready. What HD-Ready really means is: support for the high definition media interface, which must be able to decode an encrypted video signal. So extra cost for zero extra consumer features for a screen that does what your old screen did just fine.

But here’s the catch: MS thinks even this is dangerous! Might we be able to stream that encrypted signal NOT into a HDMI screen, but instead a SUPER-HOLLYWOOD-KILLING-MOVIE-STEALY-BOX that decrypts and records the signal, MS wants to be prepared -- So they artificially reduce the quality of the video before sending it to your screen! YAY! HIGH DEFINITION ROCKS!

Now, the most popular writing on this at the moment is a pessimistic paranoid tech writer, Peter Gutmann, is convinced this is doomsday, so luckily we found a much more balanced rebuttal from Microsoft on the Windows Vista blog, containing phrases like “we feel” and “everything was going to…anyway":

…As a practical matter, image constraint will typically result in content being played at no worse than standard definition television resolution. In the case of HD optical media formats such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, the constraint requirement is 520K pixels per frame (i.e., roughly 960x540), which is still higher than the native resolution of content distributed in the DVD-Video format. We feel that this is still yields a great user experience, even when using a high definition screen.

So luckily all that money you just threw down on a HDMI monitor that produces EXACTLY the same results (only makes the studios feel better) will play at a dumbed down resolution that is described as slightly-fuzzy, roughly 960x540. Great compromise for those thinking they could take full advantage of what blue-ray and HD-DVD support: 1920x1080. But don’t feel bad. Microsoft doesn’t, in fact the feel that you’re still gonna have a good time. I certainly would settle for that. I mean, I only spent a couple thousand dollars.

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