Criticism of Windows Vista - Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management

Another common criticism concerns the integration of a new form of digital rights management (DRM) into the operating system, specifically the Protected Video Path (PVP), which involves technologies such as High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and the Image Constraint Token (ICT). These features were added to Vista due licensing restrictions from the HD-DVD consortium and Blu-ray association. This will concern only the resolution of play-back of protected content on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, but it has not been enabled as of 2012. A lack of a protected channel does not stop playback. Audio plays back as normal but high-definition video downsamples on Blu-ray and HD DVD to slightly-better-than-DVD quality video.

The Protected Video Path mandates that encryption must be used whenever content marked as "protected" will travel over a link where it might be intercepted. This is called a User-Accessible Bus (UAB). Additionally, all devices that come into contact with premium content (such as graphics cards) have to be certified by Microsoft. Before playback starts, all the devices involved are checked using a hardware functionality scan (HFS) to verify if they are genuine and have not been tampered with. Devices are required to lower the resolution(from 1920x1080 to 960x540) of video signals outputs that are not protected by HDCP. Additionally, Microsoft maintains a global revocation list for devices that have been compromised. This list is distributed to PCs over the Internet using normal update mechanisms. The only effect on a revoked driver's functionality is that high-level protected content will not play; all other functionality, including low-definition playback, is retained.