High def content fails on Vista PCs

Content protection features in Windows Vista operating system have been found to prevent users from playing high-definition audio and video.

Vista requires premium content, such as high definition movies, to be downgraded in quality when set to high-quality outputs such as DVI (Digital Video Interface).

Status codes give the message ‘graphics OPM resolution too high’. This feature is intended to protect commercial content, but as more and more home movies are shot in HD, it is leaving users unable to play their own content.

The Windows Vista protection can be bypassed by encoding the movies with alternative codecs such as X264, or DiVX. These are more effective sometimes then Windows own WMV codec and are often used on HD video Bittorrent sites, or Newsgroups.

The feature has led to claims that Microsoft placed too much emphasis on content protection when building Vista, at the expense of protecting users.