Windows Vista Prevents Users from playing High Quality video and audio

Feature of Content protection in Windows Vista are preventing customers from playing high-quality video and audio and harming system performance, even as Microsoft neglects security programs that could protect users.
Vista requires premium content like high-definition movies to be degraded in quality when sent to high-quality outputs, so users are seeing status codes that say graphics OPM resolution too high.
Microsoft acknowledged that quality of premium content would be lowered if requested by copyright holders, the sources reported. The protections allow copyright holders to prevent video from being played in high definition unless users have equipment that supports the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) digital rights management system developed by Intel. If PC users have graphics cards with video connections that don't support HDCP, they are out of luck.
According to the sources,hardware costs will increase because vendors can't provide Vista-approved security functionality unless Hollywood studios like MGM, 20th Century Fox and Disney grant written approval saying the content security meets their standards.
All the extra encryption required to meet Vista's content protection standards means some computer components can never enter power-saving mode. Thus, when you play a movie your CPU keeps running at full steam, he said. The extra power demands make it hard to reduce electricity usage.
The encryption requirements render high-end graphics processing units less effective, he said, because the best of those products emphasize graphics performance over content protection. On Vista, US$100-video cards can thus outperform those that cost $1,000.