Speaking at the Tech.Ed 2006 conference in Sydney, Australia, Microsoft senior program manager Steve Riley explained that the company’s new operating system would only support the next-generation DVD formats if users were able to run the 64-bit version of Vista.
According to APC magazine writer Dan Warne, most of the world’s PC users have 32-bit processors because Intel only recently released the Core 2 Duo, the company first widely-promoted 64-bit processor.
“PC users will now have to choose between a PC that can play high-definition content (64 bit) versus one that can potentially run older devices that only have unsigned drivers available (32 bit),” Warne said.
“Signed drivers” are 32-bit processors that have received Microsoft’s digital certificate, verifying that they are able to support the 64-bit version of Vista.
“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,” Riley said. “The media companies asked us to do this and said they don’t want any of their high-definition content to play in 32-bit 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.”
According to Warne, Microsoft’s decision will likely anger consumers who were hoping to use their existing 32-bit PC with an upgraded version of Vista to play next-generation content.
Consumers using the 32-bit version of Vista will still be able to use Blu-ray and HD-DVD as storage media, Riley said, explaining that either format would store and play an MPEG-4 file. However, he conceded, HD-DVD and Blu-ray studio-released titles will not be available to consumers using 32-bit versions of Vista.