Instapundit: Vista DRM may crap up commercial HD video, but…

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit read this exchange between Microsoft and critics who say Vista's DRM cruft degrades the high-definition video experience on protected commercial content. Glenn thinks this might all be part of a dastardly secret plan to promote we-the-people HD content:

My big worry about Vista was that its copy-protection schemes would make producing my own content harder. Maybe they will, I'm not sure, but it seems pretty clear that the end result of all this copy protection will actually be a quality advantage, from the viewer's perspective, on the part of unprotected content.

Now you'll be able to tell the "professional" product because it looks worse than amateur products. That's hilarious. And with things like Sony's new HD network that's open to amateur content, this may make a big difference in what people watch, especially as I note that once you get an HDTV you become much more sensitive to issues of video quality. So perhaps all the fancy HDTVs people are buying will be showing homemade video because it looks better. Maybe this is all a clever Microsoft plan to take Hollywood down, all while appearing to do its bidding.

Link to "AUDIO/VIDEO QUALITY ON WINDOWS VISTA."