Microsoft has recently announced that the next version of Windows, due out in late 2006, will be named Vista. Getting down to business, Microsoft has decided to make Vista even tougher on DRM (Digital Rights Management) in order to prevent piracy.

The new DRM “features” of Windows Vista require that your monitor be compatible with something called Digital Content Protection. When you are trying to play a digital video file of any kind, Vista will check to see whether or not your monitor is HDCP compliant. If it is then you’re fine and everything plays just like you would expect. However, if your monitor is not compliant with HDCP, Vista will make the picture fuzzy. The problem with this is that there are currently very, very few monitors that support the standard.

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