Digital Home Thoughts: Vista to Support HD DVD, Blu-Ray After All?

"Microsoft surprised more than a few people on Thursday when one of its developers told a technical crowd in Australia that 32-bit versions of Windows Vista won't be able to play back next-generation high-definition protected content, i.e. commercial Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. Later Thursday, representatives in the U.S. said that senior program manager Steve Riley was mistaken. "The information he provided to that audience was incorrect," a representative told CNET News.com. "Playback is possible with Windows Vista in 32-bit."



This is one point folks seem to be ignoring in the race to get high-definition DVD discs to the masses: it takes a lot of horsepower to decode those discs. Because of the ultra-high resolution and data rates, you need a fast processor and plenty of memory bandwidth to display a clean signal at the full framerate. Add this on top of the headroom required just to run Windows Vista, and you're going to need a screamer of a machine to watch an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray disc on your PC. While technically a 32 bit machine "can" display an HD disc in Windows Vista, I'm going to have to side with Steve Riley here and say that you'll want a 64 bit processor for the best playback experience.