At Microsoft's Tech.Ed conference in Sydney today, Senior Program Manager Steve Riley announced that Windows Vista users won't be able to watch next-generation HD video content unless they upgrade to a 64-bit processor. The reason has to do, of course, with DRM. "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]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don't want any of their high definition content to play in x32 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," said Riley. If you'll allow me to editorialized a bit, it seems obvious that the end result of this will be that movie pirates will still find it laughably easy to get around these "protections," and the only people who will actually be punished are legitimate users.