From: Gary Britt 

How hard would it be for a hacker to reprogram the VM emulated drivers so
that Vista thought it had a secure path to HD capable hardware?

Gary

Robert Comer wrote:
>> Vista requires a secure video path for any HD video, if you virtualize the
>> machine, vista thinks it's got a secure end to end path but it's talking
>> to a virtualized end so it's really not secure.
>
> Not correct with regards to current VM software, the secure path is at the
> hardware/ HW driver level and the VM doesn't have access to the hardware
> layer of the host at all, it only has emulated devices (S3 Trio and SB16
> sound), so it's not DRM capably.  If Vista is in the VM, it knows it has no
> secure path and wouldn't play HD.
>
>> As for not allowing any form in a VM, they don't allow watching HD video
>> from vista if it's running in a VM (per the license agreement text that
>> was posted in the thread).
>
> That's an interesting concept, the VM doesn't have to be Vista even if the
> host might be.  If the HD content can be played on the emulated minimal
> hardware, it would play, but the performance would be hit or miss.
>
>> They claimed it wasn't secure to do so, what kind of security do you think
>> they were talking about?
>
> I don't believe security has anything to do with it, otherwise the whole VM
> scenario is not secure for anything.  I've read some interesting discussions
> as to what it might really be, and the most plausable is just the threat of
> piracy or money.
>

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