From: "Robert Comer" 

> 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?

Impossible.  They would have to write their own VM software, not using any
of the current products, and it would have to be very hardware specific
plus have some driver hacks on the host to allow it.

--
Bob Comer


"Gary Britt"  wrote in
message news:45e31947{at}w3.nls.net...
> 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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