There have been a few comments asking about what’s going on with HD DVD and Media Center.

First, to clear up the confusion about 32 bit vs 64 bit playback I point you to The Windows Vista Team Blog, Clarifying Windows Vista Support of Protected HD Content in 32-bit Systems:

The real deal is that no version of Windows Vista will make a determination as to whether any given piece of content should play back or not. The individual ISV providing the playback solutions will choose whether the playback environment, including environments that use 32-bit processors, meet the performance requirements for playback of protected High Definition content.

Secondly, what’s going on with HD DVD and Media Center? I was going to be working on that but was pulled off to work on something else. In my place Peter was the program manager and has this post about our support for next gen DVD formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray application extensibility in Windows Media Center. In short, we provide the extensibility mechanisms necessary for you to drop in your own playback application and have it called from Media Center.

Thirdly, our press release from WinHEC has some info, Hardware and Software Vendors Rally Behind HD DVD at WinHEC 2006

At the conference, Microsoft reiterated that Windows Vista will be shipped with the drivers, file system and other components necessary to support HD DVD playback.

So no, I’m not quiting because HD DVDs won’t play on 32 bit systems :).