Example: If you rented "The Interview" on Google's video service (in HD) and played it back on a software/hardware stack that didn't have the latest DRM(1), you were limited to SD.
You paid for HD. You got SD.
Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming.
(1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental in HD. I don't know anyone that didn't get forced to play in SD.
I looked into this and you could get HD on locked down devices (phones, tablets, TVs), but not computers, regardless of operating system. This was weird to see given that EME made it into Chrome recently and now Netflix works without silverlight. I ended up renting it on Youtube, then googling for an HD copy. Found one hosted on Google Drive (!), which produced quite a chuckle.
You paid for HD. You got SD.
Of course, you could go pirate a full HD copy of the movie and play it back anywhere. The effectiveness of these inconveniences is overwhelming.
(1) I'm not positive it was even possible to redeem an HD rental in HD. I don't know anyone that didn't get forced to play in SD.