Methods and systems protect digital content such as premium content like movies, programs, and other types of digital audio/visual content. In some embodiments, an architecture and related methods protect content by maintaining the content in encrypted form, whether the content resides in video card memory (referred to herein as "VRAM"), or some other local or remote memory subsystem. The methods and systems enable video card co-processors, such as the graphics processing unit (GPU) to manipulate the encrypted content or data. In various embodiments, the content is maintained in an encrypted format and is unencrypted only when the GPU operates upon the data. After the GPU operates upon the data, the resultant data is re-encrypted and written to memory.