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Comment by justinlardinois | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how the detection works. I have three different monitors hooked up to my desktop computer at home, and one of them is exceptionally old and running on a VGA to DVI-I adapter. When I get home I'll see if Netflix complains if I drag the window over to that monitor.

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It probably happens in the Widevine CDM. Note that Widevine is Google, and they mislabel it as a "Video Optimizer". DRM is evil and anti-consumer, but trying to spin it as a codec improvement (what "video optimizer" actually means) is just fucking slimy, and I'd love if a Google employee reading this could bring this misrepresentation up with an internal ethics officer if they get a chance.

Could be a risky career move - depending on the point of view as who it flows through to

I've just checked it and I have no problems.

The monitor I have on my PC is DVI-D only and it works fine with both the webapp and the Windows rich client.

On my Mac I had no problems using mini-DP to DVI or VGA adapters and I've tested this on 3 monitors.

I've also tested it on different resolutions and CDN's using the secret menu and I haven't seen any problems or restrictions (Chrome/FF is limited to 720p, but 1080p works on Edge/Safari without a hitch even over a non HDCP connection).

I've tested 3 different adapters, a Lenovo one, an original Apple one, and some combo adapter (DP to HDMI/DVI/VGA) none of them showed signs of this.

This was tested on both Netflix original content and a few non-Netflix shows/movies the Netflix account is a UK account.

Sometimes HDCP is only required for digital connections. VGA may be exempt.

just an assumption here but I'm going to guess it doesnt apply for all netflix content, just the content where the owner is unnecessarily strict about where they view it

It won't, since VGA is analog and HDCP only applies to digital outputs.

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