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Comment by robxu9 | Hacker News Reader

TIL that Widevine DRM is the reason my HDMI monitor flashes whenever I start or stop viewing something on Netflix or Amazon Video.

Welp.

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While I understand the content producers / owners stance on DRM, I've never once found a widevine or any other DRM'd show or movie that hasn't been available via piracy. All it seems to do is things like this - degrade the legal users' experience. Even though I have amazon prime and netflix accounts, I still download all of my shows. It's just a better experience.

One question I have is this: are there any examples of cases where DRM on widely distributed media has actually worked?

Every drm implementation has successfully sold engineering hours to big media. But no, if anything, annecdotally it drives me to piracy after being unable to use my purchase on my projector.

The main reason for DRM is old people in positions of power who don't get computers. Locking your door helps against physical theft, so why not do "the same" for digital goods? DRM is a cargo cult.

You think DRM hasn't worked, but it has worked perfectly fine for its intended purpose. The purpose of DRM is not to control the content, it's to control the channel. DRM on DVD's, even though trivially to break and broken since the beginning, has been used quite effectively to control DVD players. Anyone who makes a DVD player without a license can and will be sued, meaning you still can't skip ads on most DVD players. Similarly, DRM in browsers is a means to control browsers, so that they don't become any more piracy-friendly, and in time it may be used as a weapon to lock them down.

Hello Firefox!

Hello Silverlight if you want Netflix too.

Firefox also includes Widevide, so Silverlight is no longer needed. Netflix works just fine with it. (https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/04/08/mozilla-t...)

It also includes UI to indicate when DRM content is being played, and there's a UI pref to disable DRM support entirely, if that's your thing.

Firefox also uses Google's Widevine CDM. I'm curious if the HDMI monitor flashes are an issue with Chrome's integration with Widevine or in Widevine itself (and thus also affecting Firefox).

Monitor Flashes because internally is basically changing inputs as it changes from unencrypted video to encrypted HDCP video

How does one use Firefox without widevine to watch a DRM video stream?

I meant you can still disable DRM completely or enable only on request.

I don't think either of them are using Widevine.

Amazon is definitely using Widevine.

Netflix absolutely uses Widevine.

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