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Comment by qntty | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, for those of us not privy to how Widevine works, what's the problem exactly? What do you need Google's approval for and why?

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Yes, you need Google's approval because now all major browsers have a black-box/binary blob which downloads other funky binary stuff so that it can decrypt video content. As you might figure out Google/Wildevine org gives the blackbox only to approved developers/devices/applications.

Bonus DRM: If your license is not "the most certified" your browser/player will play only shitty/low quality versions of the video. There are other goodies of course like not being able to play the content offline.

So how do open source browsers like Chromium and Firefox do this? Surely if they have access to the blackbox, then anyone does? And if they don't, it means you can't watch Netflix on some major browsers.

Firefox will ask you to download a proprietary blob which is needed for DRM the first time you visit Netflix.

This is also the case for Brave browser, a dialog opens asking to download the binary. I suspect this is also the case with other Chromium browsers, they may do it without prompting though.

Not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be that Firefox on Linux could only stream 720p videos.

This depends on the agreement that the media distributor has with the media owner; there's no technical reason behind the 720p limitation.

Widevine is offered with different levels, depending on the length of the secure path. On mainline Linux, there is no secure path to the screen AFAIK, so you can always read the unencrypted video from a recompiled graphics driver, and as such it only is supported in Widevine's lowest level.

For Netflix on Linux, both Firefox and Chrome are limited to 720p. However, there's an extension to enable 1080p playback: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/force-1080p-n...

You can also find a link to the Chrome extension there. I'm not sure if there's a cat-and-mouse game here -- the first time I tried it, the Firefox extension didn't work. However, it started working a few months later.

Firefox on Ubuntu 16.04 NVIDIA proprietary driver here. I searched for 1080p on YouTube and the first result is this harmless video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQuhA5ZCV9M It started at 720p, then I switched it to 1080p and it started playing at that resolution. However I didn't count the lines and I don't know if this is the kind of streaming you're writing about. Maybe Netflix? I can't check that.

Most YouTube videos (including the one you linked) don't use DRM, that's why 1080p works on Linux. Netflix only works with up to 720p on Linux.

I'm pretty sure YouTube doesn't support DRM at all. Premium originals (e.g. Mind Field) play in 4K for me on FreeBSD (for which no one has ever compiled Widevine or anything like that)

Premium is DRM-free, but Google Play purchases, which you can watch on YouTube, use DRM.

VEVO (the music producer) have most of their free video clips under DRM

You have to install the (closed-source) widevine plugin for Chromium.

What video content are we talking about here? HTML5 video?

Yes, with DRM. You can check if it's used by looking at the address bar: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/05/12/update-on-digital-r...

Widevine is a DRM scheme. You need a license and information from Google to decode it without breaking the DRM.

The Widevine CDM is publicly available but you are not allowed to redistribute it. Firefox seems to have no problem downloading it at runtime. In worst case the user could manually download it.

It is in the article:

>As far as I’m aware, Widevine is the only available DRM for a Chromium-based browser, especially so for Electron.

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