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Comment by arendtio | Hacker News Reader

Looks amazing and while I would like to enjoy such quality and am willing to pay for the premium plan (in fact I do already), I still can't watch the 4K content even in a world where I accept DRM modules in my browser, because some DRM plugins seem to be more equal than others.

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Meanwhile, pirates get the content DRM free and they don't pay a cent for it. Yet another instance where DRM hurts the consumer more than the pirates.

Do we still need an Intel Kaby Lake or later CPU for 4K DRM decoding? (And Windows... forgot about that.)

If so, Netflix is on the wrong side of the CPU war with AMD ascending.

The arguments Netflix made for this highly model-specific DRM never made sense to me. There are 4K rips of pretty much every Netflix show available for download on various bays related to piracy.

So why bother locking your paying customers out of 4K content? What's the upside?

Also: I'm reasonably convinced that NetFlix is violating the law, at least in Australia, by advertising that their content is 4K and then arbitrarily blocking access to the 4K streams. This is called "bait & switch", and the fines are eyewatering, even for large corporations.

>Also: I'm reasonably convinced that NetFlix is violating the law, at least in Australia, by advertising that their content is 4K and then arbitrarily blocking access to the 4K streams. This is called "bait & switch", and the fines are eyewatering, even for large corporations.

Nah, they have their asses covered. I went to the website and tried to sign up, and at the first mention of 4k (when you're choosing a plan), there's a disclaimer of:

>HD and Ultra HD availability subject to your Internet service and device capabilities. Not all content available in HD or Ultra HD. See Terms of Use for more details.

If you go to the terms of use, it says:

>4.7. The quality of the display of the Netflix content may vary from device to device, and may be affected by a variety of factors, such as your location, the bandwidth available through and/or speed of your Internet connection. HD, Ultra HD and HDR availability is subject to your Internet service and device capabilities

One could make the argument that this is purposefully deceptive.

The phrasing makes it sound like external conditions, outside of Netflix's control are the reason 4K may not be available.

The reality is they sell two subscription levels: 4K and a HD-only one, but then after you've given them your money, they outright block access to 4K streams on a device that is physically capable of playing the stream.

I can play 3D games in 4K 60fps. I can stream YouTube at 8K. I can watch blu-ray at 4K with 2% CPU utilisation. For crying out loud, I have an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti and gigabit fibre!

But no. Sorry sir, your CPU is the wrong model, and Netflix cannot trust it. No 4K for you.

>The phrasing makes it sound like external conditions, outside of Netflix's control are the reason 4K may not be available.

I agree that the phrasing isn't the clearest, but it's not like the actual requirements aren't available. A search for "netflix 4k" turns up this page as the first result: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444, which clearly lists what the requirements are.

I could rephrase that entire page with "The compatible devices are the ones that are compatible" and it would provide about as much useful information.

Nowhere on that page does it mention HDCP. There is no such thing as a firmware update for 99.9% of monitors out there.

I meet 100% of the stated requirements on this page, yet NetFlix refuses to play 4K on my high-end computer. It does this silently, without explanation. It simply shows everything as HD, basically gaslighting me.

This kind of thing infuriates me.

I paid for this. I feel like a sucker.

I suspect the arguments are made to make sense to media executives not to the consumer. After all, DRM is an anti-feature for the consumer.

In a lot of cases the decode is happening on the GPU anyway, so requiring a specific CPU is doubly pointless.

I figured it was some backdoor Intel scheme where they paid Netflix to be exclusive.

No. At the time that cpu family was only one that had a gpu with support for necessary drm schemes and 10bit HEVC decode.

They also block access if you have old drivers or an older display panel that doesn't support HDCP 2.2.

Which is nuts, because you can buy HDCP stripper boxes for a few tens of dollars from several Chinese suppliers.

They needed Kaby Lake for the GPU not CPU.

And according to https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 you can use any cpu if you have an NVIDIA gpu starting with 3gb version of 1050.

On windows the DRM needed for 4k Netflix is PlayReady 3.0, which is supported on some cards after driver release 19.8.1: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-1...

I am shocked at how many people watch Netflix in their browser. I have multiple different ways (AppleTV, Xbox, TV Smart App) to watch Netflix on my tv, and at least 2 of them support 4k.

I don't have a TV, so if I watch Netflix it's in a browser.

Most people don't realize this but you can only watch Netflix in 4K in a browser if you're using Microsoft Edge on Windows or Safari in macOS 11. In fact, you can only get 1080p if you're running Chrome in Chrome OS, or IE, or Safari. All other browsers, including Chrome and FF on macOS, Linux, and Windows, are stuck at 720p.

Their blog post[0] from 2017 sounded hopeful for higher resolution video on Linux - they wrote "We... look forward to high-resolution video being available on more platforms soon" almost immediately after announcing FF on Linux was supported - but in hindsight it's clear that what they really meant was what you point out - support for things like Apple TV, Xbox, and TV Smart Apps.

[0]: https://netflixtechblog.com/update-on-html5-video-for-netfli...

If you are watching on a windows computer the Netflix windows store app can play 4k and 4k hdr titles.

What differentiates Edge from Chromium on Windows?

Edge hasn't been around as long as Netflix has provided in-browser service, I'd have thought Chrome w/ Widevine would have been part of Netflix' success.

Edge supports PlayReady in addition to Widevine. PlayReady is what gates the higher quality stream. No idea what the technical reason is for this.

Honestly the whole thing is stupid. 4k videos of everything on Netflix are available on the high seas. What’s the point?

Right now stripping Netflix's 4K DRM is possible but it requires buying a new Nvidia Shield TV for every release you do. If you could strip the DRM without buying expensive hardware every time people might be slightly quicker to release the entire 4K Netflix catalog.

That is interesting how does that work where you have to sacrifice a shield per release?

I've tried to do a bit of searching around to learn more about how this works, but failed. Got any citations?

It's not too surprising. Media players (chromecast, appletv, etc.) seem pointless if you already have a laptop and you're not too into movies/tv. Not everyone owns a game console, either because they don't game or they play on PC. Finally, some people (especially hn users) think that smart tvs are a privacy/security nightmare, so use them as dumb tvs.

I agree on the smart tv thing, I don’t use it, but it’s available. But even with numerous laptops and desktops I’m just not very likely to watch on one. It’s harder to watch with my wife or friends on a laptop, or desktop. And even though I have a nice setup I don’t want to sit in my desk chair all night after sitting in it all day. Im more likely to watch on a tablet while laying in bed or on the couch than an actual computer. But still use the Apple TV 90%+ of the time.

I have an appletv connected to a projector but sometimes I just want to throw on something on the computer when I’m eating/waiting for something else.

And of course because I’m on Linux I can’t get even 1080p encoded at a shitty bitrate unless I force it with a Firefox extension that they can gimp at any time (in a way, many thanks to the engineers who made the extension possible by relaxing checks on the browser).

I don’t understand why most platforms hate their paying users like this - I can and will pirate a Blu-ray quality rip if I can’t pay for it easily.

> I am shocked at how many people watch Netflix in their browser.

They don't. They're just very noisy.

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