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> I used to watch all stuff I wanted on a MacMini attached to a dumb TV. Suddenly, Netflix stopped working on all browsers except chrome.

How is this possible? I was told that standardizing DRM interfaces in the browser would stop Netflix from forcing users to download native apps instead of using regular browsers and open streaming technology.

> Google makes the Widevine DRM, and seemly lately it has been notorious for doing silent changes that break it on all platforms except official Chrome versions on Windows, Android and Chrome OS

So wait, standardizing DRM interfaces didn't do anything to increase platform/browser availability for the actual DRM implementations that are only licensed to be used with certain browsers and on certain devices? No one could have predicted this.

Utterly shocking. It's almost like the standardization process for web DRM changed literally nothing about Netflix/Chrome's plans, and really only existed to provide a PR boost and the veneer of respectability to an outcome that they were always going to pursue anyway regardless of what the standard was.

Oh well, live and learn. And by "learn", I of course mean make the exact same arguments verbatim the next time we want to standardize DRM interfaces on image tags and then accuse critics of wanting the open web to die.

Netflix has made a significant dent in piracy, but DRM will fix that...

Netflix made a dent in piracy when they were the only game in town. With the fracturing of streaming services leading to the very thing Netflix solved piracy will be on the rise again.

You mean you don't sign up for all of Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, AppleTV+, HBO Max, Peacock, ESPN+, and Amazon Prime?? You really should, it's so convenient juggling subscriptions and apps for everything individually.

But don't stop there. You want some documentaries? Throw in Curiosity Stream, it's pretty cheap and you'll get Nebula for free! You'll want BBC Select too, though. Oh, you like Anime? Here's Crunchyroll. A horror fan? Don't forget to sign up for Shudder!

Or you could just log into your VPN and go to Pirate Bay. I mean, if you were a dirty awful criminal.

Haven't people usually paid about 40-60$ a month for TV? I don't see the issue.

Ignoring the price issue for a moment. This is not a better situation. We have gone from one platform with all content with adverts (cable), to one platform with a lot of more relevant content and no adverts (Netflix), to N platforms with some content and some adverts (platform dependent).

Even if you were subscribed to every single streaming service it's now a nightmare to manage, not only do you have N payments you now have N different apps to search/browse.

Say you have 4 shows you like release on a Monday across 3 different apps. You now have to navigate your way through multiple different apps (with wildly different UIs) just to watch the things you want.

With some nice automated piracy they just download get indexed by your platform of choice (Plex, Jellyfin, Kodi, Raw filesystem etc..) and they are all available in one place with minimal fucking about.

Sure you could achieve the same with some kind of unified stream aggregator UI (kodi can do this already to an extent) but that'll never fly long term with all providers as the streaming companies would miss out on that sweet sweet userdata (only having what was watched/when/how long) and control.

The only real benefit streaming platform have right now is the lack of ads vs. cable. But remember when cable launched? It didn't have ads either and I wouldn't expect streaming providers to remain ad free either. I give it 5 years before at least 50% have ads somewhere whether in the UI or before/during/after streams.

So then we're back to piracy providing the best service to the consumer, ad free, unified UI, and most importantly all the content.

I'm honestly unsure why the music industry hasn't splintered into a million streaming services and Spotify reigns supreme. While Spotify is terrible for Artists it is a bargain for consumers. Imagine having to load up 2+ separate applications to listen to a single artists back catalogue simply because they changed labels at some point.

Sorry, your solution sounds like more work then just switching apps every now and again, movies/tv are not like 3 minute long songs.

Did they, though? I never noticed a lack of availability of torrents and NZBs for movies and TV shows.

Oh, I get it. They're using the same zero-sum definition of "drop" that they used when calculating profits. With a convenient and well-priced legal streaming option, new consumers are less likely to seek out pirate copies. (This is true.) If you count every subscription as a "lost" pirate copy then you can describe pirating as having "fallen" from this hypothetical maximum level to the current real rate of piracy. You don't have to even bother looking at the actual rate of piracy, which may have grown over the same period. That's the kind of math they use to count how much money is "lost" to piracy; assume every downloaded movie would have been paid for if piracy didn't exist. So of course the same formula would apply to describing how valuable their platform is.

Did DRM really kill sound cards or did motherboards/gpus/cpus just get better default embedded audio solutions?

This is not only Netflix. French media do the same using exactly the same Widevine DRM, which simply doesn't work on Firefox. My sister couldn't watch some replays of her shows on my laptop because she couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work

Wait... I first heard of widevine last week when I tried watching netflix on my work's laptop (debian), using firefox. It didn't work so I googled, found out about widevine and special settings. I tweaked some chrome/chromium parameters but it didn't work.

All this in a private window.

Once I used Netflix in a normal window (Firefox or chromium) it worked.

Worth a try ?

I don't think Firefox and Chrome run extensions/plugins in private windows without you first allowing them to run. That might be the case here.

Widevine is more or less the "industry standard" for in-browser video DRM. Basically everyone uses it.

>Also I am still bitter that the DRM race led to the death of 3D sound cards and some cool stuff that was possible with analog video on Windows versions before Vista.

I share your bitterness about this same issue.

Honest question, as someone who's (probably) too young: What where these 3D sound cards and - just from the name - isn't that what Dolby Surround (etc) does?

In the 90's I chalked it up to "surround or 5.1 marketing" but it might have been something else https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/3d-audio

Yeah, there were several manufacturers who produced soundcards that basically offered two channels of sound, but where elements creating sound on-screen could be positioned as in a 3-dimensional world. I had a Packard Bell with an A3D[1] card, and I remember being fascinated by the demos they supplied.

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureal_Semiconductor#A3D

And how did DRM get in the way of that?

Just with Creative's effects extensions, you can do virtual 3D sound in Software just fine now: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Surround_sound#Bi...

Next step would be to simulate and actual 3D sound environment but with GPGPU compute I don't think that needs dedicated hardware either.

Not sure if this is valid in all cases; avid user of Netflix and F1 fan here. I only use Firefox on Linux to watch them

What do you mean about the death of 3D sound cards? Do you mean surround sound, like 5.1, etc? That's still a thing, and not incompatible with DRM.