I would've had a much better experience if I'd just went to thepiratebay and sought out nine MKV files instead.
Now I just torrent things and play them in VLC. Same or better quality, no buffering, custom subtitle size if I want. And 100% reliable.
Now that I think about it, the physical disks feel like real-world NFTs.
I know many people who stream music 95% of the time, but have a big collection of their favorite albums on vinyl, some of them unopened, as a way to support the artist / a piece of art / keepsake / speculative long term investment, etc.
Real-world NFT is a fun analogy.
Once acquired, I then take the disc data and strip its own DRM off of it. Now I have the content with the absolute best quality and can just sit back and play it in my preferred player. Obviously this is a hassle compared to just clicking play on Netflix/buying online but I am still enjoying the ability while it lasts. After all, with declining sales of Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-Ray seeming like its a bust, there are probably only a few years left until we lose this avenue of control of our media.
The MakeMKV Forums will get you started on the best drives/proper techniques.
I did. I had none of your issues.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem." — Gabe Newell
The only trouble I see is that streaming service use those metrics to decide which shows to not cancel and that way of watching doesn’t get counted. (I have a bad record of enjoying many shows that didn’t get renewed… still grumbly about the dirk gentley)
While I'm on the subject... about a year ago I tried subscribing to the 4K plan, since I bought a 4K monitor. Netflix only played in 4K if I used an HDMI cable, not DisplayPort, and only if I completely unplugged my secondary 1440p monitor (turning it off wasn't enough).
I would maybe understand enforcing that requirement if it was effective in protecting the content, but it isn't. 4K content (from UHD blurays and various streaming services) is widely available to pirate, and VLC doesn't care what kind of cable you're using.
Speculation on my part but I wouldn’t be surprised if those kinds of requirements are mainly there to appease motion picture industry partners who Netflix is licensing content from.
Furthermore, given the long experience the people of the release groups in the piracy scene have in fine tuning video codec parameters for optimal balance between quality and file size, and choosing video codecs that can be decoded on a wide range of devices, I think it is highly probable that many of the people working on the technical side of these things at Netflix have had roles in various piracy release groups prior to having come to work for Netflix.
Not saying Netflix would actively seek out piracy release group members to hire them. In fact it’d probably count as negative to openly state any kind of involvement with the piracy scene, and especially to mention having been part of a release group. What I mean is just that the people who were members of these groups have both the skills and the technical motivation to work on these same kinds of things for Netflix.
Quite likely, but why I, the end user, would ever care about that?
it just degrades my experience.
And those partners require it not because it protects something but because they make money of it by running licensing agencies, so they profit from every compliant monitor and video card sold.
Of course forget about it on anything other than windows (maybe mac?)
How do I check that ?
https://cd-rw.org/t/how-to-enable-netflix-full-hd-1080p-on-l... Ah, there's an extension.
edit: https://www.netflix.com/fi-en/title/80018499 Aaand I have been watching 720p... :D.
I'm pretty sure I watch HD Netflix in Safari. Surely I can't be watching 720p and be deceiving myself?
The difference between Netflix 1080 and 720p is often pretty small, so you might've really just not noticed. They're generally streaming with pretty poor bit-rates
The first time I watched a pirated episode after years of streaming from Netflix was pretty eye opening for me wrt video quality.
My point was that the pixel density is pretty hard to determine with low Bitrate streams as you get them from Netflix.
You can check for yourself, hit Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D during playback to show a bunch of stats on the stream, including the current resolution being shown.