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Comment by mtlmtlmtlmtl | Hacker News Reader

That's kind of bonkers to me that Netflix don't support HD/4K on Linux. Considering the number of random porn site players that play HD just fine...

What's holding them up besides laziness?

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Possibly their logic is that a Linux 4k player would more easily allow third party Netflix clients to be developed, because Linux software is more easily reverse engineered? Maybe their DRM is different for different kernels and different resolutions and they don't want to maintain an extra codebase? Really not sure, seems absurd to me as well.

DRM and Content contracts. They can't just throw 4k into an unsecured environment because they need to make a best effort to enforce that their 4k content isn't pirated.

I'm sure that is the reason, but I find it hard to believe that ripping content could possibly be that much harder just because you're on Windows.

And Netflix exclusives regularly make it to pirate sites in 4K afaik?

It's not. If you can see it, you can copy it. It just makes life harder for a small number of legitimate users on Linux or rooted Android phones because their license/contract says they need to use DRM.

> And Netflix exclusives regularly make it to pirate sites in 4K afaik?

Yes, generally the day of release.

Not really.

No 4K versions of most shows from the last month.

Windows/Apple have special APIs which allow video decrypting to be done on the GPU. And the GPU will not allow you to access the decrypted video surface.

This is why you can't screenshot Netflix on Windows/Apple - the region where the video is will be black.

Which is absurd because literally anything Netflix has can be downloaded in 4K from the usual places anyway.

Not disagreeing with you, just pointing out their faulty reasoning.

Market size? Also people consume Netflix via TVs.

It’s entirely DRM. On Windows you only get HDR/4K if you use the native silverlight/UWP (!) app with their DRM. Part of that is that all your monitors have to pass validation, not just the one on which netflix is playing.

Hah, I thought Silverlight was dead years ago, but I don't keep up with Windows tech at all.

Silverlight is long dead, the poster was mistaken: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2090

Yes and no. That post is about the plugin, but silverlight the standalone application framework is now just part of UWP (and this is about the netflix standalone app after all)

Ok, but the the standalone application is still not required for 4K. You can watch Netflix in 4K using Edge on Windows or Safari on Mac.

You’re right, edge is supported again (during the migration from old edge to new edge it was unsupported for a while). I totally missed that, although it doesn’t change anything regarding linux support.

Funny thing is, on an older Mac, If you try to run Netflix with the most current supported version of Safari, they redirect you to a page about Microsoft Silverlight[1]. If you don't read that page carefully, you might conclude you need Silverlight to use Netflix, which, of course, 404's when you go try to find it. Totally broken experience. I encountered this recently and had to download Microsoft Edge for Mac.

I'm not sure if I should be more irritated with Netflix, who can't be bothered to maintain backwards compatibility with not-that-old browsers, or Apple, who can't be bothered to get newer versions of Safari to work on older Mac hardware. Both companies are displaying a total disregard for paying customers who just don't happen to have the latest expensive hardware.

1: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2090

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