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Comment by ClassyJacket | Hacker News Reader

It's worse than Disney+??

I've been trying to watch Arrested Development and the experience is downright painful. I won't be continuing my subscription.

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I'm not sure, but I sure am not renewing my subscription either. I stream on a PC, and I have not once been able to watch a Disney+ show at any resolution higher than 720p, despite following all of their troubleshooting steps. They "scan your system and connection to determine the best resolution" (paraphrase), and don't allow you to choose the resolution. After talking to their support half a dozen times and escalating my request, I have seen no improvement. I'm convinced it's deliberate.

Of course it’s deliberate. Streaming high quality content is expensive and there is very little incentive for them to allow that given their main draw isn’t the streaming service, but the unique content library they have.

Most streaming services through web browsers do not allow streaming greater than 720p unless you install a separate desktop app with heavy DRM protection. They do not want people ripping the 4K feed for piracy. I wish there was a way to emulate the hardware decryption on streaming devices

Very clever. Keep the highest quality files out of the hands of those grubby pirates. Then the customers will have no choice but to subscribe so they can watch the content in 720p.

That certainly makes sense. But Disney+ has a desktop app, and I tried downloading and using that, but still never got resolution greater than 720p. I wish they would at least fix their app so PC users could stream in HD without feeling the need to rely on piracy.

I found Disney+ pretty bad when it launched but these days I don't have any issues, other than finding something new to watch.

It’s been mostly fine for me but a couple of weeks ago the Disney+ app on my AppleTV got into a crazy state of crashing and immediately restarting over and over. I think the issue was with a DRM related handshake but eventually I had to reboot the device by physically removing power because nothing else could get it out of the loop.

I’ve had both. I find the Disney+ app to be one of the better ones (on an Apple TV). Paramount wasn’t even in the same league.

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