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by air 3687 days ago
Netflix begs to differ.
3 comments

With what? EME is a "cure" for a problem you shouldn't have in the first place. Idiotic technology to do nothing useful and solve no problems to make some content company executives feel better about their liability.

EME does abosolutely nothing to prevent piracy and only serves as another roadblock for people to jump before seeing videos.

Just because you shouldn't have a problem doesn't mean you don't actually have that problem.
It does accomplish a few things.

1. Makes it easier for them to control access by legitimate customers. Yes, this is pretty always consumer hostile BS, but it's a use case.

2. If someone does come up with an app to download shows or whatever, they have the legal argument of "you broke DRM to do this".

Bad actors exist, hence the technology does something useful.

Piracy [probably] isn't a problem for you, but if you think it isn't a problem at all, then you should read this:

http://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when-...

We are talking about online video, where DRM is astoundingly ineffective. Any release is almost immediately available to download.

Whether or not piracy is a problem is immaterial to the importance of DRM if DRM has no effect on piracy.

All it shows is that there is certain group of people which will pirate even if the content would be given for free.

The people that would view paid content should not be punished with DRM, that only works on certain platforms and certain browsers.

It actually makes pirated product much better than original. Pirated videos besides being free work on all platforms, you can view it on your computer, phone, tablet. Living or visiting a different country does not revoke your rights to see it, and you can make as many copies of it as you want.

DRM does nothing to stop piracy.
workflow or delivery?
Netflix can make its own app, outside the web.
One of the most attractive features of netflix is the ability stream movies on the browser. Why would we want to move that to a separate app?
I wouldn't call limiting resolution to 720p in the browser "attractive". Are you aware of this limit?

In Chrome and Firefox, you can't watch Netflix above 720p. It's why I must use IE with Silverlight to watch Netflix at full HD on Windows 7.

> In Chrome and Firefox, you can't watch Netflix above 720p.

Oh my god, the horror!

Well, if youtube clips uploaded at 1080p couldn't be watched at 1080p, people would complain. When services advertise "hd video" and it doesn't actually work in HD... I'm sure you can figure it out. But then maybe you can't, given your remark.
I thought the limit/split was 1080p in browser, 4k only through certain channels?
No, there's a page on Netflix listing the resolution limits per browser, I checked before I posted.
The most attractive feature of netflix is that it is everywhere and most people would not have a problem installing a dedicated app, just look and android and ios.
I prefer Netflix in Kodi, not in the browser.

It's a far superior experience.

Netflix already has their own Windows desktop app. Because it can use Microsoft's unsandboxed PlayReady DRM, it can play 1080p video while Chrome and Firefox can only play 720p.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/netflix/9wzdncrfj...

I believe, but can't remember offhand, that Netflix will do 1080p in Edge as well.
That's correct. Netflix can do 1080p in IE and Edge (because they use unsandboxed PlayReady) and in Safari (which uses Apple's FairPlay).

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742