[hug]

I may be an idiot, but: What does this actually, y'know, achieve? It seems the answer to me is probably nothing?

It doesn't work on Firefox. It appears not to work on Chrome. The suggestion is to use Edge, which on Windows already gets 4K support in Netflix anyway.

[apt-apt-apt-apt]

Fellow idiot here, and the gist seems to be:

Here's a 4K enabler that only enables 4K where it's already enabled.

[ctippett]

You misread the README. Although it suggests using Edge at the very bottom, the extension doesn't require it and actually spoofs Netflix into thinking it is Edge via changing the user-agent.

[hug]

Did I, though?

I understand it spoofs all of the checks it can, but the only Chromium browser that supports Widevine L1 (a requirement for 4K) is Edge, so even if all of the check spoofing works, it still won't do 4K.

There's even a table in the README that describes this exact scenario.

[ctippett]

I'm putting a lot of weight on this part from the README:

  > If you're paying for 4K but using Chrome, Firefox, or a setup Netflix doesn't "approve," you're stuck at 1080p or lower. This extension fixes that.

But I get the confusion though. I'm now second-guessing if I misread the README.

[hug]

It's this section that puts the lie to the entire project: https://github.com/Pickle-Pixel/netflix-force-4k?tab=readme-...

It appears to only be useful on Edge on Windows.

[Moto7451]

I believe the benefit for Edge is faking HDCP 2.2.

[duskwuff]

Then why does the extension try to fake a bunch of other properties, like the user agent and decoding capabilities, which should be redundant?

[Moto7451]

The same plugin spec runs across several browsers and Edge is now chrome based. It’s likely just hard coded defaults that seem a little silly when used on the target browser it pretends to be.

[doctorpangloss]

i don't think it works! there's no mystery here...

[Retr0id]

I can't vouch for this extension in particular (because I haven't tested it), but I've used and written similar extensions myself and can confirm that the concept is legit.

[hug]

Spoofing the user agent and decoding capabilities and [...] is a useful way to unblock things that are crippled on various browsers, indeed.

The problem here is requiring hardware-attested DRM: Widevine L1 on Edge on Windows, and Apple FairPlay on Safari on MacOS. The only way to get hardware attested DRM is via browser specific (i.e.: native code) support that interfaces with the OS & GPU drivers. You can't get there through an extension.

[Retr0id]

Right, but the point is that Netflix still refuses to play 4K on some browsers with hardware DRM support. Even getting it to work in Edge was a challenge last time I tried - iirc I got it working via https://github.com/lkmvip/netflix-4K-DDplus