6 ms·

I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few device

by colde 9y ago

I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few devices can actually handle 4K. While your laptops screen might be able to handle it, your browser might not be able to decode h.265 at all, and might not be fast enough to decode h.264 at 4K resolutions. As someone who works on a video streaming service for similar type of content. I see this policy as a help to consumers more than restrictions, simply because they ensure they only allow 4K where they are fairly certain it works. Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers. If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated.

pedrocr 9y ago
>I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few devices can actually handle 4K. While your laptops screen might be able to handle it, your browser might not be able to decode h.265 at all, and might not be fast enough to decode h.264 at 4K resolutions. The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction. >Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers. There isn't "any number of providers". For relevant content my two options right now are Netflix and Prime Video, there is no third. >If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated. While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.
- zimpenfish 9y ago
  > There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction. There may well be licensing restrictions on the content which preclude them sending 4K video to unDRM'd or unverifi{ed,able} clients.
  - pedrocr 9y ago
    So not technical and completely unreasonable for content that they own themselves. There's no reason Netflix can't just send me House of Cards in 4K or Amazon can't send me The Grand Tour in 4K. Increasingly those are the shows I actually do want to watch as the two streaming giants overhaul the content business, further consolidating the industry. So they can't really hide behind the licensing restriction argument.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      > and completely unreasonable for content that they own themselves Well, no, because why would they want their own 4K content to be easily ripped and uploaded to Usenet?
      - zdkl 9y ago
        Oh come on, once the content is displayable it's piratable and they damn well know that. This is more a matter of restrictive terms and conditions they can enact due to their monopoly-like position.
        xorcist 9y ago
        Everybody wants to own the customer. It's true everywhere in the value chain, in every value chain. That's why they need you to install their app.
        zimpenfish 9y ago
        Streaming DRM'd video to a closed system (XBOX, PS4, set top box) is orders of magnitude less piratable than streaming video to an open system like Linux (DRM'd would be harder to pirate but I'm sure someone could lash up their own Chrome to dump the video after the unDRMing step.) (How would you get the video content out of a DRM'd stream to an XBOX?)
cyphar 9y ago
> First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. That argument may have worked in a world without HDCP and EME, but that's not the world we live in. The requirements for becoming part of HDCP cabal explicitly state that you must degrade the quality of non-HDCP streams[1]. This is not a natural limitation of the user's machine, it's an attempt to force users to use HDCP-compliant hardware and software so that they can view their content properly. This is of course not directly relevant to the discussion of Net Neutrality, but GP's point is entirely valid given that Netflix uses HDCP and was one of the authors of EME. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...
- pedrocr 9y ago
  >The requirements for becoming part of HDCP cabal explicitly state that you must degrade the quality of non-HDCP streams[1]. Your source only seems to support that if you have a HDCP stream and a non-DHCP output you need to degrade the quality. Is there actually a requirement that if I try to view my 4K family video that I captured with my own camera on a non-HDCP 4K projector that the content needs to be degraded? That would be a whole other can of worms of anti-competition. Where not even the argument that you can vote with your wallet would work (flimsy as it originally is anyway).
  - cyphar 9y ago
    Yeah, that was badly worded on my part. I meant that they have to degrade HDCP content if it's not being played through HDCP. Note that any combination of {graphics card,HDMI controller,OS,browser,monitor} may result in not being able to play HDCP content and thus your quality being degraded. The point stands that the reason for doing the degradation in that instance is because of DRM and not because of technical issues. I personally am not sure how I feel about artificially removing the ability to access high-quality streams based on the current machine I'm accessing a site over (which is what GP was talking about) -- it feels user-hostile because if I want to download the stream then I can't download it in any quality available. But it's not as bad as full-blown DRM. My mentioning of DRM was to point out that not all auto-degradation is benign.

by colde 9y ago

pedrocr 9y ago

>I think there is a huge difference here. First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. Very few devices can actually handle 4K. While your laptops screen might be able to handle it, your browser might not be able to decode h.265 at all, and might not be fast enough to decode h.264 at 4K resolutions. The exact same setup (Chrome on this Linux laptop) works just fine with 4K youtube streams. Yet both Netflix and Amazon have restrictions for 4K where it basically only works with closed set-top box type devices. There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction. >Secondly, if Netflix doesn't provide you the service you need, you can switch to Amazon, or Hulu or any of a number of providers. There isn't "any number of providers". For relevant content my two options right now are Netflix and Prime Video, there is no third. >If your ISP doesn't provide you a service without restrictions, plenty of people have no recourse. It isn't unusual for natural monopoly industries to be more heavily regulated. While I only have 2 choices, and those are the same two worldwide, I easily have 3 good ISP choices and those are local to each market, so worldwide there are hundreds or thousands. That's exactly my point. Worldwide the neutrality in content access is probably more important as it is a much more consolidated industry.

zimpenfish 9y ago
> There's no reasonable technical motivation for the restriction. There may well be licensing restrictions on the content which preclude them sending 4K video to unDRM'd or unverifi{ed,able} clients.
- pedrocr 9y ago
  So not technical and completely unreasonable for content that they own themselves. There's no reason Netflix can't just send me House of Cards in 4K or Amazon can't send me The Grand Tour in 4K. Increasingly those are the shows I actually do want to watch as the two streaming giants overhaul the content business, further consolidating the industry. So they can't really hide behind the licensing restriction argument.
  - zimpenfish 9y ago
    > and completely unreasonable for content that they own themselves Well, no, because why would they want their own 4K content to be easily ripped and uploaded to Usenet?
    - zdkl 9y ago
      Oh come on, once the content is displayable it's piratable and they damn well know that. This is more a matter of restrictive terms and conditions they can enact due to their monopoly-like position.
      - xorcist 9y ago
        Everybody wants to own the customer. It's true everywhere in the value chain, in every value chain. That's why they need you to install their app.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        Streaming DRM'd video to a closed system (XBOX, PS4, set top box) is orders of magnitude less piratable than streaming video to an open system like Linux (DRM'd would be harder to pirate but I'm sure someone could lash up their own Chrome to dump the video after the unDRMing step.) (How would you get the video content out of a DRM'd stream to an XBOX?)

cyphar 9y ago

> First of all, the restriction on 4K has a lot more to do with technical limitations than anything else. That argument may have worked in a world without HDCP and EME, but that's not the world we live in. The requirements for becoming part of HDCP cabal explicitly state that you must degrade the quality of non-HDCP streams[1]. This is not a natural limitation of the user's machine, it's an attempt to force users to use HDCP-compliant hardware and software so that they can view their content properly. This is of course not directly relevant to the discussion of Net Neutrality, but GP's point is entirely valid given that Netflix uses HDCP and was one of the authors of EME. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content...

pedrocr 9y ago
>The requirements for becoming part of HDCP cabal explicitly state that you must degrade the quality of non-HDCP streams[1]. Your source only seems to support that if you have a HDCP stream and a non-DHCP output you need to degrade the quality. Is there actually a requirement that if I try to view my 4K family video that I captured with my own camera on a non-HDCP 4K projector that the content needs to be degraded? That would be a whole other can of worms of anti-competition. Where not even the argument that you can vote with your wallet would work (flimsy as it originally is anyway).
- cyphar 9y ago
  Yeah, that was badly worded on my part. I meant that they have to degrade HDCP content if it's not being played through HDCP. Note that any combination of {graphics card,HDMI controller,OS,browser,monitor} may result in not being able to play HDCP content and thus your quality being degraded. The point stands that the reason for doing the degradation in that instance is because of DRM and not because of technical issues. I personally am not sure how I feel about artificially removing the ability to access high-quality streams based on the current machine I'm accessing a site over (which is what GP was talking about) -- it feels user-hostile because if I want to download the stream then I can't download it in any quality available. But it's not as bad as full-blown DRM. My mentioning of DRM was to point out that not all auto-degradation is benign.