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Netflix To Come To Linux Via HTML5
- d135-1r43 15y agoThey should come to Europe before they come to Linux ;)
- dasil003 15y agoThis is fascinating. How does the DRM work?
- wahnfrieden 15y agoThis is probably what the plugin is for. It wasn't clear to me whether this is a normal Chrome extension, or a "full" plugin on the order of Flash or Java. In either case, it's likely not pure W3C HTML/JS.
- daedhel 15y agoMy thoughts exactly. How will they make HTML5 DRM friendly? I thought it was designed to be an open vehicle...
- chacha102 15y agoAccording to the byline, this article was posted well over a month ago. While it might still happen, it would be really hard to pin a time frame on it, considering that Google I/O has come and passed. Still would be looking forward to this though.
- jevinskie 15y agoNetflix has already used HTML 5 for the movie browsing interface on the PS3 (with a custom webkit build IIRC). I highly doubt that they are using <video>, they wouldn't stream the video without some kind of DRM. Unless perhaps the plugin allows use of <video> with DRM content. My guess is that the plugin handles all of the video playback with some kind of <object>.
- wahnfrieden 15y agoThey are in fact not using <video> for the PS3 player. Here's a source: http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-choose-html5-for-user.html http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-choose-html5-for-...
- chaselee 15y agoThis means I can finally get rid of the part of my laptop I call a Netflix player...aka Windows 7.
- ramidarigaz 15y agoExcellent! I've been holding off on renewing my Netflix subscription for just this reason. Maybe it's time to reactivate?
- naner 15y agoThis doesn't make any sense. Netflix will not (cannot) stream anything without DRM protection due to licensing agreements. The video element from HTML5 obviously doesn't have any mechanisms for content protection. Perhaps Netflix is producing a NPAPI video player plugin for Linux browsers but that would mean they are not using the HTML5 video element.
- stanleydrew 15y agoAgreed. I'm guessing they are using the term HTML5 rather loosely here. They may have incorporated some other aspects of HTML5, but I don't see how <video> could be part of what they are planning to deliver.
- pyre 15y agoCouldn't they be developing a plugin that adds support for whatever DRM/Video solution they are using, so that the browser can play the video via the <video> element?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rdtsc 15y agoMight not be that easy. The DRM should essentially provide protection from the content distributor all they way to the hardware. If they are just play it via the <video> element, users can just scrape that content. With Silverlight or other proprietary drivers on proprietary OSes, they can have an agreement with those company to guarantee the DRM protection gets enforced. Now with open sourced drivers, that is not going to happen easily, as users can just recompile the driver with the DRM check commented out.
- aidenn0 15y agoMeh, there are commercial products out there that will rip the video from netflix on windows, so that level of DRM is really a myth anyway.
- sixtofour 15y agoThis will be great, I won't have to downshift to Windows to watch a Netflix movie. Hopefully the quality will be better in HTML5 than Netflix's current offering. While the price is right, dark scenes are pixelated in NF movies over cable internet. I have recently watched a few movies over Google's Youtube movie service, and Amazon's. Both use flash, and both have much better quality, at least on my laptop. As I watch a movie on flash I wonder why NF can't figure out how to get equivalent quality. And there's also Silverlight, which freezes up my laptop on about 10-20% of attempts to watch a NF movie. Be good to have that gone.
- adamjernst 15y agoTheir iPad app is also clearly HTML5. Sadly this means the UX is pretty crappy.
- juiceandjuice 15y agoMy guess is this is using NativeClient to manage the DRM. You don't need Silverlight to implement the DRM stack for PlayReady. Once you license it, you can implement the DRM stack any way you want, be it hardware, software, etc... otherwise this wouldn't work on iPhone either.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoThat's an interesting idea, first time I've heard of using NativeClient for that.
- ysangkok 15y agoThis doesn't even work in Chrome unless you enable it. They are not using this, it would make them to dependent on an immature technology.
- juiceandjuice 15y agoNetflix doesn't work in Chrome on Linux period, what makes you so sure they won't use it in the future when they are ready to release? Despite being immature, it's a very logical choice.
- ysangkok 15y agoThere are more Firefox/Windows users than there are Chrome/Linux users.
- jrockway 15y agoWhat's the point of DRM when I can just connect gdb to this process and suck the video right out of memory after it's been encrypted? Or, what's the point of DRM when I can just write my own video driver? Wait, what's the point of DRM again? I can already get every movie ever made for free in HD on the Internet.
- jbk 15y agoExactly. The important part is on the "video driver" part. People have asked us to implement DRM in VLC since a long time, over and over. At the end it is impossible, because when an code interface is know, you can always switch one part and dump the stream; the part being a filter, a video renderer or just a video driver. This is why HDCP was implemented (and failed, btw) to have a chain of trust.
- yid 15y agoRight, but the lower down in the stack they go, the more they deter the "casual" hacker. I think they want to bring down the sheer number of pirates to a level where the vast majority of media won't be pirated.
- jrockway 15y agoThis doesn't make sense, though. You can just share your account credentials and activate your friends' TVs. Then they can watch all the video they want. Similarly, people don't pirate movies by having a close friend rip Netflix streams. They go on The Pirate Bay and download the torrent. Preventing piracy means you need to prevent people from ripping the disks or streams in the first place... but the people who do that aren't "casual hackers", they are as hardcore as priates get. And if just one person figures out how to do it, it's broken forever. (I assume there are plenty of programs available to rip Blu-Ray disks now, since the key for each disk is known and publicly available. It only takes one person to do that, and then the DRM is nothing but a waste of CPU cycles and engineering talent.)
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- MatthewPhillips 15y agoWhy don't they just use flash? Hulu uses it without a problem. It's obviously secure enough. It's available on most computers, including Chrome (and Chrome OS). What's the fuss about?
- windsurfer 15y agoMaybe they don't want to pay for the flash media server license? With HTML5 you can also target mobile a lot easier (though I'm sure a downloadable application would be better).
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoHTML5 is a misnomer; it's only used for UI, actual playback is done via a plugin. I read in the past that they chose Silverlight because it allows them to dynamically control video quality based on fluctuating connection speed. Has Adobe not built that into flash yet?
- windsurfer 15y agoNo, only for p2p streaming. You'd need a flash media server to get dynamic video quality from a server, so it's not built into flash.
- michael_h 15y agoOn my netbook, hulu/flash uses 100% of the cpu to produce unwatchable video in full screen, while netflix (today) uses around 10% and looks just fine. On my linux desktop, flash in full screen is even worse than my netbook.
- th0ma5 15y agoThank you for posting this. Linux Flash is insane, and it is crazy that Adobe can have any respect for putting it out the for download in the state it seems to be perpetually in. It is nuts specifically because Compiz can zoom into this video fullscreen without issue, but hitting a fullscreen button 9 out of 10 times is cause for flicker and tearing. The only two instances I've had some good success are 1) Google Video and surprisingly 2) Amazon Prime.