> Remember when everyone was up in arms about W3C standardizing DRM? I'm really surprised how well that actually turned out. Whatever you say about DRM (and I

> Remember when everyone was up in arms about W3C standardizing DRM? I'm really surprised how well that actually turned out. Whatever you say about DRM (and I'm no fan of it myself), at least W3C's version is as open as it can be. You're prevented from making a copy of whatever you watch (which, to be entirely honest, is a very reasonable precaution in the age of streaming), but you can still write browser extensions[1] or even custom Electron apps[2] that interact with the video element in other ways. If you want automatic skipping of intros, changing playback rate where such functionality isn't supported, access to community subtitles or subtitle-related tools useful when learning foreign languages[3], automatic subtitle reading (with a synthetic voice) or even a completely custom Multi View interface, it's all possible. You can even do synchronized playback across multiple users[4], as long as all of them are authorized to play the relevant media. You could have achieve none of this if you had to use a Flash-based player with no programmatic access to its state whatsoever. It's the best compromise we could have hoped for. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/netflix-extended/gjcgfkhgpaccjpjokgpekpgpphgaanej https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/netflix-extended/g... [2] https://multiviewer.app/ https://multiviewer.app/ [3] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/netflix-dual-subtitle-for/oejbkdefifpkcldpkdfkhigapiifmjcl https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/netflix-dual-subti... [4] https://www.teleparty.com/ https://www.teleparty.com/