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I never get why those idiots make it harder for paying customers to watch content, than for those just torrenting it. It's the same with Amazon Prime Video whic

I never get why those idiots make it harder for paying customers to watch content, than for those just torrenting it. It's the same with Amazon Prime Video which will get me a black screen on Linux or force me to SD Quality, while the torrented Movie runs just fine in 4K

Retr0id 9mo ago
I've spent a long time wondering the same thing. The standard answer is that it's fallout from the anti-anti-piracy cat and mouse game. The more conspiratorial answer is that bandwidth is expensive and streaming sites will take any excuse to serve you a lower resolution than what you actually paid for, while still being able to say that they technically support 4K. There are sensible-ish technical reasons why they can't deliver DRM'd 4K on linux, but when browser extensions can upgrade you to 4K there are no excuses on the technical level.
- TacoCommander 9mo ago
  We need to divorce "corporate" from "tech"
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    Never going to happen. Tech came from corporate.
- hermanzegerman 9mo ago
  The point is, people usually pay because it is more convenient for them than getting it illegally. But when I have to fiddle around for 30 Minutes to see a picture (it worked before until it suddenly didn't work anymore), pirating the movie is suddenly the better option. Because I certainly don't see a point in paying and wasting more of my time. And the piracy cat and mouse game is stupid, as in the End it's always Available illegaly, except for the people developing and selling DRM
- stavros 9mo ago
  Bandwidth is only expensive if you're getting it from Amazon or Google. Cloudflare gives it away for free.
  - Retr0id 9mo ago
    Netflix is responsible for 15% of global internet traffic. That's expensive no matter how you slice it, and dropping that by a mere 1% is a huge saving.
    - stavros 9mo ago
      Hm, true. Then again, I don't know if that's worth the reputational hit. These subscribers are paying for 4K.
- nitwit005 9mo ago
  Netflix does charge more for 4k, so they simply pass along the cost: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926
  - Retr0id 9mo ago
    Netflix still saves money when someone watches in a lower resolution.
    - nitwit005 9mo ago
      Yes, but what they care about is profits. People aren't going to pay for the expensive plan if they can't actually use the features of it.
      - Retr0id 9mo ago
        Most people who aren't getting proper 4K don't even notice.
        apparent 9mo ago
        Bingo. I mostly have watched Netflix for the last decade and recently tried Apple TV. It looks so much crisper. I didn't realize what I was missing.
    - bobdvb 9mo ago
      There's a fine line, reduce quality too far and customer satisfaction drops. Some customers will have a higher tolerance to dropping quality than others, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. So you do studies, you look at the impact of quality changes to customer churn and then you move the line appropriately.
      - direwolf20 9mo ago
        Marketing emphasizing 4K helps reduce this.
michaelt 9mo ago
Most users can't tell, and if you deliver the $18/month service while charging $25/month that's $7/month pure profit - money for nothing.
Cyph0n 9mo ago
For Netflix specifically; it’s because the groups that rip 4K content from Netflix burn a device (i.e. a Widevine L1 key). This is why they typically release 4K Netflix shows in batches. Here is a good thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/17ez7mi/how_come_it_takes_so_long_for_netflix_4k_content/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/17ez7mi/how_come_it...
- bigwheels 9mo ago
  Thank you for sharing the breadcrumb~ How does Netflix detect "suspicious" activity? Does $NFLX allow 4k streaming over GrapheneOS? If so, could you pin a different certificate and do some HTTP proxy traffic manipulation to obfuscate the device (presumably an Android phone) identity or otherwise work around the DRM? I want to understand more about this but unfortunately the reddit thread is bits and pieces scattered amongst clueless commentary, making it challenging to wade through.
  - Cyph0n 9mo ago
    I honestly have no clue! This is just a tidbit I randomly learned about haha.
  - coppsilgold 9mo ago
    They can trace a torrented 4K piece of content to the device (or private key) that ripped it using A/B watermarking. See AWS offering: (and probably what they use for Prime Video, Netflix has their own) For large-scale per-viewer, implement a content identification strategy that allows you to trace back to specific clients, such as per-user session-based watermarking. With this approach, media is conditioned during transcoding and the origin serves a uniquely identifiable pattern of media segments to the end user. A session to a user-mapping service receives encrypted user ID information in the header or cookies of the request context and uses this information to determine the uniquely identifiable pattern of media segments to serve to the viewer. This approach requires multiple distinctly watermarked copies of content to be transcoded, with a minimum of two sets of content for A/B watermarking. Forensic watermarking also requires YUV decompression, so encoding time for 4K feature length content can take upwards of 20 hours. DRM service providers in the AWS Partner Network (APN) are available to aid in the deployment of per-viewer content forensics. <https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/streaming-media-lens/detective-controls.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/streaming...> They also use a traitor tracing scheme (Tardos codes) such that if multiple pirates get together to try and remove the watermark they will fail, you would need an unreasonably large number of pirates to succeed for some length of time.
aljgz 9mo ago
It's simple: Lawyers creating market for themselves and other lawyers. A head of legal department at Netflix would have a better job and pay if ge has 50x more employees. Hence, the incentive to find ways to get involved in everything, even if it arguably hurts the company's revenue, let alone the rest of the market.
direwolf20 9mo ago
It's a legal contractual requirement with the companies who provide the content.

Retr0id 9mo ago

I've spent a long time wondering the same thing. The standard answer is that it's fallout from the anti-anti-piracy cat and mouse game. The more conspiratorial answer is that bandwidth is expensive and streaming sites will take any excuse to serve you a lower resolution than what you actually paid for, while still being able to say that they technically support 4K. There are sensible-ish technical reasons why they can't deliver DRM'd 4K on linux, but when browser extensions can upgrade you to 4K there are no excuses on the technical level.

TacoCommander 9mo ago
We need to divorce "corporate" from "tech"
- reactordev 9mo ago
  Never going to happen. Tech came from corporate.
hermanzegerman 9mo ago
The point is, people usually pay because it is more convenient for them than getting it illegally. But when I have to fiddle around for 30 Minutes to see a picture (it worked before until it suddenly didn't work anymore), pirating the movie is suddenly the better option. Because I certainly don't see a point in paying and wasting more of my time. And the piracy cat and mouse game is stupid, as in the End it's always Available illegaly, except for the people developing and selling DRM
stavros 9mo ago
Bandwidth is only expensive if you're getting it from Amazon or Google. Cloudflare gives it away for free.
- Retr0id 9mo ago
  Netflix is responsible for 15% of global internet traffic. That's expensive no matter how you slice it, and dropping that by a mere 1% is a huge saving.
  - stavros 9mo ago
    Hm, true. Then again, I don't know if that's worth the reputational hit. These subscribers are paying for 4K.
nitwit005 9mo ago
Netflix does charge more for 4k, so they simply pass along the cost: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926
- Retr0id 9mo ago
  Netflix still saves money when someone watches in a lower resolution.
  - nitwit005 9mo ago
    Yes, but what they care about is profits. People aren't going to pay for the expensive plan if they can't actually use the features of it.
    - Retr0id 9mo ago
      Most people who aren't getting proper 4K don't even notice.
      - apparent 9mo ago
        Bingo. I mostly have watched Netflix for the last decade and recently tried Apple TV. It looks so much crisper. I didn't realize what I was missing.
  - bobdvb 9mo ago
    There's a fine line, reduce quality too far and customer satisfaction drops. Some customers will have a higher tolerance to dropping quality than others, but you've got to draw the line somewhere. So you do studies, you look at the impact of quality changes to customer churn and then you move the line appropriately.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      Marketing emphasizing 4K helps reduce this.

michaelt 9mo ago

Most users can't tell, and if you deliver the $18/month service while charging $25/month that's $7/month pure profit - money for nothing.

Cyph0n 9mo ago

For Netflix specifically; it’s because the groups that rip 4K content from Netflix burn a device (i.e. a Widevine L1 key). This is why they typically release 4K Netflix shows in batches. Here is a good thread on the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/17ez7mi/how_come_it_takes_so_long_for_netflix_4k_content/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/17ez7mi/how_come_it...

bigwheels 9mo ago
Thank you for sharing the breadcrumb~ How does Netflix detect "suspicious" activity? Does $NFLX allow 4k streaming over GrapheneOS? If so, could you pin a different certificate and do some HTTP proxy traffic manipulation to obfuscate the device (presumably an Android phone) identity or otherwise work around the DRM? I want to understand more about this but unfortunately the reddit thread is bits and pieces scattered amongst clueless commentary, making it challenging to wade through.
- Cyph0n 9mo ago
  I honestly have no clue! This is just a tidbit I randomly learned about haha.
- coppsilgold 9mo ago
  They can trace a torrented 4K piece of content to the device (or private key) that ripped it using A/B watermarking. See AWS offering: (and probably what they use for Prime Video, Netflix has their own) For large-scale per-viewer, implement a content identification strategy that allows you to trace back to specific clients, such as per-user session-based watermarking. With this approach, media is conditioned during transcoding and the origin serves a uniquely identifiable pattern of media segments to the end user. A session to a user-mapping service receives encrypted user ID information in the header or cookies of the request context and uses this information to determine the uniquely identifiable pattern of media segments to serve to the viewer. This approach requires multiple distinctly watermarked copies of content to be transcoded, with a minimum of two sets of content for A/B watermarking. Forensic watermarking also requires YUV decompression, so encoding time for 4K feature length content can take upwards of 20 hours. DRM service providers in the AWS Partner Network (APN) are available to aid in the deployment of per-viewer content forensics. <https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/streaming-media-lens/detective-controls.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/streaming...> They also use a traitor tracing scheme (Tardos codes) such that if multiple pirates get together to try and remove the watermark they will fail, you would need an unreasonably large number of pirates to succeed for some length of time.

aljgz 9mo ago

It's simple: Lawyers creating market for themselves and other lawyers. A head of legal department at Netflix would have a better job and pay if ge has 50x more employees. Hence, the incentive to find ways to get involved in everything, even if it arguably hurts the company's revenue, let alone the rest of the market.

direwolf20 9mo ago

It's a legal contractual requirement with the companies who provide the content.