23 ms·

Netflix ditches Silverlight with support for HTML5 video in IE11

216 points by mindstab 13y ago

bsg75 13y ago
What does this mean for anything not running IE11?
- ihuman 13y ago
  Hope that your browser supports whatever method Netflix is using
- bsimpson 13y ago
  In the near term, nothing.
- dstorey 13y ago
  Netflix already support ChromeOS on Samsung Chrome books using this method. Only that Chrome doesn’t support an end to end solution, as it doesn’t support the Crypto API, so Netflix rolled their own. They also support a different DRM plug-in. As this involves three different specs, which are all from the W3C, this means that it will work in any browser that implements them, and supports the DRM that Netflix uses. Microsoft and Google are already on board. I expect Opera will inherit this from Blink/Chromium. As both YouTube and Netflix support this already, I wouldn’t be surprised to see WebKit and Firefox/Gecko implement it eventually.
jdangu 13y ago
Incidentally, that puts another nail in the coffin for Adobe Flash, which is still widely used for DRM'd video streaming.
- scribu 13y ago
  I never thought I would say this, but I think I would prefer Adobe Flash and other browser plugins instead of making DRM a built-in feature of the web.
  - randallu 13y ago
    At least as a browser vendor you just had to implement NPAPI to get Flash -- EME requires contracts and money.
Zikes 13y ago
Netflix will be taking advantage of EMEs for HTML5 DRM in IE11. Microsoft has not confirmed IE11 will be supported in any OS other than Windows 8.1. Older versions of IE, including IE10 on Windows 7, will still require Silverlight, meaning it still will not die. If this is to be a nail in Silverlight's coffin, it's a very tiny one. Edit: Per freehunter's comment below, Microsoft has confirmed eventual IE11 support for Windows 7.
- freehunter 13y ago
  Many sites are reporting that Microsoft has confirmed IE11 support for Windows 7 [1]. The question is when, not if. [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043129/internet-explorer-11-will-land-on-windows-7-someday.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043129/internet-explorer-11-...
  - tracker1 13y ago
    It took an awfully long time to get IE10 for Windows 7. Hopefully this time it will go faster.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    Is Microsoft really releasing a new version of IE with support for only 2 major (8.1, 8.2, etc are just service packs anyway) versions of Windows back? I guess that's good for everyone, though, since it means IE won't have a huge market share anymore.
    - mynameisvlad 13y ago
      I really don't think it's as big of a problem as you're trying to make it out to be.
      - Zikes 13y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
mindstab 13y ago
And so in a small part the MSIE team is back to "creating" new "standards" for the web because they were the first on board so the get more input to the final product. I hate to say it (in part because I'm not 100% sold on web DRM, tho netflix on Linux will be nice...) but by being sticks in the mud over the issue Google and Mozilla are now going to be following IE's lead for probably the first time in a while
- ndesaulniers 13y ago
  Over my dead body.
- wmf 13y ago
  Google implemented DRM in Chrome before IE did.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  These proposed changes to the standard do not add DRM. Rather they add a standardized interface between javascript in a browser and a proprietary binary blob that actually contains the DRM. Why do you think this would improve the situation of Netflix on Linux? All you are going to have is a fancy API with nothing to plug into it.
- ndesaulniers 13y ago
  Also, standardizing EME will not bring Netflix to Linux (the most common misunderstanding around EME). Please name one CDM for a Linux distro other than ChromeOS. Widevine is available only in ChromeOS, and Playready is only available in Windows. So looks like you have to buy one of those Operating Systems to have Netflix.
- knome 13y ago
  > tho netflix on Linux will be nice... What's annoying is that you can run netflix on linux right now[1] via `netflix-desktop`, which combines `firefox`, `silverlight` and a modified copy of `wine` to access their site. If they switch over to these new plugins and the plugins are IE-specific, we'll be locked out again. [1] * https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop * http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/ http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/
fatjokes 13y ago
Thank god. I hate Silverlight. It's so resource intensive. EDIT: I just felt like ranting against Silverlight some more. The only reason I use Silverlight is because of Netflix. I run it in Chrome on my Mac Air. Besides being buggy and resource hungry, it also doesn't stop my Mac from dimming even when watching a video in fullscreen, unlike YouTube videos, etc. (Could this be because it doesn't use the graphics card?) I watched a movie on it the other day and the audio/video kept going out of sync due to lag (not a network problem) and I had to reload the page every 5 minutes. Aaargh! Death to Silverlight!
- arbitrage 13y ago
  Don't forget buggy as hell! It's got that going for it, too.
- rubberband 13y ago
  Are you implying that Flash is any less resource intensive or buggy?
  - kenbellows 13y ago
    Where did he mention Flash? HTML5 video is the alternative being discussed here, and it's far less resource intensive and buggy (depending on the video format), from my experience at least.
    - jspaur 13y ago
      To be fair, he mentioned Youtube, which even in Chrome uses Flash by default.
      - bestdayever 13y ago
        http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 granted it doesn't always work.
    - smackfu 13y ago
      AFAIK, HTML5 video on a Mac pretty much requires it to be H264, which Apple has optimized their whole stack for.
isomorphic 13y ago
Quoting Netflix, from the article: We expect premium video on the web to continue to shift away from using proprietary plugin technologies to using these new Premium Video Extensions. Quoting the article: According to Netflix, Microsoft made this possible by implementing three features in its still-unfinished IE11: The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) using Microsoft PlayReady DRM. Netflix is using some doublespeak here. Yes, Silverlight was a "proprietary plugin", but they've just shifted to using proprietary DRM with proprietary extensions to HTML5. They got rid of the plugin--great! But they've replaced one proprietary experience with another.
- makomk 13y ago
  In fact, they've replaced one proprietary experience with an even more proprietary one. Silverlight was available on more than one browser and OS; this is Windows-only and IE11-only. I believe Netflix are already using EME on Chromebooks but they have a different, totally incompatible DRM scheme (Google's Widevine).
  - tmzt 13y ago
    But even so, the DRM system was not available cross-platform. Something like Moonlight could process the data but could not play back encrypted video using the Microsoft DRM system. Each platform will offer a different DRM implementation, but there would be only one HTML5 player and would use the same API on all systems. I assume that they will continue to use Silverlight on Windows prior to IE11.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  They will still be rendering the interface and probably the video with standard HTML5 components, in fact even the DRM - Browser mechanism is standardized. It's just that the DRM code itself may be proprietary. So this is still a step forward.
  - lukeschlather 13y ago
    Theoretically one piece of it is now cross-platform, however the core functionality only works on one platform, and actually seems explicitly engineered to be incompatible with the Ubuntu computer I have hooked up to the TV in my living room. This is a pretty disappointing move, since I'm pretty sure Netflix will never run on that computer, and Netflix doesn't care.
kevincrane 13y ago
Are "Premium Media Extensions" also plugins? Because if so this didn't really get much better. It still means Linux users could be on the backburner until someone decides we can watch too. Until Mozilla and Google are on board this doesn't necessarily seem better from a "universally available" standpoint.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Yes. There is no reason to think that things which did not work on Linux before will suddenly start working just because this API is being crammed into HTML5.
  - mikeryan 13y ago
    I'm not necessarily saying that Linux will ever be a high priority, but having to only provide a PlayReady Media Extension for a few browsers on Linux is a much more reasonable effort then providing the whole Silverlight or Flash runtime.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      They would have no control over the rest of the stack. If netflix created a linux build of a DRM binary that worked with their service then it would become the tool of choice for everyone that wanted to rip/upload to usenet the latest Netflix exclusive content. Also they frankly just don't care about linux users. If this were something that they were interested in having, they would have had Netflix on Chrome on 'regular GNU desktop' Linux months ago when it started working with Chrome on a Linux kernel with ChromeOS.
      - tjoff 13y ago
        Does it matter what tool or OS people use to get rid of the DRM?
        jlgreco 13y ago
        Since DRM is all about making it inconvenient/difficult to delay the inevitable, yes. They are not going to do anything that will only help a very fraction of their subscribers but would streamline, let alone automate, the ripping process.
wamatt 13y ago
The ideological debate is potentially interesting: Does DRM belong in HTML5? (and yes, it's hard not to view the Netflix/MS situation cynically) That said, ditching that godawful Silverlight plugin, is probably a welcome change from the customer experience perspective.
mortenjorck 13y ago
Am I the only one who, given the vast proliferation of mobile and TV-connected devices with Netflix clients over the past few years, can't even remember the last time they used the Silverlight app to stream something?
- lesslaw 13y ago
  I don't know but I use it every day. It is how Eurosport delivers its streaming channel to Windows. There is an Android and iOS version. The Android one doesn't allow the 3 hours rewing feature that Silverlight does and drops frames rather than buffering. http://player.eurosport.com/ http://player.eurosport.com/
- jaredmcateer 13y ago
  I used it every day because I find all HTPC media center implementations of netflix to be lacking so I use it straight through the browser.
mtgx 13y ago
The "good news" is that they are using web crypto, and knowing how many will try to crack Netflix's streaming now, this means the developers behind web crypto will be getting a lot of feedback and "bugs" to fix, and eventually make web crypto stronger, and maybe some day we can finally use it for e-mail and storage services.
- gue5t 13y ago
  This doesn't make sense, because you have to have the key to play the video. Cryptography and security practices are the medical science to DRM's snake oil, and I don't really expect this usage will help security at all. A "known key" attack isn't an attack at all, cryptographically speaking. In addition: it doesn't even look like they're meaningfully using "web crypto" APIs, but rather the much-debated proposed DRM blob APIs.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    I only know the basics of crypto, but couldn't the key be hidden and itself encrypted within the machine code for IE, and then authenticated via HTTPS? I would think this is mainly a problem for open-source browsers, which would require closed-source plugins.
    - ZitchDog 13y ago
      You can't hide a key for long. And you can't encrypt a key without another key.
      - lukifer 13y ago
        But doesn't client-side encryption already function at the OS level? For instance, the keys for FairPlay and the App Store have not been cracked, as far as I know.
        X-Istence 13y ago
        FairPlay has been cracked a lot of times, there have been many tools to remove the DRM from FairPlay encrypted songs/videos/books. App store apps have also been cracked in that their keys have been stripped, on a jail broken phone you can run all those apps without needing a valid key.
tomphoolery 13y ago
Nice!! I've been holding out on downloading a new version of Silverlight because I heard this was just around the corner. Now I get to uninstall the last MS product on my machine!
- Daiz 13y ago
  >Now I get to uninstall the last MS product on my machine! ...Except you'd have to install Windows 8.1 and use IE11 in order to use the "wonderful" HTML5 Netflix with their proprietary DRM blob that has even less compatibility than Flash and Silverlight.
codereflection 13y ago
This is interesting. Google still hasn't completely converted over to HTML5 video for YouTube. You've been able to opt in to the trial for years now (http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5). But it seems that more than half the videos I watch are still using the crappy old Flash player. Content wise, YouTube has way more content to convert to be able to take advantage of HTML5. I wonder if Netflix is having to convert video on the backend for this as well. Or if they're just using a base format that allows for delivery over Silverlight and HTML5 without having to re-encode and store. But they wouldn't really be re-encoding on the fly though, would they? That would seem to be hugely resource intensive. Does anyone know more about how they're doing this on the backend?
- lloeki 13y ago
  > But it seems that more than half the videos I watch are still using the crappy old Flash player. That's because of the ads. With things like ClickToFlash or youtube-dl, you notice that most videos are actually available as MPEG4 and/or WebM.
  - Daiz 13y ago
    The Flash player is playing the exact same H.264 video that you could get with the HTML5 player.
    - codereflection 13y ago
      Then why do they bring up the Flash player when I've opted in to the HTML5 preview?
      - Daiz 13y ago
        For ads (and DRM).
        MatthewPhillips 13y ago
        The HTML5 player can play ads too...
driverdan 13y ago
Here's the EFF's formal objection to including DRM in HTML specs: https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/w3c-formal-objection-html-wg https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/w3c-formal-objection-html-wg
shmerl 13y ago
Netflix was and remains DRMed, which is enough of a reason to avoid them.
lupinglade 13y ago
About time. Now if they only added some good movies...
ebbv 13y ago
Nice Frank Lutz-ian reterming of HTML5 video DRM extensions as "premium extensions".
- isomorphic 13y ago
  Netflix is indeed using some slippery and perhaps contradictory wording that has passed through at least one marketing filter. Although we may interpret "premium" to connote "better", the usage meaning "something you have to pay" is accurate. Perhaps we could take back the language and start referring to the extensions as "Media Fee Extensions"?
  - mtgx 13y ago
    I think it has nothing to do with being paid - it's not like you pay for the plugin itself. Plus, they wouldn't want you to think about having to pay for it anyway. I think in this case it's just a meaningless word introduced to make it sound better than the "proprietary plugins" like Silverlight and Flash. I think their alternatives were naming it like "Awesome Viewing Experience Extension" or "Netflix True HD Vision Extension", or something like that. In each case they wouldn't mean what they normally mean, and would be used in a misleading way just to give you a "good feeling" about having DRM on the web.
    - ebbv 13y ago
      The issue is there's already accurate words to describe these extensions; DRM. But the accurate words have negative connotations so they avoid them on purpose and try to use positive ones which may be technically accurate but wouldn't be how anyone would normally choose to describe them. This is the definition of spin.
      - Daiz 13y ago
        I think we should just all start calling these extensions either something like "Digital Restriction Extensions" (DRE for short) or just plain and simply "DRM Extensions". If misleading garbage like "Premium Media Extensions" were left to the likes of Netflix press releases, reporting on the subject would be much more truthful.
ck2 13y ago
This means netflix might finally come to the raspberry pi! Far more exciting than IE11
- Daiz 13y ago
  No, it won't. As far as compatibility goes, EME is even worse than something like Silverlight. This should be evident just from the fact that in order to use HTML5 Netflix, you either need a) IE11 on Windows 8.1 or b) an official Google Chromebook with Google-provided image and which hasn't been rooted. In comparison, even Silverlight has a pretty amazing track record as far as compatibility goes.
  - dstorey 13y ago
    EME, MSE, and Web Crypto are very new specifications. They’re just starting to be rolled out in browsers. They’re not going to be rolled out everywhere overnight. H.264 video codec is on pretty much every major browser now, including Firefox. This wasn’t the case when browsers first supported the video element. It is a similar situation to EME and friends today. Including the potential licensing fee (I assume vendors have to licence the DRM module to plug into EME or get it from the underlying OS in the same way to how they have to licence H.264, but I'm not sure about this area)
downrightmike 13y ago
About effing time
dave1010uk 13y ago
Can we stop calling video that uses extensions "HTML5 video" (even if it may be part of the HTML spec)? I suggest we call it "EME video".
jebblue 13y ago
Can you say you are supporting HTML5 if you just get in bed with Microsoft?
- dstorey 13y ago
  I don‘t see why not. Two of the editors of the HTML5.1 spec are Microsoft representatives: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/ http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/
  - jebblue 13y ago
    If you have to say they will support HTML5 but only on xyz browsers or OS'es then it's like a gas station saying they support Regular but only for Ford and General Motors cars. The reason I can say that is any _other_ site that claims HTML5, works fine on my Chrome browser on Ubuntu.
jebblue 13y ago
This works great on Linux, this is true HTML5 support (or they say it's HTML5 - and it works): http://www.videojs.com/ http://www.videojs.com/
adamconroy 13y ago
As pointed out by many, this is even more proprietary than any plugin. Microsoft are fricken idiots, they are trying to be hip and open standards etc but nobody is going to buy it, at the same time they are annoying everyone who couldn't care less and probably don't even know what a plugin is, on top of disenfranchising legions of developers.
- humbledrone 13y ago
  You say nobody is going to buy it, but doesn't this article show that Netflix "bought" into it?
  - adamconroy 13y ago
    Sorry for the ambiguity. My intention was to communicate that I didn't think anyone would buy the idea that MS is hip and an open-standards advocate.
denibertovic 13y ago
there's really too much of this going on lately...i hate the path on which we are on....it's a slippery slope.
frankcaron 13y ago
I'm curious. With all the railing around Flash and its obsolescence, is Silverlight destined to go the same route? I don't hear much about it anymore, particularly in the enterprise and the video provider space in which I currently work, where things like Verimatrix and Azuki are mentioned far more often than Flash/Silverlight. Anyone have any intel on any major projects that use Silverlight aside from Netflix?
alanbyrne 13y ago
Does this mean it will now support Surround Sound?
Sonicmouse 13y ago
Exchange one crappy plugin for another... Way to innovate.

216 points by mindstab 13y ago

bsg75 13y ago

What does this mean for anything not running IE11?

ihuman 13y ago
Hope that your browser supports whatever method Netflix is using
bsimpson 13y ago
In the near term, nothing.
dstorey 13y ago
Netflix already support ChromeOS on Samsung Chrome books using this method. Only that Chrome doesn’t support an end to end solution, as it doesn’t support the Crypto API, so Netflix rolled their own. They also support a different DRM plug-in. As this involves three different specs, which are all from the W3C, this means that it will work in any browser that implements them, and supports the DRM that Netflix uses. Microsoft and Google are already on board. I expect Opera will inherit this from Blink/Chromium. As both YouTube and Netflix support this already, I wouldn’t be surprised to see WebKit and Firefox/Gecko implement it eventually.

jdangu 13y ago

Incidentally, that puts another nail in the coffin for Adobe Flash, which is still widely used for DRM'd video streaming.

scribu 13y ago
I never thought I would say this, but I think I would prefer Adobe Flash and other browser plugins instead of making DRM a built-in feature of the web.
- randallu 13y ago
  At least as a browser vendor you just had to implement NPAPI to get Flash -- EME requires contracts and money.

Zikes 13y ago

Netflix will be taking advantage of EMEs for HTML5 DRM in IE11. Microsoft has not confirmed IE11 will be supported in any OS other than Windows 8.1. Older versions of IE, including IE10 on Windows 7, will still require Silverlight, meaning it still will not die. If this is to be a nail in Silverlight's coffin, it's a very tiny one. Edit: Per freehunter's comment below, Microsoft has confirmed eventual IE11 support for Windows 7.

freehunter 13y ago
Many sites are reporting that Microsoft has confirmed IE11 support for Windows 7 [1]. The question is when, not if. [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043129/internet-explorer-11-will-land-on-windows-7-someday.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2043129/internet-explorer-11-...
- tracker1 13y ago
  It took an awfully long time to get IE10 for Windows 7. Hopefully this time it will go faster.
- mtgx 13y ago
  Is Microsoft really releasing a new version of IE with support for only 2 major (8.1, 8.2, etc are just service packs anyway) versions of Windows back? I guess that's good for everyone, though, since it means IE won't have a huge market share anymore.
  - mynameisvlad 13y ago
    I really don't think it's as big of a problem as you're trying to make it out to be.
    - Zikes 13y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

mindstab 13y ago

And so in a small part the MSIE team is back to "creating" new "standards" for the web because they were the first on board so the get more input to the final product. I hate to say it (in part because I'm not 100% sold on web DRM, tho netflix on Linux will be nice...) but by being sticks in the mud over the issue Google and Mozilla are now going to be following IE's lead for probably the first time in a while

ndesaulniers 13y ago
Over my dead body.
wmf 13y ago
Google implemented DRM in Chrome before IE did.
jlgreco 13y ago
These proposed changes to the standard do not add DRM. Rather they add a standardized interface between javascript in a browser and a proprietary binary blob that actually contains the DRM. Why do you think this would improve the situation of Netflix on Linux? All you are going to have is a fancy API with nothing to plug into it.
ndesaulniers 13y ago
Also, standardizing EME will not bring Netflix to Linux (the most common misunderstanding around EME). Please name one CDM for a Linux distro other than ChromeOS. Widevine is available only in ChromeOS, and Playready is only available in Windows. So looks like you have to buy one of those Operating Systems to have Netflix.
knome 13y ago
> tho netflix on Linux will be nice... What's annoying is that you can run netflix on linux right now[1] via `netflix-desktop`, which combines `firefox`, `silverlight` and a modified copy of `wine` to access their site. If they switch over to these new plugins and the plugins are IE-specific, we'll be locked out again. [1] * https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop * http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/ http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/

fatjokes 13y ago

Thank god. I hate Silverlight. It's so resource intensive. EDIT: I just felt like ranting against Silverlight some more. The only reason I use Silverlight is because of Netflix. I run it in Chrome on my Mac Air. Besides being buggy and resource hungry, it also doesn't stop my Mac from dimming even when watching a video in fullscreen, unlike YouTube videos, etc. (Could this be because it doesn't use the graphics card?) I watched a movie on it the other day and the audio/video kept going out of sync due to lag (not a network problem) and I had to reload the page every 5 minutes. Aaargh! Death to Silverlight!

arbitrage 13y ago
Don't forget buggy as hell! It's got that going for it, too.
rubberband 13y ago
Are you implying that Flash is any less resource intensive or buggy?
- kenbellows 13y ago
  Where did he mention Flash? HTML5 video is the alternative being discussed here, and it's far less resource intensive and buggy (depending on the video format), from my experience at least.
  - jspaur 13y ago
    To be fair, he mentioned Youtube, which even in Chrome uses Flash by default.
    - bestdayever 13y ago
      http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 granted it doesn't always work.
  - smackfu 13y ago
    AFAIK, HTML5 video on a Mac pretty much requires it to be H264, which Apple has optimized their whole stack for.

isomorphic 13y ago

Quoting Netflix, from the article: We expect premium video on the web to continue to shift away from using proprietary plugin technologies to using these new Premium Video Extensions. Quoting the article: According to Netflix, Microsoft made this possible by implementing three features in its still-unfinished IE11: The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) using Microsoft PlayReady DRM. Netflix is using some doublespeak here. Yes, Silverlight was a "proprietary plugin", but they've just shifted to using proprietary DRM with proprietary extensions to HTML5. They got rid of the plugin--great! But they've replaced one proprietary experience with another.

makomk 13y ago
In fact, they've replaced one proprietary experience with an even more proprietary one. Silverlight was available on more than one browser and OS; this is Windows-only and IE11-only. I believe Netflix are already using EME on Chromebooks but they have a different, totally incompatible DRM scheme (Google's Widevine).
- tmzt 13y ago
  But even so, the DRM system was not available cross-platform. Something like Moonlight could process the data but could not play back encrypted video using the Microsoft DRM system. Each platform will offer a different DRM implementation, but there would be only one HTML5 player and would use the same API on all systems. I assume that they will continue to use Silverlight on Windows prior to IE11.
jiggy2011 13y ago
They will still be rendering the interface and probably the video with standard HTML5 components, in fact even the DRM - Browser mechanism is standardized. It's just that the DRM code itself may be proprietary. So this is still a step forward.
- lukeschlather 13y ago
  Theoretically one piece of it is now cross-platform, however the core functionality only works on one platform, and actually seems explicitly engineered to be incompatible with the Ubuntu computer I have hooked up to the TV in my living room. This is a pretty disappointing move, since I'm pretty sure Netflix will never run on that computer, and Netflix doesn't care.

kevincrane 13y ago

Are "Premium Media Extensions" also plugins? Because if so this didn't really get much better. It still means Linux users could be on the backburner until someone decides we can watch too. Until Mozilla and Google are on board this doesn't necessarily seem better from a "universally available" standpoint.

jlgreco 13y ago
Yes. There is no reason to think that things which did not work on Linux before will suddenly start working just because this API is being crammed into HTML5.
- mikeryan 13y ago
  I'm not necessarily saying that Linux will ever be a high priority, but having to only provide a PlayReady Media Extension for a few browsers on Linux is a much more reasonable effort then providing the whole Silverlight or Flash runtime.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    They would have no control over the rest of the stack. If netflix created a linux build of a DRM binary that worked with their service then it would become the tool of choice for everyone that wanted to rip/upload to usenet the latest Netflix exclusive content. Also they frankly just don't care about linux users. If this were something that they were interested in having, they would have had Netflix on Chrome on 'regular GNU desktop' Linux months ago when it started working with Chrome on a Linux kernel with ChromeOS.
    - tjoff 13y ago
      Does it matter what tool or OS people use to get rid of the DRM?
      - jlgreco 13y ago
        Since DRM is all about making it inconvenient/difficult to delay the inevitable, yes. They are not going to do anything that will only help a very fraction of their subscribers but would streamline, let alone automate, the ripping process.

wamatt 13y ago

The ideological debate is potentially interesting: Does DRM belong in HTML5? (and yes, it's hard not to view the Netflix/MS situation cynically) That said, ditching that godawful Silverlight plugin, is probably a welcome change from the customer experience perspective.

mortenjorck 13y ago

Am I the only one who, given the vast proliferation of mobile and TV-connected devices with Netflix clients over the past few years, can't even remember the last time they used the Silverlight app to stream something?

lesslaw 13y ago
I don't know but I use it every day. It is how Eurosport delivers its streaming channel to Windows. There is an Android and iOS version. The Android one doesn't allow the 3 hours rewing feature that Silverlight does and drops frames rather than buffering. http://player.eurosport.com/ http://player.eurosport.com/
jaredmcateer 13y ago
I used it every day because I find all HTPC media center implementations of netflix to be lacking so I use it straight through the browser.

mtgx 13y ago

The "good news" is that they are using web crypto, and knowing how many will try to crack Netflix's streaming now, this means the developers behind web crypto will be getting a lot of feedback and "bugs" to fix, and eventually make web crypto stronger, and maybe some day we can finally use it for e-mail and storage services.

gue5t 13y ago
This doesn't make sense, because you have to have the key to play the video. Cryptography and security practices are the medical science to DRM's snake oil, and I don't really expect this usage will help security at all. A "known key" attack isn't an attack at all, cryptographically speaking. In addition: it doesn't even look like they're meaningfully using "web crypto" APIs, but rather the much-debated proposed DRM blob APIs.
- lukifer 13y ago
  I only know the basics of crypto, but couldn't the key be hidden and itself encrypted within the machine code for IE, and then authenticated via HTTPS? I would think this is mainly a problem for open-source browsers, which would require closed-source plugins.
  - ZitchDog 13y ago
    You can't hide a key for long. And you can't encrypt a key without another key.
    - lukifer 13y ago
      But doesn't client-side encryption already function at the OS level? For instance, the keys for FairPlay and the App Store have not been cracked, as far as I know.
      - X-Istence 13y ago
        FairPlay has been cracked a lot of times, there have been many tools to remove the DRM from FairPlay encrypted songs/videos/books. App store apps have also been cracked in that their keys have been stripped, on a jail broken phone you can run all those apps without needing a valid key.

tomphoolery 13y ago

Nice!! I've been holding out on downloading a new version of Silverlight because I heard this was just around the corner. Now I get to uninstall the last MS product on my machine!

Daiz 13y ago
>Now I get to uninstall the last MS product on my machine! ...Except you'd have to install Windows 8.1 and use IE11 in order to use the "wonderful" HTML5 Netflix with their proprietary DRM blob that has even less compatibility than Flash and Silverlight.

codereflection 13y ago

This is interesting. Google still hasn't completely converted over to HTML5 video for YouTube. You've been able to opt in to the trial for years now (http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5). But it seems that more than half the videos I watch are still using the crappy old Flash player. Content wise, YouTube has way more content to convert to be able to take advantage of HTML5. I wonder if Netflix is having to convert video on the backend for this as well. Or if they're just using a base format that allows for delivery over Silverlight and HTML5 without having to re-encode and store. But they wouldn't really be re-encoding on the fly though, would they? That would seem to be hugely resource intensive. Does anyone know more about how they're doing this on the backend?

lloeki 13y ago
> But it seems that more than half the videos I watch are still using the crappy old Flash player. That's because of the ads. With things like ClickToFlash or youtube-dl, you notice that most videos are actually available as MPEG4 and/or WebM.
- Daiz 13y ago
  The Flash player is playing the exact same H.264 video that you could get with the HTML5 player.
  - codereflection 13y ago
    Then why do they bring up the Flash player when I've opted in to the HTML5 preview?
    - Daiz 13y ago
      For ads (and DRM).
      - MatthewPhillips 13y ago
        The HTML5 player can play ads too...

driverdan 13y ago

Here's the EFF's formal objection to including DRM in HTML specs: https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/w3c-formal-objection-html-wg https://www.eff.org/pages/drm/w3c-formal-objection-html-wg

shmerl 13y ago

Netflix was and remains DRMed, which is enough of a reason to avoid them.

lupinglade 13y ago

About time. Now if they only added some good movies...

ebbv 13y ago

Nice Frank Lutz-ian reterming of HTML5 video DRM extensions as "premium extensions".

isomorphic 13y ago
Netflix is indeed using some slippery and perhaps contradictory wording that has passed through at least one marketing filter. Although we may interpret "premium" to connote "better", the usage meaning "something you have to pay" is accurate. Perhaps we could take back the language and start referring to the extensions as "Media Fee Extensions"?
- mtgx 13y ago
  I think it has nothing to do with being paid - it's not like you pay for the plugin itself. Plus, they wouldn't want you to think about having to pay for it anyway. I think in this case it's just a meaningless word introduced to make it sound better than the "proprietary plugins" like Silverlight and Flash. I think their alternatives were naming it like "Awesome Viewing Experience Extension" or "Netflix True HD Vision Extension", or something like that. In each case they wouldn't mean what they normally mean, and would be used in a misleading way just to give you a "good feeling" about having DRM on the web.
  - ebbv 13y ago
    The issue is there's already accurate words to describe these extensions; DRM. But the accurate words have negative connotations so they avoid them on purpose and try to use positive ones which may be technically accurate but wouldn't be how anyone would normally choose to describe them. This is the definition of spin.
    - Daiz 13y ago
      I think we should just all start calling these extensions either something like "Digital Restriction Extensions" (DRE for short) or just plain and simply "DRM Extensions". If misleading garbage like "Premium Media Extensions" were left to the likes of Netflix press releases, reporting on the subject would be much more truthful.

ck2 13y ago

This means netflix might finally come to the raspberry pi! Far more exciting than IE11

Daiz 13y ago
No, it won't. As far as compatibility goes, EME is even worse than something like Silverlight. This should be evident just from the fact that in order to use HTML5 Netflix, you either need a) IE11 on Windows 8.1 or b) an official Google Chromebook with Google-provided image and which hasn't been rooted. In comparison, even Silverlight has a pretty amazing track record as far as compatibility goes.
- dstorey 13y ago
  EME, MSE, and Web Crypto are very new specifications. They’re just starting to be rolled out in browsers. They’re not going to be rolled out everywhere overnight. H.264 video codec is on pretty much every major browser now, including Firefox. This wasn’t the case when browsers first supported the video element. It is a similar situation to EME and friends today. Including the potential licensing fee (I assume vendors have to licence the DRM module to plug into EME or get it from the underlying OS in the same way to how they have to licence H.264, but I'm not sure about this area)

downrightmike 13y ago

About effing time

dave1010uk 13y ago

Can we stop calling video that uses extensions "HTML5 video" (even if it may be part of the HTML spec)? I suggest we call it "EME video".

jebblue 13y ago

Can you say you are supporting HTML5 if you just get in bed with Microsoft?

dstorey 13y ago
I don‘t see why not. Two of the editors of the HTML5.1 spec are Microsoft representatives: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/ http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/
- jebblue 13y ago
  If you have to say they will support HTML5 but only on xyz browsers or OS'es then it's like a gas station saying they support Regular but only for Ford and General Motors cars. The reason I can say that is any _other_ site that claims HTML5, works fine on my Chrome browser on Ubuntu.

jebblue 13y ago

This works great on Linux, this is true HTML5 support (or they say it's HTML5 - and it works): http://www.videojs.com/ http://www.videojs.com/

adamconroy 13y ago

As pointed out by many, this is even more proprietary than any plugin. Microsoft are fricken idiots, they are trying to be hip and open standards etc but nobody is going to buy it, at the same time they are annoying everyone who couldn't care less and probably don't even know what a plugin is, on top of disenfranchising legions of developers.

humbledrone 13y ago
You say nobody is going to buy it, but doesn't this article show that Netflix "bought" into it?
- adamconroy 13y ago
  Sorry for the ambiguity. My intention was to communicate that I didn't think anyone would buy the idea that MS is hip and an open-standards advocate.

denibertovic 13y ago

there's really too much of this going on lately...i hate the path on which we are on....it's a slippery slope.

frankcaron 13y ago

I'm curious. With all the railing around Flash and its obsolescence, is Silverlight destined to go the same route? I don't hear much about it anymore, particularly in the enterprise and the video provider space in which I currently work, where things like Verimatrix and Azuki are mentioned far more often than Flash/Silverlight. Anyone have any intel on any major projects that use Silverlight aside from Netflix?

alanbyrne 13y ago

Does this mean it will now support Surround Sound?

Sonicmouse 13y ago

Exchange one crappy plugin for another... Way to innovate.