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Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

techblog.netflix.com

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Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#351

Post by flukus »

dasil003 wrote: post #343
flukus wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're living in fantasy world where DRM actually works. Not once has DRM prevented me from watching a netflix show, it's only prevented me from watching it on netflix.

Wrong, neither I nor anyone in industry believes DRM "works" in that sense. You're misunderstanding the purpose of DRM, see my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13936576

I don't understand your clarification either:

> The point of enforcing DRM is not to prevent piracy, but rather to flex their market clout and demonstrate control.

I don't see how DRM does this. The amount they've spent compared to the results they've got seems to demonstrate a complete lack of control to me.

>As long as they put up moderate barriers to ripping, and as long as they have legal sanction to suppress productized piracy, the steady stream of new must-have content allows them to throw their weight around.

What does DRM do to prevent productized piracy?

>Licensing streaming without DRM is a slippery slope that decreases the perceived value of their content.

So the choose to increase the real value of it instead?

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#352

Post by Silhouette »

matt4077 wrote: post #251
dasil003 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free…

Browser makers have plenty leverage. A Firefox user watching Netflix will, and this is a tautology, be worse off if they cannot continue doing so. That may lead to people switching to other browsers more often than dropping Netflix subscriptions, but the costs for Netflix wouldn't be 0, and may even be substantial considering the population of people using Firefox is self-selected to those placing a high value on ope…

That may lead to people switching to other browsers more often than dropping Netflix subscriptions, but the costs for Netflix wouldn't be 0

Maybe not, but since they already provide their content via various apps anyway, it's hardly a leap to them providing a dedicated, proprietary player on other platforms as well.

If Chrome were to ship without DRM, Netflix would cave faster than you can say "thepiratebay". See what happened to flash when it wasn't supported on the iPhone.

Flash continued to be the dominant platform for online video for several more years, major sites didn't work on Apple devices, and competitors literally ran campaigns with lines like "See the whole Internet"? I'm not sure you're making the point you intended to here.

If your defeatist attitude had prevailed in the early years, we'd all be writing VBScript to animate the spinning gif on homepage.doc – yes, Microsoft once tried to push .doc to replace .html.

This is just silly. At no point in the history of the Web, from its earliest days growing out into public awareness, was there any serious prospect of anything like that happening. Whether we're really better off with JS having become the dominant front-end language is a different question, but I digress.

I also think the music industry has proven quite clearly that you'll have a lot more success with carrots than sticks.

The music industry can sell its primary content at sub-dollar prices and still make a reasonable profit. Almost no-one else can.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#353

Post by tptacek »

syshum wrote: post #350
tptacek wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it not true that Netflix would cave if they didn't have native browser support, but we know it's not true, because Netflix for years relied on plugins to deliver over browsers. Meanwhile, every year that passes, browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers.

>> because Netflix for years relied on plugins to deliver over browsers. They still do, you have to have the Widevine PLUGIN and the Open H264 PLUGIN to play content on netflix It is a pure myth that eme does not have plugins >browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browse…

I agree that it's a myth that EME doesn't have plugins. What EME does is reduce the scope of those plugins.

HTML5 does not require binary plugins in order to work.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#354

Post by syshum »

derefr wrote: post #212
daenney wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. Why do you assume they didn't? And if they did and the industry said no, what should they have done? Walk away, lose access to all its content, see a large part of their subscriber base move to different services that do support DRM and therefor get the content and eventually have t…

It's interesting that DRM is basically a "free market problem." In cases where there is a government-supported media production/distribution service, as with the BBC in Britain, no DRM is needed, because the success of the service is not dependent on income from licensing the content. Instead, the content itself is often put up for free on a government-hosted online archive, in as many formats as possible, to ensure…

Aside from the fact that your wrong about the BBC

the issue itself is not a "free market problem" because copyright only exists because of government interference. Government created the "right" DRM is protecting against.

In a pure free market, there is no copyright, thus no need for DRM to protect a right that does not exist

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#355

Post by jasonkostempski »

usrusr wrote: post #311
zanny wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I'm going to immediately argue with you that there is no reasonable DRM. It comes from two ideological positions. One believes that content creators need complete systemic control of what they make - at all costs (that the creator maintains full control no matter how the content is interacted with) - and the other is that content shouldn't be controlled (or that I, as a buyer of content, should control the co…

So, install a DRM-free browser on your universal computer and get a dedicated box for the subscription service? Except for perfectly avoidable waste, what did I miss?

The problem is, eventually, no one is going to make an DRM-free browser because "no one" will use it if they can't watch movies or access whatever other content will be locked down with EME. Firefox let's you easily disable DRM, for now, I have no faith it will remain that way forever. If content providers were really never going to give up on DRM requirements, I think a standardized "Media Browser" specification should have been created with the only goal being audio/video delivery, completely separate from web standards. I don't even understand why Netflix wants to be under the thumb of the major browsers, they should be the one's looking for a dedicated solution so they can declare independence.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#356

Post by infinite8s »

schrodinger wrote: post #348
Silhouette wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here. Sure it will. It will stop people writing a script to download as much as they can get away with in a single month and then cancelling since they have enough content to keep them going for several more months without paying for them. 3. People who want to…

There's always the analog loophole. If you can watch it on your screen, you can record it.

If you discount the cost of your time to zero. Otherwise it's not even worth a minimum wage job.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#357

Post by Silhouette »

schrodinger wrote: post #348
Silhouette wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here. Sure it will. It will stop people writing a script to download as much as they can get away with in a single month and then cancelling since they have enough content to keep them going for several more months without paying for them. 3. People who want to…

There's always the analog loophole. If you can watch it on your screen, you can record it.

Of course, but typically quality suffers significantly, so what you get isn't as good as the original and that in itself is a deterrent for a lot of people.

Also, some modern watermarking techniques can survive conversions like this, so if anyone is making a habit of recording content from a service using watermarking and redistributing it on a scale that justifies taking serious action, it'll be pretty easy to prove who it was when the lawsuit comes up.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#358

Post by amelius »

Silhouette wrote: post #339
amelius wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you think this DRM will stop? 1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here. 2. People who don't have access to the content can't even see the DRM'ed version of the file, so DRM will do nothing here either. 3. People who want to pirate (illegally distribute) the content have advanced t…

1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here. Sure it will. It will stop people writing a script to download as much as they can get away with in a single month and then cancelling since they have enough content to keep them going for several more months without paying for them. 3. People who want to…

> Sure it will. It will stop people writing a script to download as much as they can

But the people who go through the trouble of that are exactly the people who wouldn't mind downloading pirated copies in the first place.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#359

Post by jasonkostempski »

flukus wrote: post #307
jasonkostempski wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for Linux and I know first had that the Windows Store one is complete garbage because I really wanted it to work. The Hulu one is just as bad.

I've used the windows one a fair bit and would take it over the browser one any day. The desktop one wins for resource usage alone.

For me, it usually wouldn't start up (some oddball Windows Store error, probably because I don't sign into my machine with a Microsoft ID) and streaming quality was horrible, especially at the beginning, and there was no way to tell it to wait longer for buffering.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#360

Post by syshum »

mintplant wrote: post #184
apostacy wrote: post #127

This is the strategy Microsoft tried over a decade ago with ActiveX. And Firefox saved us. It was starting to be normalized, to have to install ActiveX controls to view certain content. Companies like CinemaNow[1] offered Netflix-like streaming movie services using Microsoft's ActiveX based Janus DRM over a decade ago. Thankfully, the community had more of a backbone back then. Firefox and Linux were not broken becau…

> Now, the same thing is happening again, except that Mozilla is on board with it. Mozilla doesn't have as much leverage now that a large part of "the community" has abandoned Firefox for Chrome. If you care about these issues, stop and consider the effect of your choice in user agent. > It's only a matter of time until Firefox is just a wrapper for webkit It will be a very cold day in hell before this happens. Mozil…

>>browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers.

Yea they will us Blink, not Webkit...

Mozilla is trying their hardest to make Firefox the best Chrome Clone on the market...

Ofcourse Vivaldi is giving them a run for their money, but I I am sure Adopting EME, Web Extensions, and every other Chrome Tech will really get them their market share back..

Copy Cats always win...

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