Not completely legal for distribution, but you can embed the Chrome Widevine binary in a Chromium Embedded Framework application. I have done so myself in the past. Works great.
I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
431–440 of 632 posts
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#432Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#433Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been running it since the earliest beta versions when it was literally Xbox Media Center - a media center for modded Xboxes (original). I’ve ran it on all kinds of hardware from laptops, Android phones and tablets, Raspberry Pis (version 1 through to 3), Intel NUCs, etc. And obviously not forgetting the Xbox. Until very recently it was my go to media center. I even went as far as to write some plugins for it. Bu…
As a (former) plugin developer and long-time user and community member, I don't think you're exactly the best person to evaluate today's install usability for a non- or even somewhat-technical new-ish user.
I'm really not sure what the point of your post is but what I can tell is you've completely misunderstood my post (and possibly Kodi too?) because several of the conditions you highlighted (eg "todays", "non-technical") wasn't even in the scope of my monologue.
Besides, non-technical users wouldn't be ripping DVDs to a NFS / SMB share in the first place (or using a home server / NAS for bittorrent / usenet / etc if that's how one prefers to accumulate their video archive). So why would they want a Media Centre that's designed for playing local or networked content?
Maybe what you're referring to is the stuff that has been in press a lot in recent years; the stuff incorrectly named (imo) as "Kodi-boxes" (or similar). I say "incorrectly named" because they used 3rd party plugins for illegal streams but those really have naff all to do with the Kodi media centre itself. It's like calling illegal downloading "Windows-boxes" because someone uses a bittorrent client on Windows 10.
I guess you could argue that Kodi now fills a niche that is dying out - that's certainly the case for me as I tend to use Netflix et al on my smart TV. But for playing local / mountable files, Kodi still leads the pack in terms of ease. Which is hardly surprising when you consider that's what the media centre was built to do.
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
EME does not require Widevine; you can implement EME in its entirety yourself, in open code. Widevine is only one of several implementations of a Content Decryption Module; it just so happens to be by far the easiest to license (though that doesn't mean that's easy!).
So could I write a custom Content Decryption Module that would be able to decrypt Netflix content? Or would the content providers have to support my custom Content Decryption Module?
A website can decide which Content Decryption Modules it would like to support, because ultimately the site runs the keyservers and can decide which CDM's keys it would like to generate.
But EME includes a fully freely implementable Clearkey spec. Ultimately sites generally don't want to generate keys for it, but it can be done.
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how do open source browsers like Chromium and Firefox do this? Surely if they have access to the blackbox, then anyone does? And if they don't, it means you can't watch Netflix on some major browsers.
Firefox will ask you to download a proprietary blob which is needed for DRM the first time you visit Netflix.
This is also the case for Brave browser, a dialog opens asking to download the binary. I suspect this is also the case with other Chromium browsers, they may do it without prompting though.
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So what is this DRM supposed to achieve? I think DRM in general was never really designed to completely thwart piracy. The goal is actually to delay the pirated version as much as possible and to raise the barrier to entry when pirated versions are eventually released into the wild.
My point was that, for movies and TV shows at least, this simply doesn't work. The delay is small enough that it's usually negligible (a few hours in my experience). For live events (especially sporting events) of course that's enough to make pirating impractical, but for the new episode of Game of Thrones it's really not much. Furthermore I assume that most of that latency is not due to the time required for pirates…
The UHD Blu-ray protection held up for several years.
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
EME is part of web standards. So for some value of standards compliant web browser google can block you from implementing it. https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-encrypted-media-20170918/
EME does not require Widevine; you can implement EME in its entirety yourself, in open code. Widevine is only one of several implementations of a Content Decryption Module; it just so happens to be by far the easiest to license (though that doesn't mean that's easy!).
> you can implement EME in its entirety yourself, in open code
Noope. Netflix has explicitly stated, at W3C, that they absolutely won't use any open EME implementation.
In practice any open CDM that you implement yourself will be totally useless. The "open" parts of EME have no real utility, and exist only to be able derail criticism by making rhetorical arguments about hypothetical open implementation, even though it's by definition exactly the opposite what Netflix and Google designed EME for.
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the same way, part of building a web browser is having the ability to render web content. If Google can block your custom browser from rendering content, then for all practical purposes they are blocking your ability to build a browser. Eh.. in a way, but not really. It can still work as a web browser but a web site can still render however they'd like based on your user agent. If I made a site today, I could ad…
I would still claim two differences on the user agent side of things: First, any browser can report any user agent they want. There are a number of examples of browsers faking or changing user agents to get around sites that try to differentiate based on those strings. Second, while any individual web site can implement logic based on the user agent, that's the sole choice of the web operator. By restricting Widevine…
> By restricting Widevine access, Google is blocking rendering of content on other people's domains.
This isn't good, but it's not arbitrary control. These companies chose to implement widevine, so they chose to allow Google to dictate who gets to legally use WV.
Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
The W3C isn't to blame. No one is to blame, really. We have DRM, we hate it but it's there, and it serves a purpose. If it is your intellectual property, you get to decide how it is used. And if you don't want to make copying too easy because you think that it will get you more money, that's your right. The goal of the W3C is not to make to make a political statement about the rightness or wrongness of DRM. They are…
If it is your intellectual property, you get to decide how it is used. Another poster here made an interesting point, that this wasn't true until the 90s. Deciding "how it is used" is different from (and broader than) deciding "who gets to distribute it".
> Another poster here made an interesting point, that this wasn't true until the 90s.
This was always true. Most copyright traditions recognise Droit Moral, and the right for the author to determine the integrity and treatment of the work, and have for, in some cases, literally hundreds of years.