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The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

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Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#151

Post by yosito »

rowanG077 wrote: post #147
freeplay wrote: post #115

Widevine has been privately cracked/bypassed. The method hasn't been made public as it would obviously get patched rather quickly (if it even can be patched). That's why Netflix content is available almost immediately on any decent tracker. The quality would not look nearly as good if it was grabbed using a capture card. Like others have mentioned, it's security theater for the content owners who most likely require…

Why would a capture card look any worse? Isn't it capturing lossless video output? Just because of the re-encode?

Capture is not lossless. Think about a photocopy machine, every copy loses a small bit of information. Recapturing video output is a similar situation.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#152

Post by _ea1k »

rfoo wrote: post #91
koolba wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical complexity aside, it’d be a business risk to accidentally mislabel a stream as not requiring DRM too.

Netflix already labels them. They show only their original content to users which are suspected to be behind VPNs. [1] [1] https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/why-can-i-only-see-net...

The consequences of mislabeling it likely vary based on the severity. Mislabeling and presenting without encryption is likely to be a bigger issue with content providers than accidentally allowing it via a VPN.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#153

Post by Scoundreller »

rowanG077 wrote: post #147
freeplay wrote: post #115

Widevine has been privately cracked/bypassed. The method hasn't been made public as it would obviously get patched rather quickly (if it even can be patched). That's why Netflix content is available almost immediately on any decent tracker. The quality would not look nearly as good if it was grabbed using a capture card. Like others have mentioned, it's security theater for the content owners who most likely require…

Why would a capture card look any worse? Isn't it capturing lossless video output? Just because of the re-encode?

The signal remains digital, but decompressed into a raw bitstream that would be many mbps (think how big lossless filesizes get). So it has to be re-encoded but you’re doubling the compression artefacts, and can only avoid them by really dialing up the bitrate.

Maybe someone made a video encoder algorithm that’s tuned toward already compressed and decompressed video.

Though I’m in the camp of watching for quality of the story etc. rather than the crispness of the video. If it’s not worth watching in 480p, it’s not worth watching in 4K either.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#154

Post by torified »

nl wrote: post #133
reisse wrote: post #63

The mere existence of Widevine is a mystery for me. How sensible for Netflix is to invest into DRM at all? It's not a gamedev situation, where DRM lasts long enough to make impact on initial sales. Pirated Netflix shows appear on the torrents same day, and unless they have full-stack protection from the decoder to the screen, not much can be done. They seem to make user experience worse for nothing.

The point is to make the Netflix experience better for the average person than the experience of using a pirated source. And - IMHO - it works. I used to use Bittorrent quite a lot. There was a bunch of US shows I watched that were unavailable in Australia and so I had a pretty decent setup where things would automatically download when torrents were posted. Life happened, I stopped using it and haven't really tried…

What? Piracy is so easy.

Go to torrent site, download torrent, click on file. It really couldn't be easier. There's no DRM on the torrent. If you have a semi-modern GPU you can play any codec you might download. I'm really not sure what you're talking about, unless you're going to some weird torrent site.

Piracy has a great user experience compared to paying for DRM and having to use a particular app instead of your preferred player.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#155

Post by rowanG077 »

yosito wrote: post #151
rowanG077 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a capture card look any worse? Isn't it capturing lossless video output? Just because of the re-encode?

Capture is not lossless. Think about a photocopy machine, every copy loses a small bit of information. Recapturing video output is a similar situation.

Why? Photocopy is obviously lossy since there is a very noisy digital-analog-digital conversion going on. But a capture card is capturing a digital signal. There should be no loss except for video decoding/encoding artifacts.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#156

Post by rowanG077 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #153
rowanG077 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a capture card look any worse? Isn't it capturing lossless video output? Just because of the re-encode?

The signal remains digital, but decompressed into a raw bitstream that would be many mbps (think how big lossless filesizes get). So it has to be re-encoded but you’re doubling the compression artefacts, and can only avoid them by really dialing up the bitrate. Maybe someone made a video encoder algorithm that’s tuned toward already compressed and decompressed video. Though I’m in the camp of watching for quality of…

A single re-encode will make a difference. But with the proper settings it will be almost unnoticeable.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#157

Post by p1necone »

Longhanks wrote: post #114
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix doesn’t do it because they want to. They do it because it’s part of the licensing agreements they sign to get content.

Of course they want to. Who doesn’t want to protect his or her intellectual property? There are probably millions of people subscribed to Netflix merely because pirating Netflix content is inconvenient enough to make people rather pay. How many would reconsider this if the user experience of pirating was exactly as convenient as a paid Netflix account? Most probably enough so that enacting DRM is the smaller price to…

DRM doesn't do anything for non interactive content. It's trivial to rip video and music regardless of what DRM scheme is used because the content is useless unless it's eventually presented to the viewer/listener in a non DRMd form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

You can make this argument for DRM on games, because there is no analogue hole - I can't record me playing a game and give someone else the exact same experience (although some publishers try to restrict this too, not realizing that streamers and youtubers are just giving them free advertising by playing their games).

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#158

Post by hunter2_ »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #123
depressedpanda wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, the extra "protection" is worthless.

Not worthless, actively harmful to the user experience, and therefore actively harmful to the bottom line.

But I doubt the harmed people will feel materially less harmed if some tiny fraction of content isn't in harm's way while the rest still is.

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#159

Post by hunter2_ »

p1necone wrote: post #157
Longhanks wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they want to. Who doesn’t want to protect his or her intellectual property? There are probably millions of people subscribed to Netflix merely because pirating Netflix content is inconvenient enough to make people rather pay. How many would reconsider this if the user experience of pirating was exactly as convenient as a paid Netflix account? Most probably enough so that enacting DRM is the smaller price to…

DRM doesn't do anything for non interactive content. It's trivial to rip video and music regardless of what DRM scheme is used because the content is useless unless it's eventually presented to the viewer/listener in a non DRMd form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole You can make this argument for DRM on games, because there is no analogue hole - I can't record me playing a game and give someone else the exac…

Do people even still use the analog hole, or is it all about stripping DRM/HDCP/etc. in the digital domain these days?

Re: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux

#160

Post by Havoc »

seizethegdgap wrote: post #142
Havoc wrote: post #122

Many judge success on this by "do i get 1080". I've found this to be incredibly deceptive for nix and DRM on netflix. My experience has been that even managing 1080 on a nix platform the experienced quality is substantially worse. Thoughout I was going insane, but checked bitrate and sure enough netflix at 1080 was streaming at much lower rate than on windows 1080.

Would changing the user agent to a Windows release of Chrome make any difference?

I do not know.

I jumped through all the hoops suggested at the time by the various get netflix to work on linux guides. Extensions and right browser and DRM enabled and whatever other stuff they recommended.

No dice on comparable quality.

I should add that there is always the possibility that there was some gfx driver or codec dynamic at play that I don't understand...but ultimately if it's visually noticably worse that's a fatal flaw regardless of reason.

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