Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 219 posts

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#131

Post by progbits »

clueless wrote: post #121
koinedad wrote: post #3

Not sure the full motivation behind this but this is very annoying for a parent with kids. Especially if you've lost your remote, or want to quickly find something and cast it to your Chromecast/Apple TV. I'd prefer video streaming apps be required to support Casting/AirPlay.

> Not sure the full motivation behind this This feature was one of the main reasons how Netflix movies/shows could be captured/uploaded to piracy sites in full quality as soon as they were released. People recorded the video output and uploaded them. This is to remove that path. Kinda obvious if you ask.

This is untrue. This method wouldn't get you the highres content, that's limited to higher widevine tiers. Pirates use other bypass methods and this will zero impact.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#133

Post by mvdtnz »

clueless wrote: post #121
koinedad wrote: post #3

Not sure the full motivation behind this but this is very annoying for a parent with kids. Especially if you've lost your remote, or want to quickly find something and cast it to your Chromecast/Apple TV. I'd prefer video streaming apps be required to support Casting/AirPlay.

> Not sure the full motivation behind this This feature was one of the main reasons how Netflix movies/shows could be captured/uploaded to piracy sites in full quality as soon as they were released. People recorded the video output and uploaded them. This is to remove that path. Kinda obvious if you ask.

How is this different from recording video output from a not-casted stream?

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#134

Post by finnjohnsen2 »

quxbar wrote: post #95

After the better part of a decade spent with chromecast and legal streaming, I have been forced back to the high seas as of late. I can't reliably get programs without onerous subscriptions, each for one or two shows I actually care about.

aye matey

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#135

Post by jauntywundrkind »

The extra irony here is that Netflix kind of lead the charge in this domain, worked with YouTube to build the DIAL protocol (Discovery and Launch, 2010). Which strongly resembles what emerged latter, Chromecast. From the DIAL protocol:

> For consumers, DIAL removes the pain of having to launch the required app on the first-screen [eg: tv] before interacting with it from their second-screen [eg: phone].

https://www.dial-multiscreen.org/

Growing up in the 90's, I was obsessed with ubiquitous computing, with an idea that there would be computers everywhere & we were going to need "the network is the computer" type thinking to let us make use of ambient screens, speakers, cameras, lights, etc. with Casting being ascendant and ragingly excellent, and Matter finally bringing some reason to IoT (but computer to computer notably weak) it's amazing to see some of that world.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why Netflix would be trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle now. We're ina user I would be pissed. I almost never touch my TV remote, and turning back the

I also want to mention that there is an open standard at the w3c, Open Screen Protocol, that's built by the Second Screen Working Group, to handle these flows in an open specified way. Matter has a Cast spec as well, but seems to only work with native apps that are already installed on devices, where-as DIAL (in many cases), Chromecast, and Open Screen Protocol all have modes where the target TV or speaker or whatnot open a given URL, so they can work with any* app without the 1st screen/tv needing explicit support. https://github.com/w3c/openscreenprotocol

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#136

Post by Dayshine »

clueless wrote: post #121
koinedad wrote: post #3

Not sure the full motivation behind this but this is very annoying for a parent with kids. Especially if you've lost your remote, or want to quickly find something and cast it to your Chromecast/Apple TV. I'd prefer video streaming apps be required to support Casting/AirPlay.

> Not sure the full motivation behind this This feature was one of the main reasons how Netflix movies/shows could be captured/uploaded to piracy sites in full quality as soon as they were released. People recorded the video output and uploaded them. This is to remove that path. Kinda obvious if you ask.

That's not how casting works. It's actually super locked down: the TV loads a netflix website and you can't create your own Chromecast receivers.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#137

Post by otterley »

koinedad wrote: post #3

Not sure the full motivation behind this but this is very annoying for a parent with kids. Especially if you've lost your remote, or want to quickly find something and cast it to your Chromecast/Apple TV. I'd prefer video streaming apps be required to support Casting/AirPlay.

Apple TV has a Netflix app already. Plus you can use your iPhone as a remote.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#138

Post by mort96 »

lunias wrote: post #78
mort96 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's going to be primarily a gaming device then that makes sense, but if not, what do you gain from SteamOS? And why do you want Steam to start on boot? I use Fedora for this purpose, used to use Debian. You really just need a system with a web browser, file browser, media player and torrent client, and some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone). Sadly, I don't know of any nice o…

> some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone) If you use Kodi then you could try Kore (their remote app). I tried it once a long time ago and it was alright, but it's hard to beat a keyboard. I think similar apps exist for VLC and other media players, but I haven't looked into a solution that allows controlling the entire computer via a phone.

The huge problem with Kodi is that it requires playing media from within Kodi. The advantage of using a PC for this is that it works with anything you can play from a PC, regardless of whether someone has made an app for it for Apple TV or Samsung's smart TV stuff or Kodi.

You need to be able to provide keyboard and mouse input from a phone. Not just control Kodi or VLC.

Re: Netflix kills casting from its mobile app to most modern TVs

#140

Post by mort96 »

threetonesun wrote: post #94
mort96 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's going to be primarily a gaming device then that makes sense, but if not, what do you gain from SteamOS? And why do you want Steam to start on boot? I use Fedora for this purpose, used to use Debian. You really just need a system with a web browser, file browser, media player and torrent client, and some way to remote control the computer from the couch (ideally from a phone). Sadly, I don't know of any nice o…

You can add any applications to Steam's Big Picture mode and the UI is relatively couch friendly. Yes, you could install Steam on any distro and do this but SteamOS is pretty nice out of the box if you want a TV friendly solution.

Steam Big Picture is very couch friendly, if you're using a game pad and what you're launching supports a game pad. That's why it works for a couch gaming PC. Firefox has pretty bad gamepad support last I checked.
Post reply on HN