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

Netflix Downloads

media.netflix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 122 posts

Re: Netflix Downloads

#21

Post by morsch »

logicallee wrote: post #13
jbob2000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably aren't storing the videos as you are traditionally thinking about them - you don't get to download a video file which you can play anywhere. Most likely what they've done is stored the video chunks locally and then the Netflix app is "streaming" these chunks from the local storage rather than the netflix servers. If you looked through the folder that holds these chunks, you'd probably just see a bunch o…

>That's all the DRM they need, you have no ability to consume these files without the Netflix app. This is like saying that .doc files are as good as DRM'd, since who's going to open one in anything but Word? I get what you're saying but it's a security through obscurity argument - if this takes off, of course someone can figure out the encoding and transcode straight from those files.

It's just the same security they use for streaming. If you can decode the chunks, you can also capture the streamed data and decode it.

Re: Netflix Downloads

#22

Post by jbob2000 »

m3ta wrote: post #11
jbob2000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably aren't storing the videos as you are traditionally thinking about them - you don't get to download a video file which you can play anywhere. Most likely what they've done is stored the video chunks locally and then the Netflix app is "streaming" these chunks from the local storage rather than the netflix servers. If you looked through the folder that holds these chunks, you'd probably just see a bunch o…

That is not "all the DRM they need". Files split up into "randomly named 100mb chunks" does not make them safe from would-be pirates with a penchant for reverse engineering.

I mean, there's probably more to it than "randomly named 100mb chunks", but for the sake of brevity, that's how I described it.

Re: Netflix Downloads

#23

Post by logicallee »

morsch wrote: post #21
logicallee wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's all the DRM they need, you have no ability to consume these files without the Netflix app. This is like saying that .doc files are as good as DRM'd, since who's going to open one in anything but Word? I get what you're saying but it's a security through obscurity argument - if this takes off, of course someone can figure out the encoding and transcode straight from those files.

It's just the same security they use for streaming. If you can decode the chunks, you can also capture the streamed data and decode it.

I would imagine downloads can be faster than 1x realtime, no? Having to stream things is a serious limit on ripping (transcoding) speed.

Re: Netflix Downloads

#24

Post by ozgurozkan »

I have a new theory about user requirements. Spotify and Netflix has same feature now. Only one difference exists music vs. video. What will be the spotify and netflix of VR content? It will be downloadable to our mobile phones. to be continued...

Re: Netflix Downloads

#25

Post by royjacobs »

m3ta wrote: post #11
jbob2000 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably aren't storing the videos as you are traditionally thinking about them - you don't get to download a video file which you can play anywhere. Most likely what they've done is stored the video chunks locally and then the Netflix app is "streaming" these chunks from the local storage rather than the netflix servers. If you looked through the folder that holds these chunks, you'd probably just see a bunch o…

That is not "all the DRM they need". Files split up into "randomly named 100mb chunks" does not make them safe from would-be pirates with a penchant for reverse engineering.

The chunks themselves would have the same DRM applied as when you'd stream from their servers. In the latter case you can also just sniff the traffic, but that's not enough to be able to decrypt the video.

Re: Netflix Downloads

#27

Post by ianai »

kevinbluer wrote: post #5

Oddly not everything is downloadable though. No Luke Cage here on Netflix Hong Kong (which is odd given it's Netflix made).

They said it wasn't going to be available for every title yet.

Re: Netflix Downloads

#28

Post by tdb7893 »

paglia_s wrote: post #19

Looks like it's only available for smartphones and tablets, not for computers. Probably because on smartphones and tables they have their own app and don't have to rely on a browser.

Too bad they couldn't make it a chrome extension or something at least

Re: Netflix Downloads

#29

Post by brianwawok »

logicallee wrote: post #23
morsch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the same security they use for streaming. If you can decode the chunks, you can also capture the streamed data and decode it.

I would imagine downloads can be faster than 1x realtime, no? Having to stream things is a serious limit on ripping (transcoding) speed.

Whut?

You can write a stream to file with maybe 2 commands, and try to decode it later.

If the DRM on the stream is broken, you can save the stream to file and decode it later. If the DRM on the stream is safe, then it should be equally safe between the stream and saving the file to disk.

I fail to see how letting you save encrypted stuff to local disc has anything to do with breaking the DRM.

Also, the first thought people have when given a new service for free is "how can I use this to pirate movies". This is why we can't have nice stuff.....

Re: Netflix Downloads

#30

Post by mulletbum »

tdb7893 wrote: post #28
paglia_s wrote: post #19

Looks like it's only available for smartphones and tablets, not for computers. Probably because on smartphones and tables they have their own app and don't have to rely on a browser.

Too bad they couldn't make it a chrome extension or something at least

Can someone please explain why this comment is being downvoted? Is it not feasible or is that stupid in some way? I'd just like to know if the downvotes are from a technical perspective.
Post reply on HN