HD Monitor Causes DRM Issues with Netflix

Jeremiah Cornelius points us to Davis Freeberg's blog, where he discusses his "nightmare scenario" of losing access to his DRM-protected purchases by upgrading his PC monitor. "When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue. Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup."

Comments

vista only

[Anonymous Coward]

Tag this Vista only. I ain't got no problems like that with XP.

Re:vista only

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Hi. I posted this story. The guy is not lying. You should try this yourself, with HDMI sometime.

When he's done being Slashdotted, look at the screen captures of his dialogue boxes.

I watched this technology being demonstrated - as an insider during development. Sheer suckage.

Re:vista only

[el americano]

Bad COPP No Netflix
Posted on January 3rd, 2008 by Davis

Movie Viewer Message

When In Doubt Blame Microsoft

Even though I'm an HDTV fanatic, it wasn't until this past weekend, that I finally made the jump to an HD monitor. While I don't have HDTV tuners on my Media Center, I do have an HD camcorder and it was important for me to be able to edit my high resolution videos.

After doing a little bit of research, I decided to pick up a SyncMasterTM 226BW from Samsung. Between the new monitor and my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card, the resolution looks absolutely stunning. Even my home movies look fantastic in HDTV. I really couldn't have been happier with the upgrade.

Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't quite as thrilled about my new HD Media Dream Machine and they've decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix.

I first found out about the problem on New Year's Eve, when I went to log into my account. When I tried to launch a streaming movie, I was greeted with an error message asking me to "reset" my DRM. Luckily, Netflix's help page on the topic included a link to a DRM reset utility, but when I went to install the program, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this warning.

Netflix Reset Microsoft DRM Utility

Netflix DRM

The minute I saw"this will potentially remove playback licenses from your computer, including those from companies other than Netflix or Microsoft" I knew better than to hit continue. Before nuking my entire digital library, I decided to call Netflix's technical support, to see if I could get to the bottom of my C00D11B1 error message.

When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue.

Technically, there is a way to back up the licenses before doing a DRM reset, but it's a pretty complex process, even by my standards. When I asked Netflix for more details, they referred me to Amazon for assistance.

Perhaps even worse than having to choose between having access to Netflix or giving up my Unbox movies was the realization that my real problems were actually tied to the shiny new monitor that I've already grown fond of.

Netflix's software allows them to look at the video card, cables and the monitor that you are using and when they checked mine out, it was apparently a little too high def to pass their DRM filters.

Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup.

As part of their agreement with Hollywood, Netflix uses a program called COPP (Certified Output Protection Protocal). COPP is made by Microsoft and the protocol restricts how you are able to transfer digital files off of your PC. When I ran COPP to identify the error on my machine, it gave me an ominous warning that "the exclusive semaphere is owned by another process."

My Netflix technician told me that he had never heard of this particular error and thought that it was unique to my setup. When I consulted Microsoft, they suggested that I consult the creator of the program. Since Microsoft wrote the COPP software, I wasn't sure who to turn to after that.

The irony in all of this, is that the DRM that Hollywood is so much in love with, is really only harming their paying customers. When you do a DRM reset, it's not your pirated files that get revoked, it's the ones that you already paid for that are at risk. I

Re:vista only

[gallwapa]

I have a 720p samsung 5075s and DVi-> HDMI works just fantastic. NVIDIA has a tweak tool to size the display just right for the TV. You might look into that.

Re:vista only

[Anonymous Coward]

I found I had about 100-200 pixels less in each direction. 720p is 1280x720. Many lcd tvs capable of 720p actually have a resolution of 1366x768. If you set your computer to 1280x720 resolution and output to such a tv you will usually have black bars all the way around. It's still 720p - the tv just isnt scaling it to 1366x768 like it does with other sources.

Re:vista only

[guruevi]

Correction: Your iTunes music will keep working (if you off course backed them up). If they're DRM-protected, all you need is an internet connection to re-authorize your computer and de-authorize the previous setup. Maybe it's different with the combination of Amazon and Netflix because the DRM is different although I don't ever plan on buying DRM'ed stuff so I wouldn't know. My guess is that the DRM-scheme authorizes a single key which resides on the client and (another guess) that copies can not be played anywhere else. The implementation is stupid because it is basically a PKI between buyer and seller where the buyer is the sole owner of their private key, Apple's implementation has all "keys" server-side and sends them to your player which is linked to a specific account so you can re-authorize your media.

Re:vista only

[jaa101]

You say "Third, it's not terribly difficult to backup your licenses. It's 3 clicks in Windows Media."

I can't see anywhere where he states what version of Windows Media Player he's using but, given his setup, it's reasonable to assume it's pretty recent. Are you aware that, with Windows Media Player11 and according to Microsoft, `This version of the Player does not permit you to back up your media usage rights.'

So with WMP11, once you lose your licence data or upgrade enough hardware, you need to go around and contact every vendor you bought DRM files from and ask nicely if they'll re-license your content. Ask yourself what your chances are of being able to play your DRMed files in five or ten years.

Re:vista only

[mac.man25]

This can all be solved by a little device called HDFury. It sits between your display and your DRM enabled device and converts from nasty DRM laden, to beautiful, DRM free signals. Completely digitally. (Unless you get the VGA model)

My friend got one for his PS3. Works great, he uses his PS3 with a CRT monitor, full 1080p BluRay with no issues. Pretty wicked little device.

Re:vista only

[james_a_craig]

Unfortunately it's not always as simple as this. My panasonic TV only allows two resolutions on the HDMI port - 1080p or 720p. But the hardware resolution's 766, so the right way to get a 1:1 mapping of pixels on the PC is as follows:
Configure PC to 1366x768. This would be the right resolution, but the TV won't actually accept that resolution.
Set the PC NOT to scale to output panel size. This gives a 1366x768 patch in the middle of a theoretically 1080p res screen.
Configure the TV's scaling to stretch that patch to full screen (Zoom 2 if you're using a panasonic viera TV)

DRM sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

This perhaps doesn't directly address the problem mentioned, but this is what I do. I only bother with Netflix DRM because I get it "free" anyway with my subscription.

Anyway, using a script I wrote, I parse the HTML saved from Firefox (pretending to be IE7) and download the highest bandwidth version of a movie. I then cringe and for the only time each month boot Windows and using Mirakagi, FreeUse4Win, WMP and unDRM the file. Then I can play in perpetuity in Linux/MythTV.

The size of the files is normally 1-2GB. Yes, that's less than DVD quality, but pretty acceptable in most cases. You can fetch the keys for 9 hours of movies per month (for the basic subscription), but they round up, so if you do it carefully and get keys for 8.5 hours of movies, you can make the last one a 3 hour epic - about 5-7 movies total.

This is all based upon information I got from here: http://forum.rorta.net/showthread.php?t=1134&page=6 (link to last page)

Kaffeine didn't play the resulting WMVs very well. mplayer and VLC do a better job.

Re:Owned

[bigtangringo]

AnyDVD + Handbrake + VideoLAN

"We work hard, so you don't have to"

mfilemon

[DamnStupidElf]

mfilemon is a printer port driver for Windows 2000/XP (maybe Vista and 2003, ymmv), so the Windows Printer thinks it's an Applescript or generic HP laser printer but it actually just dumps postscript files in a directory of your choosing. You can probably rig up any number of other scenarios where a "real" printer just sends postscript output to a network port somewhere that you can capture, or just turn on print-to-file with a normal printer, depending on how smart the DRM on the application is.

Re:I call bullshit...

[croddy]

Oh, I wish I'd copied the text while it was still mysterious red. Anyway, he provides screenshots, model numbers, and so forth. There's a "DRM reset" tool that Netflix recommended that they say will nuke anything from other vendors. It's clear that his digital restrictions keystore became corrupted somehow, and Netflix, Amazon, and Microsoft all directed him to each other. In the end he wonders why he bothered paying at all, noting that he could obtain higher-resolution rips for less money using bittorrent.

Re:There are sample videos in the "My Videos" fold

[harrkev]

The fact that you can download mp3s from amazon.com is probably due to the fact that computer speakers have become such a low-end commodity that vendors can't convince anyone to "upgrade" to DRM-enabled models.

Wanna bet? When I build my "dream" computer 3-1/2 years ago, I got an Audigy 2 sound card. It appears that the digital audio outputs are disabled if you are trying to play some restricted hi-def audio files (not MP3, though). So, if you went high-end and run your computer to an amp with digital inputs, you simply cannot listen to some music. The sad thing is that the people most likely to care about hi-def audio are the ones most likely to switch to an all-digital setup. Yet another reason to stick to analog speakers.

Re:I call bullshit...

[mariushm]

He changed the monitors, which caused Vista to invalidate the DRM, much like a Windows Genuine Advantage. Now his Netflix account is invalid and has to revalidate it and for this the application will scan all his licenses and reset all license it finds (which means he would have to contact Amazon and all the other companies and request to have the licenses activated again). Or something like that.

article text

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though I'm an HDTV fanatic, it wasn't until this past weekend, that I finally made the jump to an HD monitor. While I don't have HDTV tuners on my Media Center, I do have an HD camcorder and it was important for me to be able to edit my high resolution videos.

After doing a little bit of research, I decided to pick up a SyncMasterTM 226BW from Samsung. Between the new monitor and my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT video card, the resolution looks absolutely stunning. Even my home movies look fantastic in HDTV. I really couldn't have been happier with the upgrade.

Unfortunately, Hollywood isn't quite as thrilled about my new HD Media Dream Machine and they've decided to punish me by revoking my Watch Now privileges from Netflix.

I first found out about the problem on New Year's Eve, when I went to log into my account. When I tried to launch a streaming movie, I was greeted with an error message asking me to "reset" my DRM. Luckily, Netflix's help page on the topic included a link to a DRM reset utility, but when I went to install the program, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this warning.

[img]

The minute I saw"this will potentially remove playback licenses from your computer, including those from companies other than Netflix or Microsoft" I knew better than to hit continue. Before nuking my entire digital library, I decided to call Netflix's technical support, to see if I could get to the bottom of my C00D11B1 error message.

When I called them they confirmed my worst fears. In order to access the Watch Now service, I had to give Microsoft's DRM sniffing program access to all of the files on my hard drive. If the software found any non-Netflix video files, it would revoke my rights to the content and invalidate the DRM. This means that I would lose all the movies that I've purchased from Amazon's Unbox, just to troubleshoot the issue.

Technically, there is a way to back up the licenses before doing a DRM reset, but it's a pretty complex process, even by my standards. When I asked Netflix for more details, they referred me to Amazon for assistance.

Perhaps even worse than having to choose between having access to Netflix or giving up my Unbox movies was the realization that my real problems were actually tied to the shiny new monitor that I've already grown fond of.

Netflix's software allows them to look at the video card, cables and the monitor that you are using and when they checked mine out, it was apparently a little too high def to pass their DRM filters.

Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files from Netflix. In order to fix my problem, Netflix recommended that I downgrade to a lower res VGA setup.

As part of their agreement with Hollywood, Netflix uses a program called COPP (Certified Output Protection Protocal). COPP is made by Microsoft and the protocol restricts how you are able to transfer digital files off of your PC. When I ran COPP to identify the error on my machine, it gave me an ominous warning that "the exclusive semaphere is owned by another process."

My Netflix technician told me that he had never heard of this particular error and thought that it was unique to my setup. When I consulted Microsoft, they suggested that I consult the creator of the program. Since Microsoft wrote the COPP software, I wasn't sure who to turn to after that.

The irony in all of this, is that the DRM that Hollywood is so much in love with, is really only harming their paying customers. When you do a DRM reset, it's not your pirated files that get revoked, it's the ones that you already paid for that are at risk. I'm not allowed to watch low res Netflix files, even though I have the capability to download high def torrents? How does this even make sense? It's as if the studios want their digital strategies to fail.

While I understand the need for the studios to protect their content, I believe that these measures g

Re:article text

[figleaf]

Very weird. I have a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW monitor (which I recently upgraded to from a Dell monitor which finally conked out after 5 years of service), have the same graphics card -- ATI 2600 & I run Vista!
Yet I had no trouble with Netflix service before or after upgrading.

The reason I brought the Samsung monitor is because it supports HDCP and I wanted no trouble playing Blu-ray disks. Its a great monitor but for front-on viewing.
Unfortunately angular view is very better. I wish I had brought some other IPS-based monitor.

I suspect he is getting some bad support from Netflix.

Re:Hmmm. What is the problem here?

[tshak]

A service which, I might add, happens to work beautifully if you're running XP. It looks like this guy's problems stem from the fact that he's running Vista and has decided to change his hardware (even if it is only the monitor). We were given plenty of warning that Vista would do this, so we shouldn't be surprised when it happens.


The service works fine on Vista too (I use it all the time). This issue seems to lie HD display with an HDCP interface that requires DRM. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that XP/Linux/OSX has support for this so you wouldn't even be able to stream HD content via an HDCP protected interface to an HDCP capable display, as these types of displays require a "secure" video source for streaming digital HD content.

Sorry Server Down - Link To Article

[Davis Freeberg]

Sorry everyone /. was a little too powerful for my hosting company and they won't let me up my quota. If anyone knows of any webhosting companies that can handle the /. effect, I'm in the market for a new one. In the meantime, here is a link to another copy of the article in case you would like to read it. If someone can get Commander Taco to update it in the main article, I would appreciate it. Thanks for all the support and I hope that you don't hate me too much for making the mistake of buying Vista and DRM movies. Sometimes you have to experience how crappy DRM is first hand, in order to realize how much value it strips from your content.

Re:Owned

[Jester998]

AnyDVD is commercial software for Windows that decrypts + rips DVDs. There is also an 'HD' version out now that supports HDDVD and BluRay. It can be used to rip commercial DVDs to a DVD-R disc with region-free playback, or simply to an ISO on your hard drive. (http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html)

Handbrake is an open-source DVD-to-MPEG4 converter. (http://handbrake.fr/)

VideoLAN is a media player that can play back the MPEG4 files created with Handbrake. In addition to local plaback, it has the ability to unicast/multicast video & audio across a network. (http://www.videolan.org)

So basically, the idea is, rip the video to make it DRM-free, convert it to a smaller, more efficient format for storage, stream across a network.

Re:Owned

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not really a pirate by nature, I buy music online from iTunes and other places if I like it.

However, I make sure to remove the DRM once I have purchased it, if there is no DRM free version of the music, as I've been burnt with losing access to content before, due to often upgrading my hardware and occasionally reinstalling operating system, also bumping up into the limit of resetting "authorizations" with iTunes.

But this NetFlix shit? Is just fucking crazy. I swear, I will pirate every single fucking movie releases by every single fucking movie studio, and give it to any of my friends who are interested, until they stop this shit. No way in HELL I'm supporting these kinds of bullshit and illegal activities (what right does Microsoft/Hollywood have to DELETE OTHER CONTENT NOT PRODUCED BY THEM THAT I HAVE PAID FOR??!?). FUCK YOU CUNTS SUCK A BAG OF DICKS I'LL PIRATE ALL YOUR SHIT AND DISTRIBUTE IT.

Excuse the profanity.

Re:Simple solution

[Ice Wewe]

Here's an idea. Don't use Netflix. Just pretend they went bankrupt and no longer exist. Seriously, fuck em!

Onto the next media provider please...

Rent desired DVD. Download HandBrake. Encode into H264.

Legal? AFAIK it is in countries that don't have the wonderful copyright laws the US does... but I'm not a lawyer.

As bad as downloading it from a torrent? I think not.

To quote bash.org: "I saw 2 men in black suits knocking on my door so I microwaved my hard drive :\"

Re:Owned

[poopdeville]

Uh, so can VLC. MPlayer and VLC both use ffmpeg. Also, there's no point in using a codec pack with either MPlayer or VLC. They can both already play just about everything including Quicktime and older Real files.

he also changed his video card

[Joe The Dragon]

he also changed his video card and likely the video is tied to the old SN / ID of the hdcp chip in the old video card.

Re:I'll bite back.

[Kludge]

You Free(TM) OS fanboys are all fucking idiots. Perhaps. But we know what we're doing.

Because my computer allows me to send an unrestricted HDTV feed to my monitor, Hollywood has decided to revoke my ability to stream 480 resolution video files... This is obviously software DRM, not hardware.

DRM can be implemented in ANY operating system with or without cooperation from the authors of the OS But on an OS to which I have the code, I can dump any data that flows to my video or sound card and reencode it as I wish, rendering the DRM useless. If everyone used such open source OS systems, companies would not bother implementing DRM.

Re:Owned

[Martin Blank]

Consoles are inferior, IMHO, for FPS and RTS compared to mouse and keyboard, and there are still games that are released solely for Windows PCs.

Good

[saladpuncher]

Dear makers of DRM: please keep this up! Please, please, please keep making it harder for consumers to view your stuff. I've got an idea! How about a program that deletes all mp3s and (why the hell not) installs a root kit. I still don't think that goes far enough. You might want to kill all avi file usage too. Of course this only hurts the low tech pirates. You might want to limit streaming to ANY device that hasn't been registered. How about if I decide to take a game to a friend's house to show him how awesome it is? Fuck that! He hasn't paid a license so brick his machine. Pop a new HD-DVD/Blue Ray/ETC into a car stereo? Better make that thing call home before he can hear it. Also maybe make him swipe a card, enter a password and give a retinal scan too. Make him jump through hoops! Hoops that are on FIRE! Maybe then people will dump this tired crap and move to a standard that works for everyone.

Re:Why use HDMI?

[monsted]

Close. HDMI is DVI with sound (basically good old SPDIF). DVI supports HDCP (on some devices) and HDCP isn't a requirement on HDMI.

The problem is that some things require HDCP on high quality video signals, thus needing HDCP-enabled DVI or HDMI devices. The same goes for high quality sound, but since there's no protection on SPDIF, you're just out of luck. I believe that Vista will destroy your sound quality if DRM-infested media is played with an SPDIF output.